Last year, Matt Cutts has dropped a bomb on the sphere when he hinted that site speed could be considered as a ranking factor for the SERPs (search engine result pages). While it is not clear whether this is in fact being used or will be, by Google, it is always prudent to see how your website is performing. Relevance is still king when it comes to rankings and a combination of both relevance and page speed will definitely give you the ingredients to get to the top.

So, Is Site Speed Important For SEO?

Say there are two websites that are equally relevant for a user. Which do you think will be preferred by the user, the website that loads faster or the one that takes forever to fully load? I am betting that the answer is obvious and this is the reason why I think you should regularly check for your sites loading time whenever possible and perform some changes whenever necessary. It may or may not be an official ranking factor but I am almost sure that it will come into play when Google decides which website should come first, all for the good of enhancing the users experience. According to some research I have performed, the ideal site loading time will be somewhere under 10 seconds.

How do you measure your site speed loading time?

As always, I like using the KISS principle when recommending some tools for you to use. I have been using two free online SEO tools and one of them is even recommended by Google. Here they are:

Numion's StopWatch (very simple and recommended by Google): The stopwatch is a small Javascript that runs on your computer (not the Numion server). It measures the time between the moment your browser starts to load the URL and when the browser signals that it has finished ("Done" in the status bar). The measurement therefore includes fetching and interpreting all HTML (including frames), images, and Javascripts. It does not include content that is handled by plugins. If the page is in the cache then the stopwatch will measure the faster loading time. The accuracy is the accuracy of the Javascript timer, on most systems 10 milliseconds. Not bad. Just be make to test for your site speed also by clearing up your cache. This will give you an idea of what a new user will have to wait for your site to load.

iBlogzone Test Site Speed

Web Page Analyzer (simple but advanced): The script calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve page load time. The script incorporates the latest best practices from Website Optimization Secrets, web page size guidelines and trends, and web site optimization techniques into its recommendations.

If you are interested is seeing how your site is performing, give these tools a go and get your website optimized for speed. Remember though that it is not something you should panic about, but better safe than sorry.

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Hi everyone. After a taking a long break on my online activities, I have finally resumed to write my weekly echoes which as you know is my form of sharing posts that I have enjoyed reading over the past week. Whether it is a great advice, an inspirational message, a humorous post, or a breaking news, I am of the opinion that it is also a great initiative and an excellent form to build your network.

As usual they are of no specific topic and are in no particular order.

So, for the weekly roundups:
Consistency – A 7th Characteristic of Trust Building (Everyone can do this): How do you know if your readers trust you? Find out how.

16 Facebook Applications to Boost Popularity of Facebook Fan Page: Don't really have to elaborate too much here. Just head over Ching Ya's blog and be informed of some of the best Facebook apps available to boost your popularity. Must read.

The BEST Way to Generate Lots of Comments on Your Next Blog Post: An extremely simple written article and yet very informative. If you are struggling to get those comments pumping in, apply these techniques and you should see some movement going on.

7 Shoestring Marketing Secrets: The secrets of internet marketing finally revealed? Check this awesome guest post written by Jessica Swanson.

Blog Food Series: 4 Tips for whipping up fresh content
: An excellent 4 part series that provides tips on how to create fresh and original content. This is the fourth. You will have to read all parts:)

In Defence Of A Bloggers Right To Review A Product: A perfect example of how the community of bloggers work.

Dramatically improve your blog in one night: These works and it is easy to implement. Read on...

Top 7 Celebrity Plugins, How to turn Wordpress into a Hollywood Blog: If you are on WordPress, here are some must have plugins that will help you reach that status of celebrity quicker, lol

What You Should And Shouldn’t Have On Your Blog’s Sidebar: These are tips and suggestions, and I highly recommend you to read it, just in case.

Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & a Viral Video: Kikolani's weekly roundup. More great posts over here.

That's it for this "I'm Back" weekly echo. Next week (hopfully) there's more. Have a great week ahead.

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While one of the most important objectives of search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns today is still “direct response” (e.g: clicks and conversions), brand awareness has definitely taken a whole new meaning when it comes to advertising.

Brand advertisers goals are normally different with that of direct response advertisers, as they are not looking for clicks and conversions, but rather to create certain awareness among users. To illustrate this better, here is an example:

Direct Response Advertiser: A company selling some kind of gadget. They are looking for clicks to direct them to their website to ultimately generate a sale (conversion).

Brand Advertisers: A company wants to create a "buzz" prior to a launch of some new product. Say company X will launch a revolutionary new SEO tool that will blow your mind away. "X SEO Tool, Three weeks to countdown". The advertiser in this scenario does not want clicks, but rather to call the attention of users about a product launch they are going to have. Maybe they will direct you to a page that is some sort of pre-sale page or with a tease, to further enhance the awareness.

Considering that brand advertisers have different goals from that of direct response, it is also safe to say that they are more selective when choosing for websites to publish their ads. This is where, Google AdSense ad placement management comes into play. These types of advertisers will more likely be looking for available spaces that are above the fold because they are more attractive and will want their ads to be immediately visible when a page is loaded.

That said, Google AdSense has recently launched a new beta advertiser feature that will enable brand advertisers to target their ads to available units which can help them accomplish this goal. Google has implemented a statistically-driven model that takes into account various user habits, including various types of web browsers, monitor sizes, and screen resolutions, etc. and will only consider ads above the fold if they are fully on-screen when the browser window loads.

Placing your ad units above the fold, will increase your chances of being targeted by this new type of advertising and hence, improve your earnings. So far, it is still not clear if this type of advertisement will pay by click or by impression, or both. In any event, this will bring more revenue to your website, particularly if you have a good amount of traffic. Give it a test drive and see if it works for you. Nothing to loose, a lot to gain:) Good luck!

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For those of you that have not heard about Mahalo yet, this post, Mahalo: Another Way To Make Money Online, will give you the introduction you need to get familiar with this online opportunity. Briefly speaking, Mahalo is a Human Powered Search engine which is composed of a community of people that post questions and answers. The difference between Mahalo and other similar websites of the genre is that you get paid for participating. This is probably, and I quote, "one of the easiest ways to make money online".

There are basically 4 ways to earn money with Mahalo. They are all outlined on the referenced post above and once again, I highly suggest you give it a try, if it is making money you are looking for. Mahalo pays like clockwork and through PayPal. I can vouch for this based on my personal experience. To date, I have not had any problems getting paid by them. This is not a sales pitch as I am not earning anything to write this post.

Make Money With Google AdSense Without An Account?

You may be wondering how is it possible to make money with Google AdSense without an account. This is particularly interesting for those who like the program but for some reason don't have it. You might have been banned, not approved, or simply do not want to carry it on your blog because you are running other alternatives to AdSense.

One form of making money with Google AdSense is by joining websites that have revenue sharing program. This might not be new to you, but the fact is, to make money with AdSense you need good amount of traffic and this is where the new Mahalo way, gets interesting. Mahalo now has has started a beta test for sharing Google AdSense revenue generated on question pages with the asker and best answerer. Revenue is split three ways, in Mahalo dollars, up to a maximum of of M$100 ($75) per asker and best answerer (M$200 total, M$100 each). The more questions and best answer you have, better are your chances to earn more money. Google AdSense revenue for the asker begins accumulating after a question is posted. Revenue for the best answerer begins after the best answer is selected. You do not need an AdSense account because it is Mahalo's account that is being used. Since this website is credible, there is no problem at all.

Exploring Mahalo.com's SEO potential

This is where the key to taking advantage of Mahalo's SEO potential comes into play. When asking a question, make sure that you have also keywords in them. Since Mahalo's pages gets indexed very quickly, there is a greater chance for your question to rank high on the SERPs (search engine result pages). If any users clicks on that link, it will take them to your question and here, there will be AdSense ads displayed. See example below:

That's it. If I have not convinced you yet to try Mahalo after this post, please let me know. I'll do better next time:) Happy earnings!

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