Well, domain investors will probably not take to them much at all. As not only do they have so much money invested in .com .net and .org (amongst others) but also for the fact that other extension flops like .mobi in recent years have cost active domainers a lot of cash. However the other side of the argument is it is only 1 letter off .com (miss of the “m” typing fast and you could easily land on the .co version). This will probably prompt some domainers to invest in high traffic search terms for the type in value from parking them.

Parking domains however is becoming less and less worthwhile, and the more shrewd domainers now develop small but useful sites to sit on these “parkable type in domains”. This can give good value, but probably only if you are a decent web developer yourself, as the cost of doing this to potentially hundreds (if not thousands) of your domains will never be worthwhile if you are paying people. Causing many domainers to streamline their portfolios a lot lately.

So we come to dot co. Interesting enough is the fact that Google and Microsoft have take up their .co names. And obviously so. There are also many large trademarked companies who have taken up the option in sunrise period, and when looking for many large searched terms in dot co right now, you will find the top ones mostly gone now also. I guess the key to all of this is development. If there are major companies who have now managed to buy the domain name they were always after, but never able to get the .com, then they will throw some weight behind the extension in the form of advertising on TV or around the web. Also if there is a major sale or auction of a dot co in the coming months it may prove that people are seeing the value in them, which in turn Google will too.

Google is developed on what the user wants to get from the internet. Their whole ethos is to create the best web search experience for their users. If that means serving up .co extensions because demand and development of them is increasing then it will happen in my opinion. However, if like .mobi, the extension fails to gather any momentum over the first 6 months to a year, then it could fall spectacularly and be the most talked about thing in domain circles for many years to come.

I have bought 4 .co domains and have bids on some further ones with namejet. I am not going to go crazy and buy up everything I see, but if I get 10 domains all with good development possibility then fine. I have been bitten to often over the years buying worthless domains, and now only buy ones I know could be developed, either by me, or by a possible future owner.

Welcome to the dot co era. Let’s hope it works out, it will be interesting.

For a while I had my doubts as to how effective the script was. Although I could see in analytics that the URLs for some language were being accessed I was worried that maybe it was creating some sort of duplicate content issue. Even though the pages were translated. I decided to remove the scripts, mainly as an experiment to see what difference it would make. I was astonished to find that my page views and general traffic improved significantly over the next two weeks.

Now don’t get me wrong I am in favor for offering my users content in other languages, but from what I found I decided there is need for a different website translation solution.

I had a guy I know spend a bit time modifying the script to use Google translate. Whilst he was working on it the IP was banned for making too many requests. This is why a cache is essential if you are using website translation plug ins or scripts. So you serve the users pre translated copies of your pages rather than access the service every time a user clicks a flag!

In the end, I decided to leave the translation of the website all together. The traffic was increased anyway, so I was happy enough.

I then started to look at what other options are available. Looking at some high ranked websites particularly withn the same industry as mine it was clear that the ones perfoming better were not actually using automated language page translation. They were producing static translated version of their site on sub domains with the extension in the form of spanish.websiteURL.com or es.websiteURL.com etc.

So if you are thinking about adding translation to your website, think long and hard about it. Website translation plug ins and scripts can make the job a painless one, but in the long run they seem to do nothing but damage your traffic and search engine optimisation. Spending a little more time and money creating sub domain for maybe the top 5 to 10 languages or countries which access your site will pay you back over time.

I am going to take this path for my website translation very soon. I have decided to post up on some freelance site like ifreelance or vworker to find some cheap native language speakers and have them translate the templates for each site into a language, then host each one on a seperate sub domain. To me this seems the way forward.

Although if your site is new and is not gaining much traffic, it may be an option to try out some of the free plug ins, especially for wordpress to see if it helps make a difference. But if your site has large amounts of traffic and makes you good income, then maybe explore the above idea.

Here are my 10 common sense things I think about when planning any new site. Keep these in your head and you won’t go far wrong over time with your website ranking for your targetted terms.

1. Unique Website Content Creation

You may have heard it before, but I will say it again. You need to be unique if you want to control your niche or area of search. Write some unique and informative articles about your topic, create a tool that is valuable to users and make them return or link to you. If you can’t code a useful tool then give away something for free, but make sure it useful and not just any old thing you find online. Writing a 5 to 10 page E Book about your niche may take you a couple of days, plan it properly and describe to the user exactly what they want to hear. Maybe even ask for an e mail address in return for the free book. It will be worth the work it if it is useful.

2. Natural Backlinks From Popular Sites

If you write good content, have useful tools or E Books, then commenting on other good quality websites and blogs can help you gain some valuable links back to your site. Try and find blogs in the same theme with active users and preferably do follow links (you can right click the comments page of any blog and “view source” to see if the comment links have “nofollow” in the code). Make some nice comments about others sites and articles and maybe mention you have a similar article or site. Sometimes with a popular site using the authors site as a reference linked in your article about a subject will make the author of the other web site visit yours, who knows, maybe he will reference you in future or add you to his blogroll. Having useful content as in No 1 above will make other sites link to you naturally. You can also send occasional personal e mails to similar themed sites telling them about new content you have added and ask if they would link to it in future. For every 10 you send, maybe one will link. One good link is worth its weight in gold.

3. XML Sitemaps

Don’t build a website without one. Wordpress plug ins can make them automatically, and there are free services online if you search that will make them for you. Upload it to your server and submit to Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Explorer and Bing sitemaps.

4. URLs with Keywords

Whenever possible, try to have your URLs mention your keywords for that content. If you have say a currency converter, try make the URL /currencyconverter.html or something similar. Explaining to the Search Engine what the content is through URLs will help place the page higher over the long term optmisation plan.

5. Meta Title and Description Tags

Make sure you have unique content pages tagged with unique meta tags. The title tag is important. Short and descriptive is the best way, using your keyword or phrase once and at least the same amount of non keyword text to balance it out. So again for your currency converter, maybe “Currency Converter – Find Current Rates” is descriptive enough to get users attention and balanced keywords. A similar balance is recommended for your desciption tag, but here you can get more information in. Again, keep it short and descriptive but you can afford to get maybe your main keywords in twice along with another relevant term along with non targetted text. Stick to about 200 characters if you can, it’s no big deal if it runs over that by 10 or 20.

6. Alt Image Tags

Use some nicely placed relevant images on your site. Don’t overdo it though! One or maximum two per page will be enough, or maybe none if you have some images in your web design named correctly. Try to call an image file name that is relevant to the content. Then add alt=”relevant title” tags. On our currency converter page we might have a picture of a Dollar note and name title “currency converter dollars”.

7. Header Content Tags

This works similar to meta tags in the way of getting the balance correct. Try to have one “h1″ titled element per page and one “h2″ or “h3″ or both. Within the h1 try to get your most targetted term and another couple of words. Titles of posts on blogs are usually good for this as they will have a relevant term and a bit more description of the article. If you don’t have any other menus titled with h2 tags then try to use one or two as sub headings within your articles or content.

8. Optimising Internal Link Structure

Again, like the content URLs, use the descriptive keyword as your internal link to content. So on my menu I may have “currency converter” which takes you to that tool. If you have a site with lots of content deep down to say 3 or 4 levels, the occasional deep link from text content back to your top level pages helps a lot. Write a guide or help on a particular tool or topic that is featured on your top level pages, place this information down a level or two below the top content and link a phrase back to the top level content. (To sort of create a link loop). Don’t overdo this, but maybe maximum two or three deep “loop” links per top level page is enough from your deep content. It may take search engines a while to opimise this by crawling deep, but evetually they will find it.

9. Buy A Keyword Domain Name

If this is a new site, then consider buying a domain with your keyword in it. Try for .com .org .net or your specific countries top level domain extension if it is relevant to that country only like shopping sites. DO NOT have a long 4 word + domain name like “bestshoppingsiteintheworld.com” that is just plain stupid. Whereever possible try to avoid hyphens “-” unless its two very targetted short ish words seperated by it and the domain describes your service EXACTLY. Check out some expiring domain lists at namejet, go daddy or snapnames, try to pick up a short punchy one. Or register a new one if there is a decent one available. If none suit you, consider buying a premium domain for a strong long term project. Paying $400 or $500 or more dollars for domain name may seem a lot at first but if you start to make money, it will be well spent, trust me!

10. Submit To Major Search Engines First Then Wait A While

You may or may not have heard of Googles “sandbox”, well it’s far too much to explain in full here so I will leave it for another posting But to help minimise the effects of sandbox don’t go hell bent on submitting to every search engine on the earth, and submitting to directories by the bucket load. Leave that a little while first submit to the big 3, Google, Yahoo and Bing. Wait a week or two and check your site is indexed using site:URL. If so then start submitting to maybe 5 to 10 more search engines per week. Start with the popular ones and work your way down. After a month or six weeks submit to maybe 5 or 10 decent PR directories. Even if they are paid ones. Stick to directories with a bit of PR. Page rank 3 and above is recommended. Slowly you should see some results but my advice is to take it carefully for the first few months. Then when the search engines seem happy with your optimisation techniques you can step it up a gear. By then you should have an idea if the site is being picked up for your terms or not. If it’s not, then get tweaking your web site!!

Hopefully some of this helps you. Don’t be afraid to comment or ask questions on what I have wrote or anything I have missed.. Tell Me!!

The revenue from these type of adverts is usually split around 50 / 50 between you and the pay per click service. Although there are a few out there that give you more like 70 / 30 , but revenue from their adverts can be lower than some of the larger brand names. Once your have revenue in your account, they will pay out each month once you pass their payout threshold. Sometimes $100 sometime $50 or less, so even though the service is free, you may have to wait a while with a new web development to get income. Do not make the fatal mistake of forging clicks, these companies are not stupid and will ban you for click fraud.

Once you have signed up for your account and been accepted (usually they like to see that your site is not a spam site made for clicks) then you can get to work adding the codes for the pay per click adverts to your site. Most services will supply the standard sizes, 468 x 60 , 720 x 90, 300 x 250, 120 x 600 and maybe more. Then you will normally be given options to customise your codes, by changing colors of links, text and borders on the pay per click ad units. When you have them just right, copy and paste the codes into the desired place on your site.. and bingo.. you have an advert ready to generate revenue. Now all you need is clicks!

Placing the code in good clickable areas of your website can sometimes make a site perform 100% better with pay per click rather than placing in spare out of the way areas. By placing them near popular links in site menus or sections like news items that are viewed a lot, it can help increase the click through on your adverts. One of the things I like to check before placing them on a site (if the site has been onlline a little while) is to use site overlay in Google Analytics. When it places the overlay on your page it shows you the percent of traffic that clicks through on your internal web links. Thinking about how you can get a pay per click advert near one of your most used menu links is a good way to attract users mouse clicks to the advert. Or maybe you have a tool on your website that is used a lot by users, if so, think about how you can place an ad unit near this without compromising the site design and the users experience.

Adding pay per click into your sites text content is another good way of gaining clicks. If your blog or site is well read, then adding a small square unit or a small banner size under the article title can be a good area for users to click on, especially if you try to use a nice standard blue as your advert link color because most people associate blue with a clickable link on a website, so naturally i will attract more clicks than say bright pink. However I guess this all is irrelevant if your site is bright pink and yellow, blue would look so lame right?

Hopefully some of this may help you if you are new to pay per click services. Feel free to comment or ask a question and I will endevour to help.