I have been so swamped with spam comments and absolute rubbish, hard to read, senseless remarks (which weren’t even picked up by Akismet!)  and I will no longer put up with it. I am sorry if all of you honest readers of my blog will have to suffer because of it, but unfortunately there seem to be more dishonest spammers out there than you good guys!

At the same time I will be removing KeywordLuv, because I think the combination of both DoFollow and KeywordLuv (and partnered with CommentLuv) was giving away too much – sadly. I don’t understand why people have to use and abuse a service like that which a fellow internet marketer provides them for their benefit.

“Rave !! Rant !!!” I just have to vent a little. I am an angry bird today!

So, after turning off these plugins – what’s still there to get you to comment on my blog? Well, hopefully some more great posts from yours truly in the future! (After slacking off for such a long time) I will also leave CommentLuv installed, so whenever you leave a comment you will get to display your recent posts from your own blog. Also, you will still be able to link your name to your blog, even though it will not be “followed” any more, it is still a link that visitors can click through and end up on your blog.

Apart from that, I have decided to bite the bullet and invest into a seriously good plugin that will on one hand increase the engagement with my readers, and at the same time add more spam protection to my blog. Lots of people had some great results with this plugin, and because it encourages social networking, it is also good for your Google rankings! Which plugin am I talking about? – Well, just bear with me, because I will write up a separate post about it very shortly!

Meanwhile I would appreciate your comments about the whole comment spam issue. Are you experiencing it, too? If so, what is your solution?

Talk soon,

The post Spam Commenting, Do Follow and KeywordLuv – No More! appeared first on Petra-Weiss.com.

Website speed (the time it takes for the pages of your site to load) is getting more and more important in today’s fast paced internet world.

A few days ago I noticed something about the website speed of one of my websites whilst I was logged into my Google Adsense account that made me stop and think, and then investigate! Usually I just stop by my Adsense account to check on my earnings (greed!) – which have been steadily going down in accordance with my inactivity on all my blogs, unfortunately -, but this time I had a proper look at the “Scorecard” Google displays to the right of your earnings. This “Scorecard” is a quick overview of how Google sees the performance of your site, and where you can improve on.

Google scores on

Revenue Optimization

Sure, while it is good to have your site optimized for revenue, it is not essential for the value Search Engines place on your site. It is more a score for yourself to see if your site could earn more revenue from Adsense ads But: you can have a site that’s totally optimized for revenue but hasn’t got much content, and the search engines won’t like it. Or, you can have a site with no revenue optimization whatsoever, but brilliant content, and your site will rank high in the eyes of the SE. So, whilst it is certainly something you can work on if your score is not good, revenue optimization is not critical.

Site Health

Now that’s a biggie, and that’s what I wanted to talk about in this post. Your site needs to have good health to perform in the search engines, otherwise you won’t rank well. One big part of your site’s health is website speed, or page speed performance. The faster your site loads when people click on it the better – because everybody is getting more impatient and has less time, so for a website and webpages to load fast (and that means on the computer and on mobile devices these days) is essential for a good browsing experience. Google (and all other search engines!) wants to satisfy its customers, so they want pages and sites that load fast, haven’t got broken links, for example, and are not too clogged up or stale in general.

Google+

This is the easiest to fix of all of them – you just need to be on Google + and add the “Plus One” Button to your website so visitors of your site can “+1” you! And, of course, interact in Google+ once in a while!

All 3 items are scored out of 5 (dots), where 1 (dot) means lousy – I mean, not good – and 5 (dots) means great.

Ok, here is what I saw on my Scorecard:

Well, I think you agree that I have some work to do on my site health for my main website, My Beach Decor! I would actually appreciate if some of you could just head over there right now and then leave a comment about the website speed and load performance …

So, I do admit that I am not a technical person, but I know that the loading time of webpages can be highly impacted by how many and what size pictures are displayed, what kind of scripts are running in the background, how many plugins are active etc. I started clicking around on the links to my analyzed pages to see if I could get tips on what to do to improve my website speed.

Clicking on the analyzed websites brought me to the Google Developers website and a list of suggestions on what I should do to improve my site’s health. I have to be honest, I think its a good idea to do what Google says since they are the one’s you want to impress, right? Here is a snapshot of the suggestions summary on page speed performance (I had a few green ticks, too, but didn’t include them here):

Now, I really am not technical minded, and this list really scared me! I started searching for “How to….” and looking around all over different websites on the internet to find out how to …. well, do what Google told me to do to increase my website speed!

I found some very good resources, but what I really wanted to tell you about is the Page Speed Service (beta) from Google itself that I stumbled upon (can’t go better than having your website optimized by the big G!). They offer a service to improve your website speed, and it’s currently free! Have a look at their short video intro:

I think it looks like an interesting service for people like me and is certainly worth having a look into. It seems to “speed up your webpages by putting a Google Page Speed server between your webpage and the Internet. It caches and rewrites the page on the fly to make it faster. Simulated tests speed up the webpages significantly. The setup is also not too complicated, but requires a little bit of technical know how (changes to the DNS entry).” (quote from a user in a forum).

As I stated before, currently the service is free, but Google might change it into a paid service some time down the track. I have signed up because I really want to do something to make my sites load faster and more streamlined, and I do not want to have to hire an expert to tweak my sites background scripts.

I have to admit that I currently do find it a bit challenging to set it up. I currently have a support ticket going with my hosting provider (D9 Hosting) (they are fantastic and really quick in responding, always!) about a problem I had with one of the steps and am waiting for a reply.  Which means my site is not running through Page Speed Service yet, but when it is, I will let you know what happens to my score!

So by all means, if you need to improve your website speed, simply go and try this new service from Google. Of course there are other options out there, too, but for me it’s first now the “All in one” solution from Google.

Please leave a comment here if you decide to use Google’s service and how you find it!

HAPPY SPEEDING!

Here are another few helpful links that you might find interesting in regards to improving website speed:

Page Speed Insights – Homepage

GTMetrix.com – Analyze the performance of your website

Gray Wolf Seo – How to speed up your WordPress website

The post Website Speed – Is Your Website Up To Speed? appeared first on Petra-Weiss.com.

We are off for a 5 day holiday to Jurien Bay as of today (we are supposed to leave in an hour, but I don’t think we will make it!), and I fully intend to get stuck into it again when we come back. Please stay with me till then!

Looking forward to reconnect with you all!

The post What Has Happened To Petra? appeared first on Petra-Weiss.com.

Allie is a WAHM who has started on the same journey I have been on for the past few years – learning how to work from home on the Internet. I find her blog Ramblings of a WAHM very interesting and entertaining, and I urge you to check it out.

Anyway, she made a new post, and since I am a good blogger I have subscribed to her posts and therefore got her invitation to join her and others on the Work at Home Weekend, this year’s biggest networking event for Work at Home Blogs and their communities!

This is your chance to discover some of the best work at home and home business blogs around.

Who: Work at Home Bloggers and those interested in working from home

What: Discovering, networking and supporting

When: September 7 – 10, 2012

Where: Right HERE (click to register)

Why:

• Because those looking for work at home opportunities often don’t know where to start or who to trust. This may be a short-term networking event, but the site will remain live year-round.
• Because sometimes we get so comfortable within our social network that we forget our community is always changing. This is a great opportunity to connect with new people and/or reconnect with those you lost track of along the way.

How Can You Participate:

If you are looking for information about work at home opportunities or home business information, just show up September 7 or anytime thereafter and start discovering new blogs.

I think this is a great idea for new and seasoned bloggers alike. For someone like me who has lost the drive a little it might just mean that I will get the inspiration and drive back that I need to keep going strong!

Anyway, it sounds like a great opportunity to meet other work at homers and socialize a little while gaining new insights and ideas for your online business(es). So join me, Allie and Angie (the organizer) on a nice weekend of blog socializing!

The post Join Us At The Work At Home Weekend! appeared first on Petra-Weiss.com.

Let me introduce you to

— The Inbread Jack Russell!!!! – Please share him if you think he’s worth it!

The post Too Funny Not To Share appeared first on Petra-Weiss.com.

It has finally happened, even though I think it’s not fair!   haha!

I have fallen victim to the latest Google algorithm update that happened a couple of weeks ago, called “Penguin” (not “Panda” – that was last years big update!).

So what exactly do I mean by that? Well, I have had one site, my main money earner site, which has been on Page 1 of Google’s SERPs for most  its main keyword for the past 2 years or so. So I had a pretty good stream of visitors coming to my site (for free), and as you will know, the more visitors your site has the more revenue you are going to earn. Even though mine was not that much, it was still ok and I was (am) proud of the site.

Pretty exactly on Wednesday, 25th of April, I noticed a big drop in earnings. This didn’t concern me much yet – I have had the odd “very slow” day. But when it happened again the next day, and the day after, I was getting really concerned.

Straight away I went and Googled my main keywords, because I knew it must have to do with the search engine placement of my site. And guess what? My site had disappeared from page 1 (or 2 or 3 in some cases…) What had I done wrong?

You might know that Google has a certain algorithm to work out which sites get displayed in which order on page 1 of search results for certain keywords, right? And as Google continuously strives to improve their user experience, they also continuously strive to improve (which in this case means update and change) their algorithm to make sure only the best, most informative and most interesting sites will be on page 1.

So first they did a major update around the middle of last year called “Panda”. I found some good explanations of it here and here. (Sorry, but I don’t want to rattle all the info off here if somebody else has written a good article about it ) My sites survived that update!

Then, and I only found out the hard way, on April 24^th Google released another change to their algorithm named “Penguin” with the intention of penalizing sites for over-optimization or spamming. There is a really good article on it here and on Matt Carter’s Blog.

After I noticed that my earnings had dropped and found out about Google Penguin, I logged into my Google Analytics account and checked out the traffic. And yes, on April 24th, I still had about 250 – 300 visitors a day, and then there is this rapid drop down to 125 or so in average. Have a look:

That’s scary! So, panic settled in. What had I done wrong, and how could I rectify it?

After analyzing my site and what I had done with it in the last few months I found that

• I had not updated it regularly at all. The site has a blog attached but I updated maybe once every 3 or 4 months – if that! And Google loves new content.
• The site is mainly a site with static pages. Other sites on page 1 of Google in my niche were real blogs, with constant updates and changes happening. Fresh sites with a lot going on.
• I had not been doing any proper link building or SEO at all. I had been concentrating on trying to get more traffic and backlinks by buying all these fancy plugins that promised “automation and a ton of backlinks and therefore better SEO and rankings in the search engines, resulting in a ton of traffic” – hey, I had so many backlink and seo plugins installed I got completely confused about what was working for me and what not.
• I did not encourage my visitors to share my content through facebook, twitter, pinterest or any sites like that, which would result in more interest created about my site and therefore more visitors.

So, really, all I was when Google Penguin came along was a sitting duck with a “trying to be over-optimized” stale site that had been going ok so far but wasn’t really offering anything new or interesting to its visitors any more. So they just took me down!

But instead of throwing my hands up in the air and giving up, I am starting a counter attack to regain my previous status on the SERPs.  Here is my new plan of action of things to do that I believe Google wants (and to get what WE want we should do what Google wants, right?):

• Write more content and update my blogs on a regular basis, even if its only every 3 weeks or so
• re-think my static websites; static pages seem to have worked so far, but Google seems to put more and more value on sites that do stay fresh with new articles and information. I will either have to do regular updates on the static pages or run a blog alongside and keep things fresh.
• No more backlink, traffic or seo plugins – just pick the best seo plugin and chuck the rest. Go back to good old school backlink building! (Asking other webmasters for link exchanges, forum signatures, internal linking, comments etc.).  All this over-optimization has not worked for me! Let the site age and spread over the internet naturally.
• Getting into social sharing a lot more. Put share bars and social sharing buttons etc. on my site so visitors can tweet, facebook, pinterest or stumbleupon (etc.) what they find on my site and therefore also create more backlinks and visitors to my site. Of course, the sharing should start to happen naturally if I manage to keep my visitors interested and intrigued!

I believe that what Google wants are honest, interesting and informative sites that engage their visitors and offer them what they look for.

In my experience you cannot achieve that if you are trying to automate a lot of things, or try to over-optimize because you kind of lose control and that’s how the spamming starts. I have so many spammy comments on my sites these days its not funny any more. Trackbacks that get generated by some robot and are not actually coming from the site they refer back to, comments that on first look seem genuine until you start reading them and the words don’t make any sense. Thin websites with very little content are also on the blacklist. They simply don’t contain enough information.

So this latest Google Penguin update has certainly shocked me in my comfy chair I am convinced that I will be able to get my site back up and ranking for my main keywords, but it will take some work and time. On the other hand I will feel better for it, because I will know that my site actually will have something to offer to the people that are visiting.

I don’t know whether you have been hit or not, but I strongly advise you to consider becoming an “honest blogger” – we will probably all be surprised by the way Google is going to reward us for it in the future!

Now, if you liked my article, would you mind sharing it? Thanks!

The post Fallen Victim To Google Penguin! appeared first on Petra-Weiss.com.

WordPress Guide

Hi guys, I just received an email in my inbox from Matt Wolfe, one of the few Internet Marketers out there I hugely respect. He is the creator of the best WordPress Guide out there (in my humble opinion, anyway!) the WordPress Classroom. It’s an easy to understand, easy to follow, all video WordPress guide that holds heaps of value for both new and seasoned WordPress users alike.

In his email Matt declared that he has been really focused on making a ton of updates for the WordPress Classroom. So right now he is basically in overhaul mode. He is in the process of re-imagining the WordPress Classroom.

If you ask me, I always like when Internet Marketers who have released a product keep updating it – that means that they really stand behind it and did not just release it for the quick bucks, but really have something to teach and are conscious of delivering to their customers and staying current. That’s why I like what Matt is doing now.

The WordPress Classroom is fantastic as it is now. But I feel good about Matt wanting to deliver an even better product to us. There’s going to be an all new, intuitive layout, new topics of training, new ways to engage with Matt and other members, and, with all of these improvements (most likely) a new pricing structure… Apparently it is going to be big! He reckons we are all going to be blown away with all the new stuff that’s inside the WordPress Classroom.

If you are trying to break into the field of Affiliate and Internet Marketing, there is – in my opinion – no better way to do that than with WordPress blogs.  These WordPress Video Tutorials (yes, video!!) will be the best thing for you to ever have come across, they can take months, if not years, off your learning. I just have to think back to the way I had to learn the ins and outs of building a great niche site (long, painful, costly) – if I would have had a course like this one I would have grabbed it with both hands. And I want you to be able to AVOID having an extremely long and frustrating learning curve.

About the new pricing structure – that’s where I want to appeal to you. If you haven’t yet, please do check out WordPress Classroom, because if you don’t get in now whilst the price is still at an all time low, if you want to get in later you will most likely have to pay more. How much more I don’t know yet, but more is more and can’t be good! Mind you, whatever Matt will decide to charge, you can be sure it will be worth it!!! But still, just make sure you get in now to ensure that you’re grandfathered in to the lowest possible price.

I believe you can still sign up just for the free videos, which are fantastic, too. But if you are serious about making money online and want to use WordPress, you should upgrade to the paid Pro version.

So what are you waiting for? See you on the inside!

The post WordPress Classroom – Get On Board Before The Price Rise! appeared first on Petra-Weiss.com.

Yes, you have read right – even a blog needs spring cleaning and pruning at times.

[“To prune”: the objective of pruning is to produce strong, healthy, attractive plants]

You see, a blog does represent you on the web. You want to stay in favor in the search engines and be clean, organized and up to date. If you just keep posting and adding information to it without, for example, changing information that might be out of date, or links that might not work any more, eventually it will become cluttered, unproductive and unattractive.

You need to get the feather duster and the shears out and give your blog a virtual once-over every now and then (it does not have to be spring ) Just think of the plants in your garden – lots of them require pruning at some stage so that they will keep looking attractive, fill out and grow into a nicer shape!

I noticed on my blog here for a long time that I had links in my sidebars that I did not really support any more, and that a few blog posts were outdated. Also, the picture of me did not really represent me any more (it was taken a few years back), and I want to look as “updated” as possible for you all, even if it means that you will see me with a few more wrinkles, and shadows under my eyes… :-0 So I have uploaded a new photo of myself which is just a few days old, really!

Here is a list of blog spring cleaning tasks that I want to do on my blog over the next few weeks, maybe this will give you an idea as to where to start on your blogs!

• check through all my widgets in the sidebar and make sure I display current information and any programs that I still support and believe in. Also delete widgets I don’t need any more;
• change my profile picture – check!
• go through some of my posts and close comments on them – some have grown really long beards and just become little monsters. Time to pull the pin! Also, delete some of my posts that really don’t hold any value any more;
• check all my links and make sure they are all working properly;
• go through my plugins and delete the ones I don’t need any more;
• Same with my blog templates. I had gone wild for a while and downloaded all sorts of templates, but I am really happy with the one I’ve got (Primepress)
• need to possibly go through all my categories and update/organize. I am just at this stage not quite sure what that will do to the URL’s that Google has stored for my previous blog posts that are “filed” under certain categories, and thus for my SERP rankings. Can anybody enlighten me whether it is ok to do so, or shall I better leave the categories alone?

That’s it for starters! Basically, what you want to achieve when spring cleaning your blog is to keep it up to date, fresh and appealing to your audience. There is nothing worse than landing on a blog that seems neglected (hm, mine was, for 9 months..), where links don’t work and where old and not relevant content is displayed.

So get the gloves on and the shears out! Your readers will appreciate it.

Now check out my new definition of “to prune”: [“To prune”: the objective of pruning is to produce strong, healthy, attractive blogs]

I also found a great article on blog spring cleaning on the ComLuv Network right here.

If you like what I have written here, I would really appreciate a little “social sharing love” – please share on your favorite social sites through the slider on the left! Ta.

The post Blog Spring Cleaning – Do Some Pruning! appeared first on Petra-Weiss.com.

Oh my, what a mess!!! I discovered that the last time I actually did a post on this blog was back in APRIL LAST YEAR! That is nearly a year ago! I am absolutely shocked. I knew it had been a long time, but THAT long?

I think I need to explain something; I love blogging and Internet Marketing, it has become one of my favorite hobbies in the last few years. Unfortunately, it seems that it is one of those hobbies that always seem to come last, as there are so many things in life right now that have to be done first that blogging and sitting at the computer trying to make some money just doesn’t get a chance.

Do you experience the same thing? All these other tasks that have to be completed before you can sit and enjoy time with your blog(s)… Here are mine (just in case you are interested; maybe you can find some which might actually excuse the length of time I haven’t been active here for so long):

• I started working 2 days a week (school hours) at the end of May last year
• My dad passed away at the End of September
• I still have to do the paperwork for our own businesses here at home
• I have two dogs that need a walk, if possible every day
• Sports (walking, weightlifting at the gym)
• Two children who have sports and other commitments after school
• The house needs looking after
• Shopping, doctors appointments
• Social commitments (did I really mention that as an excuse??)
• Dinner, Homework, Laundry…
• etc. etc. etc.

And whenever I actually had the time to sit down and enjoy my Internet Marketing “hobby”, looking back over the past year I can honestly say all I really did was

• check my stats and earnings on any affiliate programs
• Check out any new product offers
• sign up for more crappy emails
• spend hard earned money on more products I don’t need
• kept stuffing my inbox and bookmarks with more and more offers and sites that got more and more confusing.

Yep, I can honestly say, when I look back onto my past year I have definitely fallen straight back into the Internet Marketers Trap. I did not take any action, but got lost in all the information out there.

What about blogger’s block?

Well, for the whole time since I have not been active with my blogs I had this nagging in the back of my head that “I really need to sit down and write a post again” (and remember, I have a few blogs that have grown stale over the past year, so –> more pressure).

I actually did have a few times when I made the time and sat down with the right intentions, just to discover when the allocated time had passed that again I had not achieved anything but more of the same as above.  It was like I was sitting down, wanting to write but couldn’t really think of anything, so instead of trying harder or really looking for a topic to write about I found all this other “stuff” that needed doing and felt like I did something useful, but that ended up not doing anything for my blogs, affiliate earnings or rankings. Know what I mean?

I think I was suffering from Bloggers Block. Couldn’t come up with anything interesting to write, the harder I tried the harder it got. Adding to that, having a blog in a niche with a lot of competition, like mine about weight loss and this blog about Internet Marketing, I started feeling that I could not possibly write about anything interesting any more than what all these much more experienced bloggers had already put out there. “How can I possibly top that, or write about something new, if there are so many people out there who seem to have more experience and knowledge than me?” – is what I started to think.

Well, thank God I seem to have overcome that!!! Who cares what others put out there – if you write from your point of view about the things you have learned, I am sure now that that can help others out there, too. You don’t have to be an expert to contribute valuable knowledge to the community. Don’t you think?

Well, this was rather a long post. I am all geared up and ready to jump back into the game. All I want to say is – don’t be too harsh on people who don’t update their blogs all the time, it’s tough sometimes to make it happen.

And I have learned that, if you want Internet Marketing to make you a full time income, you will have to devote at least as much time to it as you would on a full time job. Full stop. There are no shortcuts. That’s why I am treating my blogs as a “hobby” – I simply don’t have enough time in my current situation to devote a chunk of it to my blogs every day. And don’t feel bad if you don’t, either. You will get to it when you can.

In my de-blocked head I have a couple of new ideas about posts already, and I am looking forward to share them with you over the next few weeks.

NO, I am NOT going to bite the dust!!!

The post Bloggers Block! – Another One Bites The Dust? appeared first on Petra-Weiss.com.

What I have started off with now is keep generating backlinks to  my websites. Over the past 2 years all I had done was mainly build backlinks to the home pages, and do a few posts every few weeks or so. So some of my homepages have been on page 1 of the Google search results for my main keywords for a while, and I have seen some consistent search engine traffic from it. But there I was, thinking how much more traffic I could generate if I managed to get my other pages on page 1 as well, for their keywords!

Luckily, I have been a subscriber for Backlink Builder for a while now, I just never did anything with them. Seriously, I was sitting on a Goldmine and just didn’t take the time to act on it. Well, when I finally decided to come out of my hiding a few weeks ago, that’s what I decided to do – go systematically through Backlink Builder and start building those all important backlinks to my inner pages, as well.

As I had the thought of reporting about it on my blog here, of course I wrote the “starting positions” of some of my pages down before I started. Here they are:

On March 24 I had:

And then I started with my backlink campaign. Just went systematically through the files that you get with Backlink Builder, linking back to my inner pages with the keywords for those particular pages as anchor text. I made a point of writing down which anchor text I used on which site, and which page on my site I linked back to. For that I designed a very simple table which I fill out as I go along (otherwise you lose track). If you click on the image you can see it in original size. I created it on Open Office.

My next date when I checked my keywords was April 6, so just about 2 weeks later. These are a few results:

Can you see the huge jump in those keywords? It’s nearly unbelievable.
These are the positions as of today (April 29):

I find this just amazing. Now, some of the rankings still jump around a little, but I am quite positive that it will come further up again. The jumping around at the beginning is quite normal.

You know what else happened now that my inner pages are up in the search results?

• My traffic has increased – from between 500-600 views a day to most days between 900-1000.
• My affiliate earnings have increased so far by about 30%. For example, one of my Affiliate Programs made me $72 yesterday:

So – all is green in my books, so to speak! This stuff really works. You build a niche site with a few relevant pages, create some good content on those pages, – it really pays off to put effort into making the site a site that your visitors will enjoy and benefit from! – and start building links to it. I’m chuffed!

Looking forward to your comments!

The post Bump Up Your Niche Site With The Right Backlinks appeared first on Petra-Weiss.com.