If you monetize a blog then you want the maximum blogging income possible. The one thing you don’t want is to waste the value of any clicks.

Let me clarify ‘smart pricing’. Whilst Google does not say much about it, they will cut your income by 90% if you don’t have a site that is performing to their standards. Their standards equate to CTR of around 3% or better. If your CTR is below then Google will only pay 10% of the standard click rate. Instead of a keyword click being worth $0.50, it will only be worth $0.05. This is a huge drop – but it gets worse.

If you run more than one site then your return is based on your lowest CTR site. If you have three sites, one with a CTR of 5%, a second with a CTR of 4% and the a third with a CTR of only 1%, they will all return the value of the third site – 1%. This is known as ‘smart pricing’. Is it fair, probably not. Whilst Google can tell you every thing about a user and about a blog, they cannot account for different web/blog sites.

How do you avoid ‘smart pricing’? First, make sure you have good analytics on each of your ad units. Secondly, if any ad unit is performing at less than 3%, either reposition it or remove it altogether.

You can reverse ‘smart pricing’. Simply remove the poorly performing ad units. Once you stats are showing a better than 3% CTR across the board your income level will return to full value. This can take from 3 to 10 days.

In brief. Your blogging income will fall across all ad units if just one of those ad units has a CTR of less than 3%. Keep good statistics on each ad unit. Remove any poor performing ad units. Another good tip provided to you by the best blog marketing journal around.

There are many blogging income streams available ranging from the traditional Google ads, Yahoo, affiliate marketing and PPC. The Rubicon Project on the one hand is no different to the traditional methods and yet it is in it’s own right a fairly new concept. It has certainly created a deal of hype.

The Rubicon Project has partnered with traditional advertisers like Google, Adbrite and Shopzilla to name just a couple. The concept is that you place advertising units on your blog or website in much the same way as you do now. You can specify banner, skyscrapper or box units of various sizes. You can also nominate which advertisers, which geographical area and even which demographics you want ads targeted towards. You can also nominate the ratio of ads from the different advertisers.

Once you have set up and placed your ad units, the Rubicon Project then goes to work to display ads according to your setup.  For the publisher, you no longer need accounts with each of the advertisers. The Rubicon Project collects all the statistic and collects your income on your behalf. You only need the one account.

The plus side. You get to publish ads from a wide variety of advertisers. Every time someone visits your site they will view a completely different ad. You only need to keep track of one ad company. Another plus are the comprehensive statistics that are available to keep track of your blog marketing efforts.

The down side. Not all ads will be targeted to your sites content. If you include Google Adsense you are still constrained by Google’s three ads per page rule. The biggest downside for me is that I have not been able to determine what percentage of revenue I receive from each advertiser.

As a blogging income stream the concept has merit. I have trialled it on one of my other sites and income from this ad stream is almost triple what I experienced before placing the ad units (similar ads units too). The Rubicon Project is still in Beta, however it may be worth a visit to see if it fits in with your blogs aims.

Yes – another blog plugin to create sitemaps – this one’s a little different. This is a plugin for WordPress that creates a  real sitemap, not an XML sitemap for search engines, this a sitemap for your visitors.

DD Site Map Gen is from Dagon Design and generates a sitemap that can be placed on a dedicated static page. As it uses dynamic code it is constantly being updated. The sitemap can be customized to sort all your posts, all your pages or both your posts and pages. The sitemap can be produced sorted by date and or by category. I find it useful to sort by category first and then date. This produces a very professional looking sitemap in the old list web page list style.

The plugin has language files for English, Albanian, Brazilian-Portuguese, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. It is very easy to install, configure and use.

A good sitemap like this is one way to instantly produce an enormous number of internal links for blog.

WordPress tips:

If you file posts in more than one category then that post will appear in your sitemap under each category – file a post in three categories and it will appear three times in the sitemap.

Unless you have a large number of pages, by large I mean more than 300, then produce your sitemap on one single page.

Your old posts are a blog SEO goldmine if you know how to use them. These five tips will certainly make the most use of those old posts.

Tip 1: Whenever it is appropriate link a keyword back to an old post. This post relates to Blog SEO so I can effectively link to any of the older posts that relate to that topic. I am able to create three internal links just through this post.

Tip 2: I mentioned in a previous post that a lot of blogs waste their 404 Page Not Found error. Use the page to list your top posts.

Tip 3: Write a series of posts on related topics. This not only provides the opportunity to link each page, it has the added bonus of bringing your readers back.

Tip 4: Create static info pages that you can link to on a regular basis. Don’t forget to link to your About page when appropriate.

Tip 5: Make sure your sitemap is always up to date for search engines. Create a static site map for your visitors as well. While time consuming you can list every page which becomes another internal link.

Never underestimate the value of internal links. Whilst not as powerful as inbound links, internal links increase the value of the pages linked – a quick and easy blog SEO tactic.

There are many blog and website services that sell traffic. In fact, they offer traffic that is dedicated to your niche. The question is, is it worth the money? Let’s dispel a few myths first.

1 – Buying traffic is a useful blog SEO tactic that can increase your Alexa Rank. This may be so, but only if the traffic coming in has the Alexa toolbar installed. I also question why you need your Alexa Rank low. Generally speaking it is your PR that matters, not your Alexa and your Alexa rank will not affect your PR.

2 – Buying traffic is a useful blog marketing tactic that increases your income. Generally speaking, most traffic programs are either paid per visit or free traffic in return programs. The surfer often ‘surfs in the background’. In other words they go about their normal internet business with the traffic program running in the background. They hardly see the page they are visiting let alone the contents. Those that do look at the contents are generally waiting for the timer to count down before moving on to the next page. They certainly don’t stop to buy or click an ad that takes them away from their click program.

3 – Buying traffic can increase your backlinks. I refer to my previous observation. The surfer is only interested in getting to the next page – not linking to your page.

Buying traffic can often be money down the drain. With few exceptions it doesn’t lead to any increase in revenue, links or Page Rank improvement. I can only think of one situation where I would consider buying traffic. That is if I needed to boost my daily visitor numbers sufficiently that I could obtain a higher price for my ad space. That really needs a campaign over several months – not several weeks.

If you are considering buying traffic, think carefully about the outcomes you are trying to achieve. Often there are far more economical ways of increasing traffic and with it revenue. There are many blog and website services that can help develop backlinks and effective marketing programs. Your dollars may be better spent with them.