For those of you out there who like me don’t know a great deal about the techie side of the internet then this explanation is for you.

I have read about the robots.txt file but it has never really sunk in as to what it actually means, so I thought the only way I would ever understand it was if I was to do a bit of research and write about it. As you will see by now, I love to research stuff.

So this guide will explain what the robots.txt file is in simple terms (because that’s the only way I can understand it) and I will provide a step-by-step to creating your own robots.txt file.

So first of all, what exactly is a robots.txt file? Well, as the file extension indicates it is a text file. This means a plain text file and not html.

What does the robots.txt file do?

It instructs the search robots to not index certain web pages, files or directories in their search engine. This is useful if you have certain pages that you want on the internet but you don’t want the rest of the world to see them.

Bear in mind however, that this won’t keep a web page completely private, it just means that the page won’t show up in search engines results. Anyone who has a browser and knows the url or can find the url through other means will still be able to see it.

Also keep in mind that not all search engines acknowledge the robots.txt file and will subsequently list your page in their search engine anyway.

The best way to stop someone from seeing or accessing a page on your website is to password protect it.

How do you create your own robots.txt file?

1. Determine which files or directories you want excluded.

2. Open Notepad (you can access this by clicking START> Programs> Accessories> Notepad) and type in the following information from the table below depending on what you want to do:

Type this into Notepad:	If you want to do this:
User-agent: * Disallow:	Allow all robots to retrieve all pages on your website. Note that you can also just add an empty robots.txt file to do this.
User-agent: Disallow: /	Disallow all robots from retrieving all pages on your website. This will pretty much mean that none of your web pages will appear in the search engines.
User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /	Disallow a specific robot from accessing all files on your website. We have used the Googlebot robot here as an example, so substitute with the robot of your choice. This would mean that your website would not be indexed in the Google search engine but would be indexed in any of the other search engines like Yahoo and MSN.
User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: User agent: * Disallow: /	Allow one robot but disallow all others. We have used Googlebot as an example so substitute with the robot of your choice.
User-agent: * Disallow: /directory/file.html	Disallow all robots from retrieving a specific file. In this case we have used directory/file.html as an example so substitute your own.
User-agent: * Disallow: /images/	Disallow all robots from retrieving a specific directory of your website. In this case we have used /images/ as an example so substitute your own.
User-agent: * Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /private/	Disallow all robots from retrieving more than one directory of your website. In this case we have used /images/ and /private/ as examples so substitute your own.

3. Save this file as robots.txt.

4. Now you need to upload this file to the root directory of your website. I use Filezilla to upload files to the internet. The file needs to be sitting in the same folder as your home page (index.htm). In other words it should look like this when uploaded: www.mydomain.com/robots.txt

Let’s use an example here just to be clear how this is done. I have a page on my website which I want to exclude from the search engines. The file name is: www.mydomain.com/mypage.html.

I would now open up Notepad and type in the following text based on the table above:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /mypage.html

If the page was sitting in a directory called ‘mydirectory’ ie.www.mydomain.com/mydirectory/mypage.html then I would type in this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /mydirectory/mypage.html

Once that information is entered into Notepad I save the file on my computer as robots.txt.

I would then open up Filezilla which is the file transfer system I use to upload my web pages to the internet and transfer the robots.txt file over to wherever my website pages are stored.

Too easy!…well hopefully you found it easy to do. You would need some idea of how to load up files to the internet to do it but if you can do that bit everything else should be quite straight forward.

FINALLY RELEASED - Our complete guide to making money online by promoting Amazon products. Head over to the AMAZONIAN PROFIT PLAN website for all the latest info.

We subscribe to the Wealthy Affiliate University, a program where the emphasis is on making money online without having to spend anything to do it. This encompasses what is known as bum marketing – a phrase coined by Travis Sago and is fast becoming the term used to describe free internet marketing techniques.

These techniques are perfect for anyone who is just beginning to learn how to make money online, because all that is required is a person’s time. Also, these methods can be tried and tested without concern that money may be lost in the process. It’s the perfect way to learn.

These methods will still work regardless of whether you are working full time, part time or not at all. The rewards are really based on how much effort you put into it.

The most common problem for people who are not making money using these methods is that they expect to just put up a Squidoo lens or write a couple of articles and have the money start rolling in. It just doesn’t work that way. You need to maintain a consistent effort and keep at it for this to work. Also, don’t just stick to only one of the methods listed below. Try two or three but don’t overdo it. Just keep going and see what works best for you.

For any of these methods to work you first need to register with the following which are all free to join:

1. Clickbank – Here you will find digital downloadable products to promote. Clickbank acts as the middleman between the merchants who sell the products and you, the person promoting the product. It bundles all of the products into one spot so you don’t have to contact each merchant individually to find products. Clickbank also organizes the commissions that you receive and ensures that you are paid.

2. Other Affiliate Networks – If you are looking for other products, other than those offered by Clickbank, to promote then you will need to join up with networks like cj.com, shareasale.com or linkshare.com.

3. Paypal – If you don’t have a Paypal account then you will find it very difficult to make money online as it is currently the most widely used payment system on the internet today. As you make money using Clickbank they will depostit your payments into to your Paypal account. So make joining Paypal a priority.
So now here is what you have been waiting for…five ways you can make money online without having to spend anything to do it:

1. Squidoo

Squidoo is a website developed by Seth Godin. It allows people to develop a page of content about a subject and they can create as many pages as they like. Each of these pages is called a lens.
The benefits of using Squidoo are that it is ranked well by Google so not as much effort is required by you to get your lens ranked. There is also a pre-made audience so you don’t have to work so hard at generating traffic. And lastly, Squidoo allows you to include affiliate links on your lens which means that you can promote one or more products.

The key with Squidoo is to choose keywords that are not too competitive so that you can rank quite easily in Google.

How does it work?

1. Choose a topic – preferably one that you are interested in but also one that has the potential to make money i.e. it has at least one product that can be sold on your lens.
2. Choose a non-competitive keyword that relates to this topic – see instructions at the end of this article.
3. Create a lens using the main keyword chosen from step 2.
4. Add content.
5. Add affiliate links for products to your lens – use CJ, Linkshare or Clickbank to find products. They will provide you with the code to add to your lens to create an affiliate link.
6. Work on getting traffic to your lens.

Now I could go into much more detail here but I have developed an in depth Squidoo eCourse that takes you through step-by-step from start to finish so sign up here and you will soon be well on your way to making money online with Squidoo.

2. Classified ADs

Classified ad sites allow you to place ads for products that you want to promote. You basically create an ad, then add an affiliate link in the ad which links to a product that you are promoting. It’s easy, takes minimal time, costs nothing and you can add as many ads as you want. The trick with this however, is finding keywords that are non-competitive to use in the title and content of your ad so that you can easily rank on the first page of Google – see instructions below on finding non-competitive keywords.

There are quite a few classified ad sites on the net but one of the best for this type of work is USFreeAds. They allow affiliate links in their ads and you can submit ads for free. If you have some money to spare then it is worthwhile paying the $9.95 per month membership which allows for unlimited ads, greater functionality and better looking ads.

3. Article Marketing

Article marketing is very popular because it is relatively easy and it works. It involves writing articles and submitting them to article directories. Don’t be concerned that you may not have the writing skills to get this to work. You don’t need to be an expert writer to create articles. Take a look at ezinearticles.com to see what others have written about .

If you are really concerned that you may not be able to write your own quality, informative articles and you have a few extra dollars to spend then head on over to Elance.com and get a professional to write the article for you. You can get an article written from anywhere between $5-$30 depending on the word length.

How does it work?

1. Choose a product to promote – take a look at Clickbank for products.
2. Choose a non-competitive keyword that relates to this product. Use the free Wordtracker tool for this. See instructions at the end of this article for how to do this.
3. Write an article based on this keyword. It only needs to be between 300-500 words and the best types of articles are tips, hints or lists. Use the keyword/s in the title and in the content of the article.
4. Add your affiliate link in the bio at the end of the article – you will get the code for the link from Clickbank also known as a hoplink.
5. Submit the article to an article directory. The best one for this is Goarticles. Ezine Articles is actually better but they currently don’t allow affiliate links in any articles submitted to their site. If you want to use Ezine Articles then you need to set up your own website to link to and act as the middleman between the article and the product you are trying to promote.

4. Forum Marketing

This is another simple and easy approach to making money online. However, one of the most critical parts of this task is that you don’t spam the forums. You need to provide value to that forum. Help people out by answering questions and provide suggestions and try and make each post useful in some way. The more valuable your post then the more likely someone will click on your signature. Go for quality rather than quantity.

How does it work?

1. Choose a product to promote – use Clickbank for this.
2. Find a related forum. For example, if you product is a dog training eBook then look for dog or pet forums.
3. Add your affiliate link in the signature section – note that some forums don’t allow affiliate links.
4. Make lots of good quality posts.
5. Hopefully other forum readers will like what you have to say and will click on the affiliate link in your signature file.

5. Start a Blog

If you like to write and think you can do it on a consistent basis then a blog might be the answer. Google loves blogs because of the regularly updated content. The key is developing good content and posting regularly.

How does it work?

1. Choose a topic, preferably something you are interested in as you will be more likely to stick at it if you have a passion for the topic.
2. Ensure the topic has related products that you can promote on your blog. Check out Clickbank, CJ and Linkshare for this.
3. Create a blog – you can use the free blogging accounts at either Blogger.com or WordPress.com for this. Note: If you are really serious about blogging, you should consider getting your own domain name and hosting which will cost you some money, but it is recommended.
4. Add content on a regular basis. Every 2 or 3 days at a minimum.
5. Add affiliate links to your blog. Don’t overdo it. You don’t just want a blog full of spammy ads.

Finding a Niche

Each of the methods above requires one important step. Without this step none of these methods will work effectively, if at all. This step involves finding keywords that have little to no competition so that you can easily rank in Google. At this point, this probably makes little sense to you so let’s use an example to make it clearer.

Suppose we have gone into Clickbank and selected a product to market. For our example, we will assume we have chosen a dog training ebook. Now we have our product we decide to do a bit of article marketing and develop an article or two to promote this product But the first thing we need to do even before we start writing is to find some keywords to use in our articles.

Using the right keywords helps Google (and the other search engines) determine what our article is about. If you choose non-competitive keywords ie. keywords that don’t have a lot of other competing websites, then you will be more likely to rank highly in Google for that article and therefore receive more traffic.

So how do you choose your keywords?

You can use the free Wordtracker tool for this. In the search field enter the main keyword for your topic or product – in our case it would be ‘dog training’. The search will offer up a number of results that relate to your main keywords. What you are looking for is a keyword that is searched for at least 100 times a day if possible.

Once you have found a keyword head on over to www.google.com and type it into the search field using quotes eg. “dog training tips” and press Enter. On that page of results Google will display the results and also the number of competing websites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In our example, we can see we have to compete with over 270,000 websites. That is way too many. We want to keep this figure under 5000 and even less if we can. So go back to your Wordtracker list and choose another keyword. Keep doing this until you have found a low competitive keyword or keyword phrase. This will be the one you use to write your articles and create free ads.

Having always lived in an area where the internet connection is lightening fast and with unlimited internet downloads, I haven’t had to give any consideration to anyone who may have a slow internet connection.

Well haven’t I just received a rude awakening!

Having just moved to a rural area has certainly pointed out to me the problems faced by anyone who is doing Affiliate Marketing and who suffers with a slow connection.

When I first moved to the country, the service provider I was with assured me that I could have a broadband (cable) connection. This turned out to be incorrect as the line is too noisy. So it was back to a dial up connection.

To start with I thought “Hey this isn’t too bad.” But eventually I had to stop deluding myself and finally purchased a satellite dish.

Now the satellite connection is faster than dial up until I use up my 2gb allowance and then it is shaped back to dial up speed and as I can’t get an unlimited access plan this happens very quickly. In fact I use my 2gb in approximately 4 days so I spend the next 26-27 days being able to make a cup of tea, doing a bit of gardening, lighting the fire etc between downloads and uploads, you get the picture.

I find this extremely frustrating and I now understand how others in the same position feel.

As those of you who are involved in Affiliate Marketing will appreciate, we need to have a number of windows or tabs open so that we can access data and merchant networks quickly.

Unfortunately, this is one situation for which I have no answer. I have contacted all the major players who provide internet access and none of them are able to assist. And forget about the minor providers as they aren’t interested in or do not have services available to rural areas.

So if anyone has an answer I would certainly like to hear it.

Okay that’s my whinge for the day.

Now I hope you have taken advantage of our ‘Squidoo Course’. This is something that will help you start making money online really quickly, unlike my internet connection.

What is it that makes a successful blog?

Why is it that some blogs get tons of traffic, hundreds of comments and become leaders in their field while others are like bits of dust floating around the internet – they hardly get seen and eventually settle at the bottom of the blogging basement.

These were questions that I quickly needed an answer to, as this blog was fast becoming one of those specks of dust .

We realised it was time for a change. It was time to become one of those ‘successful blogs’.

We have already mentioned in a previous post how we deleted all our old blog posts, articles and comments and started again from scratch.

And why did we take such a drastic step?

Well it was simply because we felt that maybe we hadn’t really provided as much value as we could to our readers. As a result, the blog was really suffering with poor traffic and a basic lack of interest by both us and our visitors. We knew that the only way around it was to start again from scratch and we have to tell you that it’s the best thing we could have done.

So where to begin!

Well we decided to go right back to basics and it was during my research for new templates, plugins and the rest that I also took some time to take a look at some of the most successful blogs in my niche to try and figure out what made them a success. In other words, what makes them stand out from the crowd and get all of that traffic? I figured if they all follow a specific set of standards or rules then by just following these rules, we too could have a successful blog. That’s logical thinking don’t you think?

So my first step was to find a few blogs that were considered ‘successful‘.

But just what is the definition of a successful blog and how do you find them? Is it one that gets a lot of traffic, a lot of blog comments and makes lots of money? Any of those definitions could be close to the mark although I am sure there is more to it than that, but then that was the whole point of my research, to find out what makes a successful blog.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to go too far to find them as I just typed in ‘top money making blogs’ into Google and the first result gave me what I was looking for – a list of the top 100 blogs. Now I have been around long enough to know that this list is pretty close to the mark and it was a good place to start.

I took 5 of the blogs from the top 10 of this list – basically they were ones that I had already heard about. Then I had a detailed look at each of them. What I found was that they appeared to follow a consistent approach to blogging – the most common factor being that they all provide value added content and they do it on a consistent basis. But I wanted to delve a little deeper than that and find out all the things these blogs have in common to see if there was some sort of benchmark I could use when developing my blog.

It took quite a bit of research but here are the results – a list of the most common features of these blogs and in the table below is a list of the top 5 blogs followed by the features that each specifically provides.

The Most Common Features of a Successful Blog

These findings were based on the following blogs:

1. Problogger
2. Shoemoney
3. Dosh Dosh
4. Entrepreneurs Journey
5. John Chow

1. Consistent blog posts

What I was looking for here was to see how many times a week they posted to their blog and how consistent it was.

Results: Most posted on a daily basis with some posting multiple times in one day. Dosh Dosh appeared to be the only one that didn’t post as regularly as the others.  The other four blogs posted daily or every 1-2 days.

2. Quality posts.

This one was difficult to measure as some people will get more value out of some posts than others. There wasn’t much else I could do but just base it on my personal view of the article and whether it was helpful or informative to me in some way. I looked at the last 10 blog posts for each blog.

Results: All provided good quality articles with helpful and informative information. I couldn’t fault any of them on this one.

3. Responding to comments

To determine this I checked the last 10 blog posts to see if the blog owner personally responded to any comments left on their blog.

Results: All of the blog owners left comments although not in a big way. Just a few comment were left here and there.

4. Newsletter

Do they offer a newsletter?

Results: Interestingly enough not all of the blogs researched had a newsletter. I found this a bit of a puzzle as building an email list is one of the things that is consistently stressed by the gurus.

They all have an RSS subscription sign up but no real opt-in email list. In fact, only two of them had a newsletter and they were Entrepreneurs Journey and John Chow.

5. Free Newsletter Offer

Do they provide an ebook, free ecourse, free training etc to encourage visitors to sign up?

Results: Only two had any sort of free offer – Entrepreneurs Journey and John Chow – with both offering a free eBook to sign up to their newsletter.

6. Professional template

Is their template professional? This is all in the eye of the beholder of course but I think most people can pick a professional template when they see one.

Results: All had a clean, professional looking template with the predominant colors being blue or red.

7. Photo

Do they provide a photo of themselves?

Result: Four of the blogs researched had a photo of themselves on their homepage, About page or on a separate photo album page. I couldn’t find a photo on the Dosh Dosh blog.

8. About Us page

Do they have an About Us page?

Result: All of the blogs had an About page and in most cases it was quite detailed. Yaro Starak from Entrepeneurs Journey had quite a detailed bio which was quite interesting to read.

9. Guest Writers

Do they accept guest writers? This could only be gauged by an obvious link on their home page. They may accept articles if emailed directly.

Result: I couldn’t find any direct evidence that they accepted guest articles for any of the blogs researched. Note: After writing this blog post, Kevin Muldoon from www.bloggingtips.com advised me that each of these blogs accepts guest writers (see comments).

10. RSS Feed

Which RSS feed do they use?

Result: All used Feedburner and all had the subscribe option at the very top right hand side of the screen.

11. Age of blog?

Result: All of the blogs were at least 2 years old. John Chow was the oldest starting in 2000. I couldn’t find a start date for the Shoemoney blog.

12. Average number of comments per post

In my analysis I looked at the last 10 blog posts.

Result: The average number of blog comments per post for all the blogs combined was 50. Problogger received the highest number of comments with an average of 63 per post. John Chow had the least with an average of 24 comments per post.

13. Dofollow blog

Are they a dofollow blog?

Result: None of the blogs researched were dofollow blogs. All had the nofollow tag attached to their comments.

14. Do they use Google ads?

Result: As far as I could tell only John Chow uses Google Adsense on his blog.

15. Google Pagerank

What is the blog’s pagerank?

Result: The first four blogs I researched had a pagerank of 6 with only the John Chow blog having a pagerank of 3.

Successful Money Making Blogs

Features	Problogger	Shoemoney	Dosh Dosh	Entrepreneurs Journey	John Chow
Consistent blog posts	1-2 posts daily	1-3 posts daily	2-3 posts per week	4-5 posts per week	1-3 posts per day
Quality Post	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Responds to comments	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Newsletter	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Free Offer	No	No	No	Yes - ebook	Yes - ebook
Professional template	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Photo of blogger	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
About Page	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Accepts guest writers	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
RSS Feed	Feedburner	Feedburner	Feedburner	Feedburner	Feedburner
Age of blog	2004		2006	2005	2005
Avg No. comments per post	66	63	52	43	24
Dofollow blog	No	No	No	No	No
Uses Google Adsense	No	No	No	No	Yes
Google Pagerank	6	6	6	6	3

Even after all this research, I figure there is still more involved to being a successful blogger than what I have presented above. These bloggers would have put in a lot of work, at least at the start, to generate traffic, to network and so on. Unfortunately I don’t have the ability to find out this sort of information without interviewing each blogger in detail, but I got an inkling from reading the Blog Profit Report developed by fellow Australian, Yaro Starak – this is well worth a read and you can sign up for it on his website.

So what does all of this ultimately tell us? Firstly, as bloggers we need to provide quality posts that offer value to the reader and we need to do it on a consistent basis. Does this mean daily blog posts? Not necessarily as we can see from the table above but at least 4 posts a week at a minimum.

We also need to set up our blog so that it is visually appealing, details a little about us and provides as many options as possible to bring visitors back to our blog. This includes encouraging visitors to subscribe to our RSS feed and perhaps also setting up a newsletter and providing something of value like an eBook or eCourse to encourage visitors to sign up.

All of this is interesting but at this point it still doesn’t tell us how to get traffic to our blog to begin with. We could follow all of the techniques of these successful blogs but if nobody knows where our blog is then we are still that little speck of dust floating around the internet….but that is for another blog post to answer.

Contrary to common belief, it is not necessarily websites with a high page rank that dominate the top space in the Google rankings. It is not uncommon to see a website in the number one position that has a lower page rank than the website in second position. So why do so many people place so much emphasis on the little green bar?

I have the Google toolbar installed and when I am looking for websites on the internet for backlink purposes I always check the little green pagerank bar. I see the value in it even though it may not be that accurate or up-to-date as it gives me a basic idea of what Google thinks of a particular website. But this is what those obsessed with the little green bar fail to see – it really is just a basic representation of that website, nothing more.

How does Google rank web pages?

One of the main criteria Google uses to rank web pages is through the number of good quality links coming into it. So if another website decides to link to your website or blog and they are considered important in the eyes of Google, then it will in turn help to improve the importance of your website.

The keywords or anchor text used in those incoming links is another key factor that can help improve your ranking in Google. The following exercise will illustrate this perfectly. Go to Google.com and type in the words ‘click here’ and see what comes up – the first result should be Adobe.com. Now go into that page and see if you can find the keywords ‘click here’. You will find that those words are nowhere to be seen on the page. So why do they rank so well for those particular keywords? It is because there are hundreds of other websites linking to Adobe.com using the keywords ‘click here’ in their anchor text.

Now if that doesn’t get you thinking about how important anchor text is then nothing will!

Relevancy is also another critical factor. A reason that many websites do not rank well is because they have hundreds of websites linking to them that having nothing to do with their topic. Their website might be about dogs but they have a link from another website that relates to credit cards or something else totally unrelated. These links have less value in the eyes of Google.

Quantity vs Quality

In essence then, it is not so much the quantity of backward links that you have coming into your site that is important but the quality of backward links.

Be selective with your linking strategy. Look for sites with content reasonably relevant to your site that have a good pagerank and good quality backward links. This is the key.

We recently decided to totally trash this blog and start afresh by moving over to WordPress. As we have a number of established visitors and to ensure that they and new visitors would not be disadvantaged if they clicked on a page that no longer exists, we knew we needed to create a 404 page that would keep our visitors on our site.

We didn’t just want your typical ’404 Page Not Found’ message to appear as that would quickly have our visitors clicking the back button. Instead we created a totally unique page that would hopefully grab their attention and keep them reading.

Now I won’t go into how to create the page itself as WordPress.org has a very detailed and a fairly easy to understand tutorial so just take a look at that if you need help editing or creating the page itself. What we want to talk about here is how to make that page convert or at the very least get the reader to stay and check out your blog.

Now most people neglect their 404 page – in fact, many don’t even know it exists and so they are missing out on making good of an opportunity to keep their visitors. Just by making a few simple changes you can make a huge difference in preventing visitors from clicking that nasty old back button.

So here are some suggestions that you can use to make your 404 page rock!

The Header

The first thing you want to do when you edit your 404 page is to delete the bit that says ‘Error 404 – Not Found’ or anything resembling that. In fact, you don’t want people to even know that they have hit an error page at all. If they have any idea at all that they haven’t found what they clicked on then they will hit the back button real quick.

Replace this text with something that grabs their attention. In other words, avoid being boring. Take your time with this and think about how you can get their attention fast. For instance, you could use one of the following:

Wow, how did you manage to find this page? No one is supposed to see this! But I guess now that you are here I can let you in on a little secret….

This is your lucky day! You’ve found our hidden page of goodies including an offer that we know you can’t resist…

You see how these messages grab the readers’ attention.. What would you rather read – a boring message that says ‘Error 404 – Page Not Found’ or one of the ones listed above?

The Content

So now that the header is out of the way, we need to add a bit of content. We don’t want the 404 page to be a mile long page of content. Keep it relatively short – a couple of paragraphs at the most.

The first part of the content should be two or three sentences that let the reader know the benefits of staying on your site. They’ve obviously come to your site expecting to find something and haven’t found it so you need to give them some wow factor to make them want to at least click on one of the links you are about to give them.

For instance, if you had a blog about dogs you might want to add the following:

This is your lucky day as you have found the best dog resource on the internet. We have the biggest list of dog names with over 10,000 names listed and training guides to tame your little terror!

Keep it short and simple as we really want to lead them to the next section which are your links.

The Links

Just after the content on your 404 page you want to start adding some links. These links will serve two purposes:

1. They will drive visitors to some of the best pages on your site. These will be pages that you know are exceptional and will keep the reader’s attention. Once they have read one of your best blog posts then they are more likely to want to stay and read more.

2. They will drive visitors (via affiliate links) to the affiliate websites where you can pick up a commission.

My preference is to use a mix of both types of link. On our 404 page for this blog we have links to our Squidoo ECourse, to Wealthy Affiliate University (via an affiliate link), to a review of Affiliate Organizer that we wrote up for this blog and to a free eBook that we recommend.

We set up our links as dot points. So if we stay with our dog example, we might set up the links as follows:

Here are some of our most popular posts:

• The Top 10 Favorite Dog Names
• Surefire Ways to Get Your Dog to Sit on Command
• A Review of the Doohicky Dog Bed

We could then finish it off by adding the following:

Sign up for our newsletter today and receive our FREE Dog Training eBook.

So let’s put it all together now and see what we have come up with:

Wow, how did you manage to find this page? No one is supposed to see this! But I guess now that you are here I can let you in on a little secret….

This is your lucky day as you have found the best dog resource on the internet. We have the biggest list of dog names with over 10,000 names listed and training guides to tame your little terror!

Here are some of our most popular posts:

• The Top 10 Favorite Dog Names
• Surefire Ways to Get Your Dog to Sit on Command
• A Review of the Doohicky Dog Bed

Sign up for our newsletter today and receive our FREE Dog Training eBook.

So there you have it – a 404 page that gets your visitors to do something other than click on that back button.

Update: At the end of the original vesion of this post we indicated that you could also add Google Ads to your 404 page but J.Noronha (see comments below) has kindly informed us that it is against Googles Terms ands Conditions. Thanks for that info!