I spend a lot of time speaking with new affiliates and bloggers hoping to earn ad revenue on their blogs and as a result I decided to focus some of my posts on the “Internet terminology’ every publisher (and blogger) needs.

Today ‘s Internet Geek Terminology choice is:

BOUNCE RATE

Where you will see this term ? In your traffic stats .

What is it ? This is a term of measurement that defines the percentage of initial visitors to your website (or blog) who ‘bounce’ away from your site instead of clicking through to a second page within your site.

Example A

Susie lands on your website and sees a second blog post (or page) that she likes – she clicks another blog post to open it and read. Susie is NOT a bouncer

Example B

George lands on your newest blog post and starts reading – George sees a banner for hot girls in your side bar and clicks it. George goes to look at hot girls (and to download spy-ware and Trojans to his site.) George IS a bouncer. (Of course you don’t have those banners on your site it was just a hypothetical example.

What are other ways a person can  ‘bounce’ off their initial visit ?
A visitor can bounce by:

• Typing a new url into their browser.
• Clicking a link on your page to a different website
• Closing the browser window or tab
• The session timing out (inactivity)

So how to you determine your blogs bounce rate ?

Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing Only One Page / Total Number of Visits`

What is a good bounce rate?

Pick a card, because it’s not a black and white answer.  You have to KNOW the purpose of every page to determine what a good bounce rate is for any page. If you PURPOSE is to get a visitor to click through to an affiliate offer or ad then you want a high bounce rate. If the purpose si to engage the user into registering for your site then you want a low rate.

Generally an AVERAGE bounce rate rate is between 45- 60 %.

Go enter right now

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Click Here to vote <- you will need to register (which you should anyway so you can vote and rate all the great plugins you use.)

My idea is simple. Currently you can only select ONE default role with wordpress. This means when a visitor registers on your blog they are set to  for example susbcriber.

You then have to manually change each user to their role in the admin section.

What if you created new roles (maybe you have a blog for VA’s and you want  the OPTION for user to register as a VA or a Business owner ) and you want the user to select the right one when they register.

My suggestion is for WordPress to:

instead of a ‘default role’ on the general settings page ;

allow admins to select either
a Default role
OR
select MULTIPLE user roles to be included within a DROP DOWN to be included on the user registration page

So please go vote for my idea – and if you are looking for a way to create CUSTOM roles in WordPress you should check out Justin T’s Member Role WordPress Plugin.

Free JPG and EPS web 2.0 style heart icons

Free Valentine Cookie Heart and candy icons

Vector Hearts and Valentine Wallpapers

Website Icons – Heart theme

Valentine’s Day Vector Icon Set

Hope these help promote your Valentine’s Day affiliate programs! Be sure to check out the Cookie Surprise Affiliate Program. It’s a great affiliate program with tons of Valentines Day Creatives.

I like the Category Posts Widget. It is light weight and has most of the features your average blogger would need.

Display thumbnail images via WP 2.9′s new post thumbnail feature.
Set how many posts to show.
Set which category the posts should come form.
Show the post excerpt and how long the excerpt should be.
Show the post date.
Show the comment count.
Option to make the widget title link to the category page.
Multiple widgets.

Another great side bar widget for wordpress is Query Posts Justin Tadlock. It allows you to display posts by tag, category, author, time/date, custom field key and/or value.
Choose any number.
Order by various terms.
Show pages.
Show the full post, excerpt, or even order them in a list.
And much more…

Justin’s side bar widget is a bit more ‘techy’ but all of his plugins get high ratings from me.

What IS a splash page ” A page in a Web site that the user sees first before being given the option to continue to the main content of the site. Often a splash page will consist of animated graphics and sounds that entice the user into exploring the rest of the Web site. Some splash pages will bring the user to the main Web site automatically, and some require the user to click on a link that will load the main page. “ quote Useful design

I can not more adequately get my point across then to simply say “DO NOT EVER use an entry page” on your website. EVER. So now that I have made that clear let me tell you why;

1) It’s outdated. DO you want users to think you are a serious professional website, company, or blog?

Your site needs to not look like a site built in the year 2000 (because, yes, that was TEN years ago. Ten years is a decade.) Are we on the same page now about splash pages?

2) Search engines don’t like splash pages. The best traffic to your site is traffic that WANTS to be at your site and they often arrive through a – search engine. A entry page or splash page often has not indexable content (except maybe a title). Be nice to the search engine – if you want the search engine to be nice to you.

3) YOU think it looks pretty – your graphic designer thinks it looks pretty. Your blof or website is NOT a display ad, its a website.

Why do people use the web instead of opening the yellow pages ? They want INFORMATION. The less clicks the better. So like the search engines your visitors want information that is not found on a splash page or entry page. So this means simply; Your visitors don’t like Splash pages.

4.) Bail out rate. This is the percentage of visitors who land on your site and LEAVE without surfing content, subscribing to your feed, or making a purchase. A splash page has a bail out rate of more then 50% (based on my experiment and tracking).

5.) You don’t want your website to show up on the list of Flander’s Websites that Suck 2010.

“I try to tell clients that Web design should reflect the real world, and you don’t see real-world equivalents of a splash page. Think about Wal-Mart. Are you forced to wait at the front door and watch a thirty-second movie before you’re allowed to enter? No. Then why would you make your visitors wait to get inside your Web site?” (Flanders 2002) Web Pages that Suck

So here it is. If you come to me and ask me for feedback on your website and you have an entry page or splash page.

I am going to tell you that your Blog or website sucks because I will be the 50% that simply close the window at your splash page and I won’t ever see your content. (As apposed to the up to 50% who wait for it to load as they get frustrated before they see your site.)

So please. SAY NO to splash pages. Say NO to entry pages.

My tip for today. No splash pages. Period. Ever.

There is a solution to help you manage your WordPress pages in the admin panel. Geeky Weekly My Page Order is a WordPress Page management plugin that helps you manage the order of your pages, this makes finding the pages needing constant update a snap. It also allows you to group your wordpress pages within the WP Page edit screen. How does it work ? It inserts a DRAG AND drop FEATURE in your WordPress Edit Page screen!

My pages were a random mess of pages including drafts here and there.

The drag and drop feature allowed me to lsit them in a more organized order.  Our main pages (update often such as FAQ’s), All the pages by member type, Followed by the admin pages (like login & registration), followed by drafts, pending pages.

A quick save and back to the edit pages screen and now I can find what I am looking for. This is a great plugin to manage, group, and organize your WordPress page order in the edit page screen.

Now here’s even better news! Geeky Weekly has more of thes wordpress plugins to manage more areas of your WordPress admin panels!

• WordPress Plug in – My Link Order – Organized and manage the order of your WP links
• WordPress Plug in – My Category Order – Organized and manage the order of your WP categories
• WordPress Plug in – My Page Order – Organized and manage the order of your WP pages

You can install these from your Add new upload plugin screen in your WP Dashboard. More details can be found at Geekly Weekly.

Please note that this will not work with Admin Management Xtended which has it own drag and drop page ordering. I haven’t checked to see if the Link and categories plugins conflict with Admin Management Xtended.

I give this WordPress plugin -> My Page Order 4/4 stars !

P{ostling is incredibly user friendly. The service is designed for those of us who may not be techy geeks but need a way to save the time of having to log onto five or more social media sites each day. The dashboard is clean and easy to navigate.

Postling allows you to;

• update your social media ‘statuses’
• create a Blog Post
• upload an Image
• or share a link.

These are the four main actions of managing a Social Media account and for a small business owner really the only tools you need to jump into Social Media.

At this time Postling only allows you to link up the following Social Media accounts:
Facebook
Twitter
Blogs
Wordpress
Blogger
Tumblr
Typepad
Squarespace
Drupal
Photos
Flickr

I am hoping they will add bitly support and more of the social media networks I use on a regular basis. Especially Linked In (as it is an important network for small business owners), plurk, and  indent.ca.

Try managing your social media accounts for free at Postling. Click Here

I received 59781 ad impressions and 535 clicks. The CTR was bit low .0.0089 but over a cost per click of less then 2 cents per click which is great. I did receive some sign ups ( no payment required) though I didn’t track the number of signups.

So if you are looking to increase traffic to your blog with some paid advertising on a budget, I would say adgitize blog ads is a good option. I am not sure how affiliate offers would convert as they audience is rather broad.

Also, as the site becomes more popular you may find your impressions will be less.

Give Adgitize blog ads a try.