Gailardia secret areas.

 Android RPGs  Comments Off on Gailardia secret areas.
Dec 092011
 

Where is Aluminum ore?

Aluminum ore in gailardia

Aluminum ore in the hidden spot.

This is probably the first secret place where all players get stuck.

  1. Go to Hamilton the long way from Port town.
  2. There is one particular Sage west of Hamilton. Visit him and talk.
  3. Speak with the king.
  4. Go to Aluminum mine just a bit east of Mizuri.
  5. Talk to guard.
  6. Return to the king of Hamilton and speak with him.
  7. Return to guard and he lets you in.
  8. Fight your way to deepest level 3 of the cave. The ore is in hidden black square north (see this map right here).


Where to jump from Albama tower?

Albama tower in Gailardia

Fall from Albama tower in Gailardia

This is the next secret place that is hard to find if you don’t know where to look.

  1. Go to the top of Albama tower.
  2. Open the chest and loot.
  3. Stand EAST of the chest and walk east.
  4. When you reach the rightmost column, turn south.
  5. Walk until you fall.
  6. You fall into a corridor.
  7. Get in and loot 🙂


Where is Excalibur?

Excalibur in Gailardia

Excalibur secret place is black.

This artefact is needed to kill Quetzalcoatl. It is again in a dark square in the last map (the secret cave).

  1. Get to the secret cave. (Shortest path is getting the boat from Colma town.)
  2. Enter and fight your way down, using the right hand rule.
  3. Loot the chest, it is the other super-rare item “Dagger of light”
  4. Give it to Alice.
  5. Get to the west area and search for the passable black square (see the map here).
  6. Enter in the dark and click the action button. Voila. The Excalibur.
  7. Give this good sword to Guile and buy me a beer 😉
  8. The only thing left is to kill Quetzalcoatl. If you make it in less than 13 turns – drop me a line so I try to beat you 😉
 Posted by at 12:39 am

How to survive after Google panda update

 bl0g  Comments Off on How to survive after Google panda update
Dec 072011
 

What changed exactly cannot be told. Google are very clingy to their secrets.

Maybe that’s why, they are the most widely used search engine. The big G.

What really happened is, that sites rich in ADs above the fold, got penalized in SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and sites that were once with enormous Page Rank as 8 and 9 got kicked to pages 2 and 3 of SERP. Stolen content sites (Scrappers and Autoblogs) almost disappeared. Article zines suffered.

Above the fold.

Above the fold. (image source THEO @ Flickr)

What means “above the fold” ?

Imagine a newspaper folded in two (as it usually sells). The visible part, that is not folded is “above the fold”. Where the big Header titles are.

What it means “Above the fold” for a web site? The visible part when you load the page in the browser. (before you start to scroll down)

In present days, the casual Internet surfer has attention span of ~10 seconds per web page. To be sure he will notice the ADs and Affiliate sales on your site, you need to place it where all the users will look first.

Above the fold.

This makes sure the user will sometimes click ADs and your advertisers will be happy.

Unfortunately, human greed is endless. There were dozens of high Page Rank sites that started exploiting the limits. There was NOTHING else but ADs above the fold. The big G put a limit of 3 AD units per web page.

Then the Scrapers and Auto-bloggers came. They had nothing but ADs and stolen content, scrapped from everywhere. That’s why, Google had to make sure spammers get below their fold and original content gets up.

The Farmer update.

This update, also called “Google Panda update” penalized the sites that have so much ADs above the fold, that are so abundant on affiliate links and banners, that barely or no real useful information is visible.

How they did it? 80% of all ADs served worldwide are Google AdSense. It’s quite easy. They already have the data.

And then came social buttons, that say “Tweeet“, “I like this” and “I plus’d this“, which told even more about user experience. Frequently shared sites get better results in SERP. Never appreciated sites get penalized.

It’s all about user experience. AD Spamming useless sites get down, Unique content-rich sites get up. As simple as this.

Content farms, that have thousands of SEO optimized articles rich on keywords but poor on actual meaning, answering NO question, giving nothing but general talk – got penalized. Why? Because articles spanning on 2000 words take time to read and if they don’t help you at all – it is simply time loss. (zero user experience).

Article resellers, that have articles for sale got penalized too. Why? Because they sell (non-exclusively) the same article to 100 people for $20 per sale. What really happens is – 100 personal blogs with equal articles. Who the hell needs to read the same article in all his friends blogs? (again – bad user experience)

So, how to avoid penalty?

  • Never. Literally. Never copy and paste content, that is not yours. Even bought content, needs to be unique. Make sure, when buying articles from Article *zines and *How-to’s – that you are the sole owner and rights holder of the article. (Also – If you have 2 or more sites – do not duplicate content between them.)
  • Do not overdo SEO optimization. It’s pointless. Repeating “structural settlements” in article, because some BlackHat site in the internet claims it is top-10 paying keyword is pointless and you WILL get penalized. Spamming keywords in articles = penalty.
  • Put only one AD unit above the fold. Even AdSense help pages revised the “hot” areas, where the user is probably going to look first. They are less now. Stick with their suggestion. They know better than you – where their money come from. If your ADs push the real content below the fold, you will never reach page 1 of SERP. Ever. (Yesterday a commenter in Darren Rowse’s blog said his visits tripled when he removed AdSense from his blog.)
  • Avoid high paying keywords if you are not able to make really useful article for them.
  • Avoid key words with gazillions monthly searches and stick with long tail key words (sentences) that have ~ 10k local searches per month with lower competition. It is the golden area. You can’t survive El dorado, because there are one million cowboys trying their luck. But if you are good – you can be a small town mayor.

And if you pass by a blog article you like, share it and like it. 😉

 Posted by at 3:34 pm

How to avoid banner blindness?

 bl0g  Comments Off on How to avoid banner blindness?
Dec 062011
 
Banner blindness

Attention span on main page

The term is quite old and is quite self-explanatory. If you have a look at the picture on your right, you will see some areas in red, that are actually taking the visitor’s attention first and/or gets clicked while the others are not even looked upon. (I’ve hidden and pixellated the actual ADs and the Google Analytics result, so I don’t break Google TOS, but you can get your own by simply applying to the program.)

This is called Banner blindness.

It happens often to sites, that use AdSense or other AD programs to see some decline in revenues, even if the visitor numbers grow. For what is important in sites that give away free information, walk-through, how to’s and other important stuff is … to generate some revenue from ADs.

In present days, the attention on a page in the internet is … 10 seconds. To write an article that can take a visitor to actually read it, you need some talent to write or some ability to help the others. So if you are one of the common present-day breed that wants to make money online by blogging and writing articles – you probably already know what I mean.

To write an interesting article is the hardest part. Then you get some higher paying keywords inside; sit back and wait for the readers to come and read.

That’s not enough though. You want to sell your article and/or generate passive monthly income from it. The common  Click-through rate (CTR) according to Wikipedia is 0.3% (on 1000 visitors ~3 will click ADs). You want more, and that’s why you need a way to make the visitor

Lose Banner Blindness

at least as long as he reads your article. 😉

There are few methods that can help you in this.

1. Fusion.

Make the text banner look like the text itself. Same color, same link color, same background color, no borders and if possible – as wide as the paragraph of the text.

2. Randomness

This method is helpful for returning visitors and is covered by some WordPress plugins. Probably in some future time Blogger will implement it too.

In basic – you change the place for the AD. One time it is aligned right, one time it is aligned left, one time it is above the fold, the next time it is between article and comments (below article in general). And once in a while – it is totally absent.

3. Interactive ADs.

The time for text ads is over. Lots of Bloggers out there will try to tell you, that you need to count on text ADs and optimize your site this way, so text Ads stick. This may have been so once.

It is not anymore now.

  • 50% of your clicks will come from image ADs.
  • 25% will come from text ADs.
  • The remaining 25% will be from Rich Media, Flash and Movie ADs. Why? Because user loves to CLICK play.

The problem is … the biggest AD provider (Google AdSense) does not allow you to choose image ADs only.

4. Search oriented ADs

Some AD providers such as Chitika (referral link) will only place ADs on pages that are reached by visitors through search engines. This way, if you reached a site with the search terms “student loans”- you will receive relevant ADs by Chitika and the visitor coming to your site will actually BE quite interested in this AD. The best place for Search oriented ADs are below article and above the comment section.

CaptchaAd

ADs in CAPTCHA

5. ADs in CAPTCHA

You know the places you need to enter some random text in a field, so the site knows you are not an internet robot?

This is where some clever advertisers are placing ADs now. It is very Banner Blindness oriented but the click-through rate really sucks.

The banner GETS shown and is read by the visitor.

But the visitor wants something else and ignores everything but the text he needs to enter.

If you find CAPTCHA AD network that pays per 1000 impressions – you can get some $0.01 per 10 (or 100) visits (or less). Otherwise – I don’t recommend this method.

6. Pop up

The most hated method, that is absolutely forbidden by Google AdSense and will get your account disabled but with the biggest click-rate. Very often there are sites that detect even pop-up and ad-blockers and don’t allow you to enter the site if you don’t disable the AD Block add-on.

Such sites are no longer tolerated by the big G after the Panda Update. Heavy AD sites get their Rank and Authority lowered.

If you are in the Blogging for long – you already know how the Panda impacted on organic traffic on most AD Heavy sites. If you are newcomer – please don’t do this.  It sucks.

7. Relevant affiliate banners.

Nothing sells better than affiliated product! Nothing.

Most of the people coming to your site via Search engine know what they need. Affiliate link or banner with picture and prices is the next thing they will click. You only need good promotional article with good keywords, that will make people land on your page instead on the others. Why would anyone need to read review for latest Canon EOS camera? Because they need it and are ready to buy!

8. Any ADs that pay per impression.

You will rarely find that Advertiser breed anymore, but this is an AD type, that is absolutely the winner. You don’t need to do anything more than negotiating the place with the Advertiser. He will give you the AD code and will pay you either for the whole Year, based on your traffic, or per 1000 impressions. There are some scammers out there, that are still trying to get to your site for literally CENTS, but remember – it is your site. Research the Advertiser in the first page search results. If it is receiving good reviews – why not. Let them place an AD on your site.

You can always get them down if you are not happy with the results, or they place an AD, that is not good for your site, is offensive, is not what you negotiated, is adult or any other suspicious activity from their side.Your blog – your rules.

Anyway, this article is going to pass 1000 words, and I don’t want to bore you to death. If you have any good idea against Banner blindness, please drop me a mail or a comment. I am open to all suggestions 😉

 Posted by at 2:37 pm
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