Google- Life coach

Google Adwords Tips That Enable You to Profit From Google More Effectively

2011-01-08T13:20:00.000-08:00

Anyone can profit from Google - it’s just that not everyone knows how to. Yes, you can make money online when you utilize Google Ad words for your business or for another person’s business, but, to earn from Adwords, you should be aware of several Google Adwords tips first. You should have a clear idea of Ad Words key principles because if you just take everything in a happy-go-lucky manner, you’ll only end up with low conversions, or worse, no conversions at all.

If you wish to make Google’s Ad-words program work for you, better bear these tips in mind and apply them:

Choose The Right Key Phrases/Keywords

One tip that will help you profit from Google is to ensure that you actually choose the appropriate key phrases or keywords for your campaign. You can actually use Google’s Keyword Research tool to find out which words relate to your business or your niche, and which of those relevant key words have only small competition. Selecting the right words enables you to make money online because the appropriate phrases/words work to attract targeted customers.

For example, if your product is an anti-dandruff shampoo, you can utilize keywords/phrases such as get rid of dandruff, anti dandruff treatment, and the likes, so that people looking for an effective shampoo for removing dandruff will be able to find your web pages. This is one of the must do Google Adwords tips that can make you earn from Adwords. It is also best that you place yourself in the shoes of your potential customers and ask yourself which keywords you are likely to type in the search bar if you’re searching for a specific product or service.

Come Up With An Appropriate And Creative Title

Another strategy that can up your chances to profit from Google is to create a title that’s catchy or interesting, and is related to your products/services. Remember that the title is one of the first things that people see when searching, thus, if you aim to make money online more easily, do not forget to choose the right title. Part of valuable Google Adwords tips is to also use bigger font sizes for your titles, and to use font colors that make titles more visible in the eyes of searchers.

You can earn from Adwords more easily, for example, if you’re selling organic dog food, and you include the phrase: organic dog food in the title line, instead of simply making use of the phrase: dog food. Phrases such as: all natural dog food, healthy food for dogs, etc, are also good suggestions for this example, definitely better than just using the plain phrase of ‘dog food’.

Proper Keyword Placement Is Also Essential

The placement of your keywords in your Ad-words campaign also affects how easily you’ll profit from Google. Aside from placing the key phrase or the keyword in the title, you should also place keywords/key phrases within the introductory text, the body of the text, and within the conclusion. Using 1 - 3% keyword density is recommended. Using more than that percentage could make your ads look like spam. Included in Google Adwords tips is for you to also highlight your main keyword/phrase to make the campaign appear ‘stronger’ in the eyes of targeted people. Doing this tip will truly aid you in your goal to earn from Adwords.

The tips mentioned above can be your stepping stones to make money online with the use of Google’s Ad Words program. Trying out all of these strategies is highly recommended if you really yearn to profit from Google. Not only will these recommendations help you increase targeted web site traffic - they will also help you gain improvement in your sales conversion rate. To know more about how you can earn lots of money from Google, check out this e-book by Chris Carpenter: Google Cash. It does not only contain Google Adwords tips, but also discusses where you can find products to sell on line, the best ways to advertise products over the Web, and of course, how you can get more cash from Google.
By Annita Brixen

AdWords Success Secrets

2011-01-08T13:19:00.001-08:00

With AdWords, Google has created one of the most effective, easily measurable, and targeted forms of advertising and marketing in history. By using Google AdWords, you can access millions of people in seconds, getting the attention of an appropriate audience, in order to sell your products or services to visitors from all across the world.

However, in order to be successful with Google AdWords – maximizing your results along with minimizing your spend – here are a number of simple steps that you can take.

Identify a List of Effective Keywords

One of the basic steps is to identify a list of the most effective keywords, which will be used in your AdWords ad. This is particularly important, since if you bid on the keywords that everybody else is bidding on, it will result in you ending up with very costly clicks.

Use Keyword Search Tools

You can use any keyword search tools that are available online in order to determine the keywords that do not have too much competition and yet have lots of searches. AdWords Analyzer software can also be used for this purpose.

In fact, by bidding on enough keywords that are low-cost, you can actually do as well, or even better than if you should have bid for an expensive and popular keyword. Plus, you can also determine a budget limit, in order to keep control on the total monthly expenditure. In addition, you can also specify not including certain words in order to limit the number of clicks from people hunting for some related product or service that you do not offer.

Refine the Keywords

If you have budget constraints you could cut costs by refining the keyword, aiming at sub-topics of the main topic. For instance, if your topic is on Diamond, you could create a sub-topic "Diamond Jewelry". On doing this, your ad will only be displayed if the exact keyword phrase, which you need to include within quotes, is searched for.

Target the Correct Audience

Targeting the right audience is an obvious tactic. You can do this quite simply by choosing the language and countries that you are aiming for. For instance, you could leave out all countries where the major percentage of the population cannot understand English.

Perform a Split Test

One of the things you need to do is simultaneous testing of two or more ads, which is known as a split test. This will help you to find out which ad produces a higher click through ratio. Once this is determined, you could go about tweaking the weaker ad, turning it into a higher performing ad. This process should be done continuously in order to keep your ads at the highest click through ratio possible.

Track the Return-On-Investment

Although the click through ratio of every ad is tracked by Google, however, it does not actually track the conversion ratio. In order to track the conversion ratio you will need using a special tracking link. Attaching an affiliate system of tracking is one of the ways of doing it. This will help you to monitor in a better way whether each of your ads is producing return-on-investment.

Include Targeted Keywords

Targeted keywords should always be included in the headline as well as the description of the ad. Google highlights keywords that are searched for by bolding them in the ad, which helps to attract the attention of the viewer. This is the reason that ads with keywords generally perform better than the ones that are without.

Spell out the Benefits

Since ad space is limited, go straight to the point by spelling out a couple of major benefits in your ad, such as: lose weight; make more money; get healthier.

Use Attention Grabbers

The headline of your ad should begin with a word that is attention grabbing such as: Sale; New; Free; and so on. However, see that you heed the editorial guidelines of Google.

Use Power Words

Don’t forget to use power words like: free shipping; free; limited offer; sale; cheap; at last; learn; fact; discover; enhance; tips; limited time; special. Plus, it is always a good idea to include call-to-action phrases, such as: Download free trial now; Buy Today = Save 70%, etc. Make sure that the phrases you use are specific to your business or the phrase may be rejected by Google.

Sell Your USP

Your ad needs to spell out why your product or service is different or better from your competitors.

Link to the Relevant Landing Page

If any of your ads is for a specific service or product, you need to have a landing page for it. The landing page should have all the useful, appropriate and relevant information so that there are higher chances of converting the potential customer. Well designed landing pages usually convert a higher percentage of visitors than if they are simply sent to the home page.

Remove Common Words

As there is a limitation of space, common words should be removed as much as possible. Examples of these words are: of; it; on; in; an; a. In fact, get rid of any word that is not absolutely necessary in the ad. Ensure making every word count.

Deter Hunters of Freebies

Include the price of the service or product at the end of the ad. This will help you to reduce your average cost of customer acquisition along with improving your overall conversion ratio. Plus, it will also let your potential customer know what to expect. While doing this may lower your click through ratio, however, it increases the likelihood of capturing potential customers. In any case, usually freebie hunters rarely, if ever, become paying customers.
By Rita Putatunda

Adsense Follies: 6 Ways To Get Banned From Google Adsense And Lose Tons of Revenue

2011-01-08T13:18:00.001-08:00

Google’s adsense program is hands-down one of the best ways to monetize your website. Adsense is good for advertisers, good for consumers and good for webmasters. But just as there are many honest webmasters producing quality content and playing straight with the Adsense program, there are also unscrupulous individuals that attempt to deceive advertisers, Google and the public.

Sometimes the intent is not pure fraud (although it often is) but rather a desire to make money quickly. These people are not thinking about the ethical or social harm that they are causing or the consequences of getting banned. Do not engage in the following tactics unless you want to get banned from Google Adsense and destroy the best potential source of revenue your website could have.

1. Play with color and font to hide text. The purpose of this is to engage in spammy keyword stuffing that Google search bots will see but humans will not. Trying to game the system this way is an excellent way to get yourself banned.

2. Engage in "page cloaking," i.e., set up scripts so that your website shows one set of content to visitors and an entirely different set of content to Google search bots. Goo

3. Try to make adsense revenue with doorway pages. A doorway page is a page of hastily-assembled low grade content focused on a single key word. Sometimes groups of doorway pages are linked together to form an authority site. But the content is of no value to consumers and the entire purpose of the enterprise is to rank high in the search engines and generate adsense revenue from consumers that are unfortunate enough to find the sites.

4. Create multiple domains having the exact same content. Or make multiple pages on one domain having duplicate content. I do not know how to break this to you, but Google knows when you are doing this. It does not believe this duplication serves any benefit to consumers and where it is done to increase streams of revenue from the adsense program it considers it a form of abuse.

5. Format and manipulate Adsense ads in an attempt to deceive visitors. For instance, change the font and formatting ads to make it seem as though they are internal links to your website. Visitors will click on the ads thinking they are going to pages of additional content that you have provided for them. Place your ads at the very top of the page prior to any of your content, or in such a way that it seems that these ads are part of the content of your web page.

6. Try to deceive Google with click fraud. Sit around at home in your pajamas and click on your own adsense ads to generate commissions for yourself. Ask all of your friends to click on your adsense ads. Post on your blog encouraging people to visit your product site and click on your adsense ads. Outsource to a team of people that are devoted to clicking on your adsense ads. You get the picture. You are going to get banned in a hot minute.

Google Adsense is an extraordinary program for bringing webmasters, advertisers and consumers together. It is an invaluable source of revenue for your sites. But this system cannot work without integrity. If you engage in any of the tactics identified about you are attempting to undermine the integrity of the Adsense program and trying to deceive consumers. You will get yourself banned from Adsense and lose a tremendous source of revenue for your website.

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By Sylvie Strong

Make Money Online Through Google Adsense

2011-01-08T13:17:00.001-08:00

If you are looking for ways to make money online through your website, you should look into opportunities through Google’s Adsense program. Such online opportunity is definitely a good option for you to generate an income online.

With Google, the biggest search engine right now on the internet, you can now join their program known as Google Adsense and make use of such opportunity to make money online. This program are basically meant for web site owners who are willing to display textlinks or image banners on their website and earn some money when someone click on their ads on their website.

If you do have a website, then, you should not miss this opportunity to earn an extra income by signing up with the Google's Adsense program. To know more about how you could earn an income online through this program, below are some effective ways you can do so.

Making An Interesting Website To Attract Visitors

When you have a website, you should start with some interesting topics, which you yourself have interest in, to get visitors wanting to visit your site more. With more people going to your site, the chances of more people clicking on the ads will be higher and hence enabling to earn more income this way. On top of this in providing a good and interesting website to your visitors, there are a few points you need to take note of with the Google Adsense Program.

Be Aware Of The TOS (Terms Of Service) Of The Program

First, you need to be aware of the TOS of the program in order to safe keep your adsense account and preventing your account being banned for any violation go against the program. This is especially important if you want to make this a long term income as you do not want to get your account banned after so much effort was being put in to attract visitors and you start to earn money. So, read their TOS carefully after you sign up with them and follow their rules closely and do not break them.

Play Around With The Ads Placement

After you have signed up with the program, you need to play around with the ads placement and the displaying color. Normally, ads placed in the top part of your website tends to get more clicks and hence you can make money online more this way. However, every website design need to be tested out by yourself and stick to the one that get most clicks.

Similarly, use Adsense units in strategic spots on your site or blog. Usually, the top most portion of the web page is the ideal area for posting good ads. However, other locations and corners could also be converted into good areas depending on the layout plan of the web page.

Using The Tools Available

There are many tools available in the Google Adsense Program. A good one is using a channel to track the performance of the ads. By using channels, you can track which webpage or ads placement earn the most clicks and hence allowing you a way to track the performance e and make any necessary tweaks to optimize your adsense earnings.

Keep Updating Your Content

Updating your site’s content is very important for your visitors so that you want to return to your site again for more. If your site is being stagnant and not must update, people will not want to return again and hence the chances of more clicks on the ads will be less, lowering your earning income.

Using Google Adsense program to make money online is definitely a good start if you have a website. Join one today and start to make money!!!

If you want to know more of how you can Make Money Online with Google Adsense Program, do not hesitate to visit this site by clicking on the link Make Money right away.
By Alan Lim

Increasing Google Pagerank

2011-01-08T13:15:00.001-08:00

So you've heard about Google Pagerank and you know what it is. Now that you know exactly what it is, I am sure you want to increase your pagerank so you can get better rankings in the SERP's and get more website traffic. Search Engine Optimisation is the art of gaining a better pagerank through the knowledge and experience of an SEO expert. Search Engine Optimisation covers all facets of what it takes to get a website ranking well in the SERP's, from onsite changes like titles and meta tags, to offsite SEO factors like linking. Since your website probably has a low pagerank and you would like to do something to increase it this article covers some hints and tips that will aid you in your efforts. Many so called SEO experts have brought to the SEO marketplace tools that you can assist you in increasing your website pagerank. However it should be noted that the majority of these tools are useless and really do not assist you at all. What will increase Google pagerank is applying some of the techniques listed below to your site. Using these proven methods will guarantee a way of boosting your websites pagerank and they are all completely free SEO techniques. So you should ask yourself, why spend the money to increase pagerank when we’ll tell you how to do it for free?

Increasing pagerank

As we said, there are several SEO techniques to increase a web site’s Google pagerank. Even if you only follow one of the techniques below, you can expect to see a positive difference in your website’s pagerank.

Technique #1: Content

Despite the fact that SEO experts constantly talk about the importance of content, most web masters ignore their advice to make sure their sites have quality content. It’s really crazy, particularly when you consider the fact that Google looks at content when determining pagerank. Thus, one of the greatest techniques toward improving pagerank is to simply make sure your site has quality content. This content should ALWAYS be relevant to the topic of the site. The content should not be too long (greater than 2500 words a page) or too short, should be informative and should include the right amount of keywords (a keyword density of 2-5%). If your content has all of this, you should be in very good condition to increase your pagerank.

Technique #2: Back links

The major determining factor in Google’s pagerank is back links. These are incoming links from one site to your site. What these links tell Google is that your site must have good content on it, or else other sites would not be linking to it. Now you might think that all that matters is the links, right? Not exactly. Google has gotten very smart and accurate with pagerank, and so they can tell bad links (i.e. Links from link farms, irrelevant sites etc.) from the good links (links in articles, links from relevant sites etc.). The most effective technique in increasing pagerank is to gather good back links. The next two techniques on our list deal with this.

Technique #3: Forums and Blogs

Google is known for quickly indexing forums and blogs. Literally the fastest way to gain a good back link is to simply post a link to your site on a forum or a blog. Most forums consider outright linking to be spam, so you’ll have to make sure you do this in the right way. Try joining forums relevant to your site’s topic and put a link to your site in your signature, if it’s allowed. Also, put a link to your site in your profile. Then post 1-10 times. Your posts should contribute something to the forum so that they are not edited or, worse, removed.

As for using blogs to gain more links, you can try to create a blog of your own and casually put a link to your site on it. You can also try commenting on other relevant blogs and including a link to your site in these comments. Once again, you need to be cautious in how you do this—you don’t want to make comments that are outright promoting your site.

Technique #4: Articles

An popular way of gaining a better Google pagerank is to write articles. These articles are based off of your site. For instance, if you run a photography site, you may write an article on digital photography. At the end of the article, you might include something like "for more on digital photography, visit insert site.com". Article back links are very effective because they are considered credible by Google. One thing to remember is to not mention your site too many times; one or two mentions per article is fine. You can submit your articles to AssociatedContent.com and Ezines or you can use article submission services or Article Submitter software.

Conclusion

You don’t have to spend money to increase pagerank. All you need to do is just practice some of the techniques we’ve outlined here and you’ll be well on your way to a better Google pagerank.

References: Kanga Internet are based in Melbourne, Australia, expert Website Design, Web & Internet Marketing Online Marketing.

By Chris Diprose

Why sitemaps are important

2011-01-08T13:13:00.001-08:00

There are many optimisation tips and tricks that help websites achieve rankings in search engines, and one of those factors is often undervalued, these are sitemaps. Sitemaps are simply a map of your site which is usually a single page that displays the structure of your site, its sections, etc and has links to all pages within the website itself. Sitemaps makes the navigation of your site easier and keeping it updated can benefit both your site visitors, and search engines. Sitemaps are an important way of communication with search engines, as they tell search engines which parts of your site to include for indexing. It’s like giving search engines directions.

Sitemaps have always been recommended for use on websites, and now with the adoption of sitemaps by search engines, they have become even more important. If you are interested in sitemaps from an optimisation point of view, these need to be created in a specific format, like written in XML for instance.

Why Use a Sitemap?

Using sitemaps has many benefits such as easier navigation and better visibility by search engines, and the opportunity to inform search engines immediately about any changes on your site. Of course search engines probably won’t immediately index your changed pages, but the changes will be indexed faster.

If your site is new, or if you have a significant number of new (or recently updated pages), then using a sitemap can be crucial to your success. Although you can still go without a sitemap, it is likely that soon sitemaps will become the standard way of submitting a site to search engines. Though it is certain that spiders will continue to index the Web and sitemaps will not make the standard crawling procedures obsolete, it is logical to say that the importance of sitemaps will continue to increase.

Sitemaps also help in classifying your site content, and as search engines improve their sitemap indexing algorithms, it is expected that more and more sites will be indexed faster via sitemaps.

Are Sitemaps hard to create and submit?

Jade Creative has extensive experience generating and submitting Sitemaps for our clients’ sites, whether it be for search engine optimisation purposes, or to improve the navigation of your website for your visitors.

The basic process is this – create the sitemap, upload the sitemap to the clients’ website and then notify Google about the alteration.

Sitemaps can be as simple or complex as you desire, and we at Jade Creative are happy to assist and generate you a Sitemap that enhances your website for your website visitors and search engines.

Why backlinks are important

2011-01-08T13:12:00.001-08:00

If you've read anything about, or studied, search engine optimisation (SEO), you've probably come across the term "backlink" at least once. For those of you new to SEO, you may be wondering what a backlink is, and why they are important. Backlinks have become so important for SEO that they are a major factor in how your website ranks in search engines.

What exactly are backlinks?

Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website and are also knows as inbound links. The number of backlinks your website has is an indication to search engines of its popularity. Some search engines, such as Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks.

When search engines rank your website and its relevance to a keyword, they consider the number of quality inbound links to your site. So it is not just about getting inbound links, it is also about the quality of the inbound links.

How does a search engine determine the quality of a link?

When inbound links to your site come from other sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these inbound links are considered more relevant to your site. If inbound links are found on sites with unrelated content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of inbound links, the greater their quality.

What is reciprocal linking?

Another reason to achieve quality backlinks is to attract visitors to visit your website. Gone are the days of build awebsite and they will come. You need to let everyone know that your website exists. One way is to use reciprocal linking which essentially a link exchange, one webmaster places a link on their website that points to another website, and vice versa.

So to sum up...

Building quality backlinks is extremely important to search engine optimisation, and because of their importance, it should be very high on your priority list in your SEO efforts.

Keep your content fresh

2011-01-08T13:11:00.001-08:00

Why keep your content updated? Because doing this regularly shows your customers that your business is evolving, innovative and interesting. Perhaps the most important point is that if you do not update your content then why would a visitor come back? Fresh content means more visitors, simple as that!

How often will you update your content?

The best place to start is 'how often will you update your website?' To understand this you need to ask yourself:

Do you offer special offers online (e.g. Christmas offers, monthly offers, etc)?
Do you compete on price? If you do then you must keep prices current.
Do you promote new products to your customers? If so then perhaps a 'featured product' of 'new product' section is a good option for your website.
Do you offer your customers packages and if so how often do these change?
Will your customers benefit from written articles, a blog or news list?

Who, What and When?

Armed with the details to the above, then we move on to consider the following:

Timing - will updates occur daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly?
Pages - will all pages need to be updated, or just a select few (i.e. special offers, new, homepage, etc)?
Responsibility -who will be responsible for making the changes, and who will provide and/or write the content?
Images - will images need to be updated as well? Who will provide the images, will you need a photographer or can your suppliers provide them to you?
Video/Audio - will your website display any audio or video content and if so who will provide these to you? You will also need to ensure that the files provided are compatible with your website.
Style - will every page follow the same design template or will different sections require different templates?

Create a plan and stick to it

Once you have collected the details above you then need to create a plan based on the update frequency, pages to be updated, timeframes and deadlines as well as who is responsible. A plan is worthless if it is not followed, so the most important point in this article is follow your plan.

The Weight of Google PageRank in Ranking- By Andrew Gerhart

2011-01-08T13:10:00.001-08:00

As Google continues to reign as the top search engine referral source, we all continue to check our PageRank (Download the Google Toolbar to view a web page's PageRank score). SEOs and webmasters scramble to increase their PageRank to a respectable score, anything above a 5, as we continue to analyze the workings of Google's PageRank calculation and its weight within the ranking algorithm. It is not a mystery that PageRank has a fairly large role in Google's ranking, but how much weight? Are there other variables that outweigh PageRank? Below we will discuss how much weight is given to PageRank, if PageRank alone is enough to rank, and more.
The Google algorithm takes many things into account when ranking web pages. Some of the variables for ranking in Google are:

Page Title
Link text
PageRank
Heading Tags
ALT Tags
Domain names
Filenames
Directory names
Link popularity
Keyword density

The weight that PageRank is assigned within Google's algorithm has always been debated, and will continue to be as the algorithm changes from month to month. Google does not stick with one algorithm like other search engines. Instead, Google switches between a few different algorithms from month to month.
One of the main reasons that the weight assigned to PageRank is debated is because it is not uncommon to see a website with a lower PageRank outranking a website with a higher PageRank. When we see this, it means three things: 1) PageRank is not the most important factor in Google's rankings algorithm, 2) a properly optimized website with an average PageRank can outrank a non-optimized website with a high PageRank, and 3) the on-page variables play a larger role in Google ranking than most tend to think.
We have seen evidence of web pages with a PageRank of 4 and 5 ranking higher than web pages with a PageRank of 8. The website with the PageRank of 5 was highly optimized and utilized all of the variables that Google takes into account when calculating rank. The website with a PageRank of 8, although carrying some of the SEO basics, was not highly optimized.
This is what happens to many corporate websites. The website ends up being awarded a high PageRank as a result of the high amount of websites linking to them, but they end up being outranked as a result of the lack of search engine optimization. When a website has a PageRank of 8 or above, it will not take a high level of optimization to obtain top rankings within Google.
PageRank is not the end-all-be-all of ranking within Google. One of the reasons is that PageRank is easily manipulated. For example, recently we are seeing companies selling links from websites with high PageRank. For this reason and others we realize that the PageRank calculation is not perfect. Therefore, Google cannot rely on a flawed concept for their algorithm - having a website's score play a role in its ranking is fine, but the score should not be the basis of this calculation.
If you design or optimize your website properly, remembering all of the on-page variables and criteria, you can set yourself up for success. Once you have completed this task and your site has entered the ranks, you will realize if you need to increase your PageRank to battle in Google's search engine results pages.
September 11, 200

Search engine rankings tips

2011-01-08T13:09:00.001-08:00

Most website users do not look past the first 3 pages of search results in a search engine, so your goal is to be ranked as highly as possible and at least within the first 30 results and ideally the top 10. Search Engine Optimisation (also known as Website Optimisation) is the process of maximising a sites ranking potential by using multiple key techniques.

Although search engines frequently change the way in which they rank sites in order to avoid being manipulated by marketers and damaging the engines integrity some elements will always play a factor in the ranking process.

Keywords

This is crucial to your sites optimisation, and is not as easy as it sounds. The objective is to specify a list of relevant and popular phrases that relate specifically to your site that are also being search on by your websites target audience.

A keyword is a term used by a person searching through a search engine to find a website that best matches what they are searching for. Identifying keywords should be done as early as possible, and generally identifying key phrases is better practice then single keywords as this makes for a more targeted search result.

Link Popularity

This refers to the number of websites that link to your web pages, and search engines measure the quantity as well as the quality of the websites that link to you website. Many search engines use this as an important factor in determining the search engine ranking of a website as well as your web pages page rank.

The Age of a Domain Name

Another factor that many search engines measure, in a way, the age of a domain name gives the appearance of longevity and therefore can gain higher relevancy in some search engines (for example Google). This is driven by spam sites which exist and then drop off quickly.

URL Web Page Names

These are the names you call each of your web pages and are used when creating links to web pages within your website. The use of keywords in these names helps with your sites rankings.

Content

The use of keywords within the content of your web pages is one of the best ways to obtain high search engine rankings. The objective is to place keywords in places that matter the most to search engines. Each web page in your site should focus on different keywords, making the pages more targeted as opposed to being general. With this in mind, the main focus of the content is to appeal to the visitor first and search engine second.

Web Page Optimization

2011-01-08T13:00:00.001-08:00

Selecting the right keyword phrases for each page of your web site is the first step towards ranking high in the Search Engines. However, it is only the first step.

In addition to selecting targeted keyword phrases, you must also strategically optimize your page including:

� META description tag
� META keyword tag
� Title
� Image ALT tags
� Heading tags
� Image names
� Hyperlinks
� Body text

<META>

The META description tag will contain a description of your site. This description will be visible in some of the Search Engines when your site is returned in a search.

Your description should include your site's most important keyword phrases.

Example:

<META name="DESCRIPTION" content="Providing dog grooming tips, supplies and training.">
The META Keywords tag will contain a list of your keyword phrases separated with a comma. Your primary keyword phrase should be first, followed by one or two secondary keyword
phrases.

Example:

<META name="KEYWORDS" content="dog grooming tips, dog grooming supplies, dog grooming training">

<IMG ALT>

An image Alt tag follows your graphic address or URL in your HTML code. These words will be displayed in place of your graphics through an older browser or when your visitors have their graphics turned off.

To fully optimize your graphics, insert your keyword phrases within the Alt tags of your graphics. At a bare minimum, make sure you use enough images to display all of your keyword phrases. Remember...your primary keyword phrase should always come first.

Example Images (Notice the images are named using the three primary keyword phrases):

dog_grooming_tips.jpg
dog_grooming_supplies.jpg
dog_grooming_training.jpg

Example:

<IMG SRC=WIDTH=80 HEIGHT=105 dog_grooming_tips.jpg ALT=dog grooming tips>
<IMG SRC=WIDTH=80 HEIGHT=105 dog_grooming_supplies.jpg ALT=dog grooming supplies>
<IMG SRC=WIDTH=80 HEIGHT=105 dog_grooming_training.jpg ALT=dog grooming training>

<TITLE> Tag

Just as you must place your keyword phrases within your META description and keyword tags, you must also use your primary keyword phrase as your web page title. Nothing more should appear between the <TITLE> and </TITLE> tags except your primary keyword phrase.

<H?> Tag

Heading tags are used to separate topics and range from <H1> being very large and bold to <H6> which is very small and bold. Some Search Engines place relevance on text displayed within the heading tags. Top priority is placed on the highest listed heading tag.

Your keyword phrases should each be used as a heading for sections within your web page (placed in the same order as your keyword phrases within your META keywords tag) and placed within an appropriate heading tag. These headings should be followed by some descriptive text.

Your headings should look something like this:

<H?>Dog Grooming Tips</H?>

Your descriptive content containing your keyword phrase.

<H?>Dog Grooming Supplies</H?>

Your descriptive content containing your keyword phrase.

<H?>Dog Grooming Training</H?>

Your descriptive content containing your keyword phrase.

<A HREF> Tag

When creating links on your web page, your links should be displayed together with a small image in front of each link. This image might be a graphic bullet, arrow, or whatever you'd like. These images will not only enhance your web page, but they will also enable you to place your keyword phrases within the Alt tags.

When you begin creating your links, make sure the page name, image name and page description text all contain your keyword phrases.

Your HTML code might look something like this:

<img src=dog_grooming_tips.gif alt=dog grooming tips>
<a rel="nofollow" href=dog_grooming_tips.htm>Dog Grooming Tips</a>

<img src=dog_grooming_supplies.gif alt=dog grooming supplies>
<a rel="nofollow" href=dog_grooming_supplies.htm>Dog Grooming Supplies</a>

<img src=dog_grooming_training.gif alt=dog grooming training>
<a rel="nofollow" href=dog_grooming_training.htm>Dog Grooming Training</a>

<BODY>Text</BODY>

Optimizing your text is another important step towards ranking higher in the Search Engines. Your web page should contain plenty of text and should contain each of your keywords and keyword phrases used in different variations. If all of your keyword phrases you've listed within your META tags aren't found within your text, the Search Engines will simply ignore them.

Search Engine Submissions

Once you've optimized your web pages and uploaded them to your server, your next step will be to submit your main pages to the Search Engines. However, don't submit your pages to Google. Your pages will rank much higher if you allow this Search Engine to find your pages on its own.

You may want to consider creating a site map for your site and submit this page to Google instead. A site map is a page that outlines how your pages are set up and linked together. If you design a site map with links to all of your pages, the Search Engine robots can easily spider and index them.

Taking the time to optimize each of your web pages is the most important step you can take towards ranking high in the Search Engines and driving your more traffic to your web site.

Copyright © Shelley Lowery

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, Web Design Mastery. http://www.webdesignmastery.com And, Ebook Starter - Give Your Ebooks the look and feel of a REAL book. http://www.ebookstarter.com

Article source:

TwoSpots web design

8 Ways to Build a Really Bad Web Site for Search Engines

2011-01-08T12:59:00.001-08:00

Some web sites receive hundreds or thousands of unique visitors a day, whilst others only get a handful or none. The reason is often because the web designers or Webmaster has built the site in one �really bad way' or other. This can end up hindering the potential success of the web site. If you want to make sure your site is not a �traffic flop' then here are some simple rules to follow.

Bad Move 1: Build the site using a frameset.

Framesets may save designers time but are bad news for search engines. They can struggle to follow links into the web site or read text on the page unless you use a no frames tag effectively. In addition to this, if an engine does keep a cache of a site with frames it will often pick up the individual frames/ pages and not the complete frameset. The downside of this is that you may lose your navigation for many of your pages, which is likely to turn visitors off. Whilst one or two partial fixes to framesets are out there, it's still no wonder that many web site promoters still cry �Please No Frames�. For more information on why framesets can cause problems visit http://www.html-faq.com/htmlframes/

Bad Move 2: Build the site purely in flash.

Flash intros and web sites can be visually stunning, but at the same time they can be rather limiting when it comes to search engines. If your main site is all one flash site it will typically play in just one html page. Some search engines simply can't read Flash and so your web site to them is just one relatively empty HTML page. If your competitors web site has 15 or 20 pages in HTML talking about their good sand services then they will have a big advantage on you. If you must have a Flash site for graphical reasons then it would be wise to budget for a separate HTML web site to have along side the Flash so your site content can be read and indexed by search engines.

Bad Move 3: Decide that graphics are more important than words

Be careful. As great as some images can be, try not to let designers convince you that you don't need copy on your web site or that a few lines is enough. Only very occasionally is there ever an excuse to fill your web site with graphics at the expense of text. If the graphics look great, then match them with great copy. Sales copy is important to tell your audience why your goods and services are important. Search engines also like to index plenty of useful copy too. 250-500 words is a sensible starting guide for most pages or ½ of the amount you would place in a brochure. Text copy is important and will always be so make sure web site has some!

Bad Move 4: Leaving out the Meta tags

This is a bad move as Meta Tags are important to search engines. Clear and concise title tags should be written for every page reflecting what it contains. Avoid writing things like �Home' or �welcome' as it's fairly meaningless. If you page is selling blue widgets then get �blue widgets' in the title and keep the title to 10 words or less.
In addition to this create a well-written objective Meta description for each page, and list your Meta Keywords. These keywords should also reflect the content on your web page. Leaving these 3 things out, or doing them badly can be disastrous. The impact of Meta tags on rankings may vary from engine to engine, but without them your pages could be ignored. Most HTML editors allow you to easily insert Meta Tags into your web page and it only takes a few moments to add to a page. So there are no excuses. Make sure you have good Title tags, Meta Description and Meta Keyword tags on your pages today!

Bad Move 5: Use lots of JavaScript

Search engines have a few problems understanding JavaScript in pages. At the best of time they struggle with it, at worst they may even ignore it. On its own, it can be an unreliable way to make web site navigation. If you must use JavaScript for your navigation make sure you have some alternative ways to get to pages by using HTML text links at the bottom of the page. If you have a large amount of JavaScript think about linking to it as a separate JavaScript file.

Bad Move 6: Don't have sites linking to yours

Unless you want your web site hidden from the outside world you want to be found right? Well search engines ideally find a new web site by following a link from another site. This happens when people link to you and this kind of underpins the Internet. By having sites link to you search engine crawlers will find your web site and you never need to submit your web site to the likes of Google. It is still the case that web sites that rank highly on Google and Yahoo for relatively competitive key phrases often have scores if not hundreds of web sites linking to them Google help to explain the importance of linking here http://www.google.com/technology/ . So �think links� and be sure to get your site listed in some quality web directories as part of the process.

Bad Move 7: Focus on submitting your web site to thousands of search engines and forget the ones that matter

Now and then you will see some companies attempting to promote this idea - often by using Bad Move 8! It is true that there are thousands of search engines but the highest volume of traffic comes from less than 10 major search engines. The logic of �If I get one hit a day off each of the 1000 mini search engines I'll get a 1000 visitors a day� unfortunately in practice does not ring true. It is a fact that a huge volume of search engine traffic comes from a small handful of search engine: most notably the Google, Yahoo and Msn.

Bad Move 8: Using unsolicited/ Spam email

This may seem obvious that this is not the best way to promote your business but is always worth stating. If you're in any doubt simply ask yourself: �Do I like getting Spam emails?� It's common sense to avoid using techniques that annoy people or damage your brand. Using unsolicited email campaigns could result in complaints and at worst your ISP could ban you. If you want a successful email campaign it is advisable to target genuine opted in newsletter subscribers and to always offer an opt-out button in every email.

About The Author

Copyright Gareth Davies 2005. You are free to reprint this article with both disclaimer and copyright notice in tact. Gareth Davies is a web promotion consultant working for GSINC Ltd based in North London, UK. For feedback on how to build better sites for search engines email Gareth via garethskettyATyahoo.co.uk or visit http://www.garethsketty.com .

Article source:

TwoSpots web design

Choosing your Meta-Keywords

2011-01-08T12:54:00.003-08:00

Introduction

This article assumes you already know what a �meta-tag keyword' is and know a little about their importance to search engines. In this article I will attempt to explain the art of choosing the most appropriate and best performing keywords for your web pages.
As you should already know keywords contained within your websites' meta tags are extremely important in allowing search engines to determine the content of your web pages. In order to make sure that these keywords are bringing your site up within Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) and driving visitors to your site, the most important factors in determining your keywords are:

Relevance.
Choosing keywords that people actually search for.
Choosing keywords without too much competition.

Relevance

All your keywords should ALWAYS be relevant to the content within the page they describe. Adding keywords to your site just because they are commonly searched for words is not recommended. Not only will it frustrate visitors who are looking for other information, but it may well get your site black-listed from search engine rankings.
Highly relevant keywords will attract visitors who are actually interested in the products and services your website offers. At the end of the day, it is better to attract fewer visitors who actually have an interest in your website than it is to attract more visitors who leave immediately.

Choosing Keywords people search for

Although your keywords should all be relevant, sometimes it is best not to be too specific.
For example, I once discovered a new fossil (honest!), it was new to science so I named it, wrote a paper on it and had it published. I didn't ever build a web page dedicated to it, but if I had the most used keyword and most relevant word would have been the fossils name (Trypanites fosteryeomani). You might therefore think that it would be sensible to use this as one of my most important keywords� However, that would (at least to start with) have been wrong. No one else has ever heard of this fossil, so it is very unlikely that anyone would ever type its name into a search engine. And sure enough, a quick check shows that during Dec 2004 there wasn't a single search for this term within a particular, popular search engine.
I would therefore need to be more generic with my choice of keywords. The fossil itself was a trace fossil of a worm from the Jurassic, so keywords/phrases such as �fossil', �trace fossil' or �worm trace fossil' may be more successful.
There are several tools available that allow you to check the number of times a particular word or phrase has been searched for. It is important to choose keywords that are regularly searched for and these tools can help in this decision. It is also worth including common mis-spellings of your most relevant keywords as your competitors may not have thought of this when choosing their keywords.

Choosing keywords without too much competition

The section above may lead you to believe that choosing very generic keywords is your best bet as they are often searched for. However, if you get too generic in your choice of keywords then you will be competing with many more websites for the top spots in the SERPS. If we go back to our fossil example we can see what I mean. A quick search in Google brings up the following numbers of results:

Trypanites fosteryeomani � 1 result (something I once wrote in a forum!)
Jurassic Worm Trace Fossil � 4,320 results
Trace Fossil � 407,000 results
Fossil � 9,120,000 results

As you would expect, the more generic we get, the more results we get. It can be seen then that choosing the best keywords is a matter of balancing the number of times the keywords are searched for against the number of other sites competing for rankings with those keywords. The best keywords will be those that are searched for often but have few competing sites (assuming the keywords are relevant to your content).
I find that it is best to have a balance between the generic and specific keywords relating to your web page and using key-phrases is a useful way of achieving this. In this way the entire key-phrase can be specific to your particular page, but the individual words within it are fairly generic.
e.g. Affordable Website Design Wales (4 generic keywords to create a specific key-phrase)
To Summarise, choosing keywords is an essential part of producing a successful website. Your keywords need to be highly relevant to the content of your page and specific enough to reduce competition. They also need to contain some generic keywords that are often searched for. As always, the single most important factor is relevancy and good content to go with the keywords.

About The Author

Alan Cole runs http://www.pixelwave.co.uk , a one-person web design studio. His aim is to provide cost effective website design production and maintenance by offering professional web solutions that stand out from the crowd.

Article source:

TwoSpots web design

Writing Effective ALT Text For Images

2011-01-08T12:54:00.001-08:00

Anyone who knows anything about web accessibility knows that images need alternative, or ALT, text assigned to them. This is because screen readers can't understand images, but rather read aloud the alternative text assigned to them. In Internet Explorer we can see this ALT text, simply by mousing over the image and looking at the yellow tooltip that appears. Other browsers (correctly) don't do this. The HTML for inserting ALT text is:
But surely there can't be a skill to writing ALT text for images? You just pop a description in there and you're good to go, right? Well, kind of. Sure, it's not rocket science, but there are a few guidelines you need to follow...

Spacer images and missing ALT text

Spacer images should always be assigned null ALT text, or alt="" . This way most screen readers will completely ignore the image and won't even announce its presence. Spacer images are invisible images that pretty most websites use. The purpose of them is, as the name suggests, to create space on the page. Sometimes it's not possible to create the visual display you need, so you can stick an image in (specifying its height and width) and volià, you have the extra space you need.
Not everyone uses this null ALT text for spacer images. Some websites stick in alt="spacer image". Imagine how annoying this can be for a screen reader user, especially when you have ten of them in a row. A screen reader would say, �Image, spacer image� ten times in a row (screen readers usually say the word, �Image�, before reading out its ALT text) - now that isn't helpful!
Other web developers simply leave out the ALT attribute for spacer images (and perhaps other images). In this case, most screen readers will read out the filename, which could be �newsite/images/onepixelspacer.gif'. A screen reader would announce this image as �Image, newsite slash images slash one pixel spacer dot gif�. Imagine what this would sound like if there were ten of these in a row!

Bullets and icons

Bullets and icons should be treated in much the same way as spacer images, so should be assigned null alternative text, or alt="". Think about a list of items with a fancy bullet proceeding each item. If the ALT text, �Bullet' is assigned to each image then, �Image, bullet� will be read aloud by screen readers before each list item, making it take that bit longer to work through the list.
Icons, usually used to complement links, should also be assigned alt="". Many websites, which place the icon next to the link text, use the link text as the ALT text of the icon. Screen readers would first announce this ALT text, and then the link text, so would then say the link twice, which obviously isn't necessary.
(Ideally, bullets and icons should be called up as background images through the CSS document - this would remove them from the HTML document completely and therefore remove the need for any ALT description.)

Decorative images

Decorative images too should be assigned null alternative text, or alt="". If an image is pure eye candy then there's no need for a screen reader user to even know it's there and being informed of its presence simply adds to the noise pollution.
Conversely, you could argue that the images on your site create a brand identity and by hiding them from screen reader users you're denying this group of users the same experience. Accessibility experts tend to favour the former argument, but there certainly is a valid case for the latter too.

Navigation & text embedded within images

Navigation menus that require fancy text have no choice but to embed the text within an image. In this situation, the ALT text shouldn't be used to expand on the image. Under no circumstances should the ALT text say, �Read all about our fantastic services, designed to help you in everything you do'. If the menu item says, �Services' then the ALT text should also say �Services'. ALT text should always describe the content of the image and should repeat the text word-for-word. If you want to expand on the navigation, such as in this example, you can use the title attribute.
The same applies for any other text embedded within an image. The ALT text should simply repeat, word-for-word, the text contained within that image.
(Unless the font being used is especially unique it's often unnecessary to embed text within images - advanced navigation and background effects can now be achieved with CSS.)

Company logo

Websites tend to vary in how they apply ALT text to logos. Some say, �Company name', others �Company name logo', and other describe the function of the image (usually a link back to the homepage), �Back to home'. Remember, ALT text should always describe the content of the image so the first example, alt="Company name", is probably the best. If the logo is a link back to the homepage then this can be effectively communicated through the title tag.

Conclusion

Writing effective ALT text isn't too difficult. If it's a decorative image then null alternative text, or alt="" should usually be used - never, ever omit the ALT attribute. If the image contains text then the ALT text should simply repeat this text, word-for-word. Remember, ALT text should describe the content of the image and nothing more.
Do also be sure also to keep ALT text as short and succinct as possible. Listening to a web page with a screen reader takes a lot longer than traditional methods, so don't make the surfing experience painful for screen reader users with bloated and unnecessary ALT text.
About The Author
This article was written by Trenton Moss. He's crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible - http://www.webcredible.co.uk ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

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TwoSpots web design

The Google Sandbox Explained

2011-01-08T12:53:00.003-08:00

Introduction

The Google Sandbox is a metaphorical term to explain why most new websites have very poor rankings in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Very few people know for sure if the 'sandbox' actually exists, but it seems to be a filter added to the Google algorithms sometime around March 2004.

What is the function of the Google Sandbox?

The generally accepted principle behind the Google Sandbox is that it enables Google to filter out 'Flash-in-the-Pan' websites from those that offer good quality, up-to-date content. It is within Googles interest to ensure that the results it displays to its users within the SERPS lead to highly relevant, up-to-date, useful websites Relevancy is key to the search engines success so it will take all steps it can to ensure the relevancy of its search results. Filtering out new websites and monitoring them may allow them to provide more accurate results within the real SERPS.

Indentifying the Sandbox?

How do you know if your website in in the sandbox? Most new websites under newly registered domains will get relegated to the sandbox once Google knows about the site. Google will find the site by following an Inbound Link (IBL) from another site that the Googlebot crawls. You will then see the website in the normal Google SERPS if you search for the actual domain name, but the website is unlikely to be listed for any of its keywords. Google also won't show signs of any other websites linking to your website, nor will it display pages related to yours. In addition Google won't list any pages other than your Home (index) page.
If you track your websites visitor stats whilst it is in the Google Sandbox, you will see that the Googlebot comes crawling fairly regularly and that it does crawl, and therefore catalogue, all of your pages. Google does know that your pages exist and knows what they contain, but doesn't list them in the main SERPS. In other words, because your website is new, it is under probation in the 'sandbox'.

How Long Will My website Stay in the Google Sandbox?

It is difficult to say how long a website will stay in the Google sandbox as this seems to depend on the types of keywords it will be completing for in the real SERPS It can be up to 6-8 months and the only way to get out of the sandbox is to wait.
The Google Sandbox isn't all bad news. If your site contains good quality relevant material it will find its way out of the sandbox and will get the rankings it deserves in the Google SERPS. I even have some theories that may mean that your time in the sandbox can be used wisely to actually improve your final rankings.
You also shouldn't forget that Google isn't the only search engine out there. MSN is widely used and with the might of Microsoft behind it is likely to become a bigger player in the search engine world in the new future. At the time of writing, MSN or other search engines such as Yahoo! and Alta Vista don't have a 'sandbox' filter and your new websites will be listed in the quickly and should start driving traffic to your site.
About The Author
Alan Cole runs http://www.pixelwave.co.uk , a one-person web design studio. His aim is to provide cost effective website design production and maintenance by offering professional web solutions that stand out from the crowd.

Article source:

TwoSpots web design

Link Popularity

2011-01-08T12:53:00.001-08:00

Why It's The Best Investment You Can Do For Your Business

More and more search engines rank your web pages based on the number of links that point to your web site (link popularity). Google uses link popularity as its most important factor in ranking sites. HotBot, AltaVista, MSN, Inktomi, and others also use link popularity in their formulas.
In the near future every major search engine will use link popularity, so developing and maintaining good link exchange campaigns are essential to the success of your business. Also, finding the right partner to exchange links with is equally as important as becoming a member of a link farm can be devastating to your long term search goals.
Your exchange link partner should be reputable in the industry, and should provide links back to you on pages that have a high page rank.
The end goal is to have the greatest number of websites pointing to you saying on the link itself, �Your Company � Offering (insert your key phrases here)�.
For a good ranking on Google, Inktomi and Altivista, you need good links that point to your site. If you develop a strong content oriented site you can persuade thousands of other webmasters to link to you or to trade links with you. If you want to do it yourself, all you need is the right content, the right email letter, and a keen eye for finding sites that well link to your site.
The key is to develop content people want to link to and then get out there and make the contacts by visiting people's sites, sending out personalized emails to webmasters of sites you have visited, and networking in discussion groups.
You can also make posts in forums related to your industry to increase your link popularity. Just do a search on any search engine with your industry + forums or discussions and you should be able to find a few discussion boards where you can make posts.
Make sure that you find a way to participate on the discussion as opposed to just posting an ad that's not related to what people are talking about.
Another way that you can greatly increase the link popularity of your website is by publishing articles. There are literally thousands of ezine and newsletter publishers that would love to publish your article on their ezine.
Again, if you search for ezines related to your industry you should find plenty of places where you can submit an article and see it bring lots of targeted traffic. Make sure you place your resource box at the bottom of the article and require publishers to keep it there.

About The Author

Marcio Dias is an established Web Marketing Specialist who has taken dozens of sites from obscurity to millions of visitors per year in as little as a few months. Visit his main site at: http://www.webprofitsecrets.co?s=ea

Article source:

TwoSpots web design

Importance of Keyword Research for Search Engine Optimization

2011-01-08T12:52:00.001-08:00

Keyword Research is by far the most important aspect in any Search Engine Optimization initiative. This article shall discuss the important aspects of keyword research process.
Keyword Phrase Research is a process of selecting the most �optimum performance� keyword phrases that can help visitors find your site. You may have spent days and months on fine-tuning your web pages for a better ranking with the major search engines, yet it will all amount to a big waste if the right keyword phrases are not targeted. It's like not being able to reach your destination even after running your best race because you started out on the wrong road. Even if you achieve high search engine rankings, you may not get relevant traffic if you select the wrong keywords. Therefore, the foremost step in any SEO campaign is identifying your target audience and researching what keyword phrases they might be searching in the search engines to locate a site like yours.
For any marketing strategy to succeed, it is critical to know your audience and the means to reach them. A certain focus is required which could be location specific, region specific or country specific; it could be business, trade, service, product specific, since we are talking specific audience. For instance, a dentist practicing in a particular town would most likely target people living in the same region, instead of targeting the entire country. Just as a patient searching for a dentist would search for one in his own area. Focus on region would help her get targeted visitors, not just wasted traffic.

Facts, Not Gut Feel

A common pitfall is to start the website optimization exercise with a set of �gut-feel� keyword phrases. Site owners often come up with �common sense looking' key phrases, which though look obvious, may not match with the ones your buyers are using as their search term. Very often, being from within the trade narrows the vision and you tend to assume that trade-specific terms are easily understood and popularly used. Not so. You need to think out of the box.
Doing Keyword Research invariably means departing from one's gut-feel and going by the facts. �Facts are sacred' in website optimization as they provide the exact data of what people are actually searching for, thus saving you from starting on a wild goose chase. As mentioned earlier, targeting the wrong key phrases might get you a good ranking for keywords that have few or no search requests or just get you irrelevant junk traffic. So, how does one get the facts and the data regarding a particular search term? There are several online keyword research tools like Wordtracker and Overture, which offer data pertaining to your search term. Relying on search tools to analyze keyword phrase data helps you to get a grip on your target audience.

Keyword Research Process

Keyword Research process involves the following important steps. These steps can be described as:
Discovering Keywords

Analyzing Keywords

Selecting Keywords

Deploying Keywords
The Discovering phase should focus on identifying as many keywords as possible that are related to your website and target audience.
The Analysis phase involves adding information about existing competition; PageRank based limitations and potential for ranking.
The Selection process involves objective measurement based shortlisting of keywords keeping the site focus and target audience within the limitations analyzed.
The Deploying phase is about making optimum use of your selected keywords on your website copy , HTML code and tags.

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Step 1: Discovering Keyword Phrases

Starting out Keywords

The nature of keyword research tools that help you identify various keywords is such that they need initial starting out keywords. It is important that you identify good 15 starting out keywords, tightly focused on your business. You can brainstorm with your colleagues and clients to identify search phrases that are most likely to get qualified traffic to your site. This brainstorming session is intended at discussing the most relevant keyword phrases to the product or service you offer. An initial list of 15-20 keywords can be compiled at this stage, which can be generic in nature. For wider keyword coverage, you will get better results if you have one or two keywords rather than longer phrases.

Using Wordtracker, Overture to Collect a Corpus of Keywords

Keyword Research tools like Wordtracker and Overture can be used to expand on your initial list of starting out keywords. These tools allow you to find the number of searches being made on a particular term and also look for all related terms that include your search term.
Wordtracker and Overture are the two most widely used services that give you the ability to research and find out what people are actually searching for on the major search engines along with information on how popular a search term was in the last 30 or 60 days.
Wordtracker
Wordtracker is a fee-based service that allows you to look up popular keyword phrases. Wordtracker is most popular in SEO industry, as it offers a good search term database and makes searching for keyword related information easy.
The database is constantly updated, with the oldest data being removed and replaced with the latest information every week. As of writing this article, Wordtracker offers access to a database size of 324 million entries.
Although Wordtracker is a paid service for regular use, it offers the benefit of one-day free trial, which can be used to complete your keyword research if you are fairly organized.
Competition Search can also be made at Wordtracker for your short-listed terms. Competition Search allows you to ascertain how many web pages exist for these search terms on different search engines. This helps you determine your chances of ranking with a particular search engine for your search term. Ideally, lesser number of pages with a search engine means a better ranking chance for your search term.
Overture
Overture Search Term Suggestion tool, although intended to offer keyword popularity information to the PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisers, works fairly well to carry out your keyword research. Enter your main search terms and in response Overture lists out all other popular search terms that contain that particular term or phrase along with the popularity count. Overture lists the search terms in order of their popularity, giving numerical count of past one month.
Being a free tool, Overture is quite useful. However, it has a few downsides and its results cannot be totally relied upon. They are good to be used as a guideline. Some of the drawbacks of Overture are listed below:

Overture does not make a distinction between singular and plural search terms. Therefore, it can lead you to assume that a keyword is popular in the singular, though it could actually be the plural you should target.
Related phrases are often collapsed into narrow term listings.
The different variations of a word are stemmed as one.
Mis-spellings and punctuation are either ignored or stemmed resulting in stinted data.

Google Adwords: Keyword Suggestion Tool
Search engines like Google offer some keyword recommendation tools, which can be used as a guide. However, Google does not indicate the popularity count of each search phrase.

Coverage of Keyword Phrases

While selecting your key phrases, make an effort to cover each aspect of your service or product that could be searched on stand-alone basis by the users. Each page on your website could be dealing with a different topic (product or service), therefore; the keywords for each page would be different too, depending on which you should try and place unique and relevant key phrases on each page.
For instance, it would not suffice to optimize a dentist's site only for the terms �dentist' or �dental surgeon', as people are likely to make specific searches on related terms like cosmetic surgery, root canal treatment or RCT, dental crowns, tooth extractions, cavities etc. Hence, it is important that all these keywords are covered.

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Step 2: Analyzing Keyword Phrases

The second step is analyzing your keyword phrases. This involves analyzing the competition for the search terms, i.e. how many pages are indexed in a search engine like Google. This gives you an idea of how many pages are competing for the top spot. While most of the time, the optimized sites are ranking high, very often un- Optimized sites show up highly ranked due to the complex nature of the search engine algorithms. It is therefore wise to be conscious of the extent of competition.
PageRank
The potential for ranking with a particular keyword depends on several factors. The on-page factors address your optimization efforts while the off-page factors like PageRank affect ranking in a major way. While it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the affect and weight of all the factors, your site's PageRank is an important parameter in keyword analysis. Thumb rule is that the higher your site's PageRank, the better the chance of ranking with highly competitive keywords. Choose your keywords keeping your site's PageRank in mind. For more information, read our detailed article on Google PageRank Algorithm
Adding Information and Measuring Competition for KeywordsAfter you have made your search on Wordtracker or Overture, and short-listed your key phrases, you need to collect information about their competition as described above. Wordtracker offers an in-built tool to find the number of pages for your keywords indexed in Google.
Alternately, you can check the competition for your keywords at: search-engine-keyword-competition.php
In order to make this task more organized, we recommend making use of Excel Sheets to feed in all the data you have compiled. This will allow you to make comparisons between various search terms and at the same time, do away with all the unrelated junk terms that are irrelevant to your site and also the ones that exceed your site's PR requirement.

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Step 3: Selection of Keyword Phrases

If you have followed the above process of Discovering and Analyzing keywords, you probably have between 50-100 keyword phrases that qualify as �high-yield� given your site's current valuable keyword phrases that most accurately describe specific qualities of your website. Though generic keywords are generally searched more, ranking with generic key phrases often brings mediocre Return on Traffic.

Focused Key Phrases

As you may have realized by now the focused key phrases not only give your site a better chance to rank, it gets highly targeted traffic resulting in higher traffic to sales conversion ratios. Since you have used a process, which ensures that you are working with popular keywords, ranking with any of the short listed keywords assures you of incoming traffic. Amongst the 100 odd keywords you have short-listed, keep your eyes on the ones that have a tight focus on what your site's offering within the parameters of ranking possibilities and competitiveness.

Final Selection of Keyword Phrases

For making your final selection of 15-20 most relevant keywords, we recommend working in the following method:

	Eliminate the keywords, which are difficult to rank with considering the chart given for PR vs. Competition.
	Eliminate very low popularity Keywords where the search traffic for the terms is very low.
	Out of the balance keywords that qualify for ranking with your site's current PR, select the most popular keywords, which have the right focus for your site.

Step 4: Deploying Keyword Phrases

After you have made a final selection of 15-20 of your most relevant and important keywords, you need to use them on different parts of your website.
It is not advisable to use all your keywords on all the pages. A good way to use the selected keywords on your site is to divide them into 5-7 groups of keywords. Each group should have closely related keyword-forming themes. Identify various sections/ parts of your website that closely match with the keyword group themes and optimize your pages using these themes.
Keywords can be used in several portions/ codes of your web pages. The important aspects are listed below:

Keywords Per Page
We recommend using your keywords 2-4 times per page. Over-repetition of keywords on a page might be interpreted as spam by the search engines. Make sure you don't put all your keywords on one page.
Where to use the Keywords?
Your important keywords can be used in the following:Title Tag: A Title Tag of about 90 characters, inclusive of your most important keywords is good enough. For instance, the Title Tag of this article would be written as �Keyword Research : Techniques for keyword research, keyword analysis & keyword optimization�. Read our detailed article onTitle Tag Optimization.
Meta Description Tag: You should write a Meta Description Tag of about 250 characters with your important keywords. Be careful about over-repetition. For instance, the Description tag of this article would be written as: �Keyword research described: Learn all about keyword research, keyword analysis, keyword optimization and marketing keyword research.� Read our detailed article on Meta Description Tag Optimization.
Headlines: Keyword rich headlines and sub-headings placed in <H1> and <H2> tags, not only give a brief preview of what follows in the body copy, but also pass the most relevant information on the page or the subsequent paragraph. For instance, heading of this article reads: Keyword Research for Search Engine Optimization; followed by a sub-heading: Importance of Keyword Research for Search Engine Optimization
Body Text: Headlines in <H1> and <H2> Tags followed by keyword rich body text can improve your ranking chances.
Alt text / Alt Tag: Important keywords can be used in the text that appears when you bring your mouse over an image on a web page.
Title Attributes: The title attributes, are short descriptions for the hyperlinks telling the users about the content of the landing page. Make use of your important keywords here.
Anchor Text: The words that appear within the hyperlinked portion of the text are called Anchor Text. Keywords appearing in the Anchor Text have a high relevance weight in Search Engines.
File Name: your page's file name or URL also makes use of the most important keyword. For example, file name for article :
keyword-research-article.htm
Table Summary: The table summary in HTML code describes the content of each HTML table in your code. Though not visible to a user, it is important for people with disabilities and text to speech applications. It is an important place to use your keyword phrases.
Copy ChangesGiven below are a few tips for writing keyword rich copy. For detailed information, refer to our article on Search Engine Copywriting.Keeping your keyword phrases in mind, you might need to make certain changes in the copy of your web page. Therefore, instead of just writing (taking the Dentist example)�This procedure involves�' one should try and include their keywords by writing �Root Canal Treatment involves�'
It is important to include both the singular and plural versions of your keywords as most search engines return different sets of results for plural and singular forms of the same word.
Major search engines like Google are not case sensitive. Therefore, headlines and sub-headings can be written in upper or lower case or a combination of both, as it makes no difference in your search engine rankings.
Spelling variations of the same word is another thing you should look out for. Try to include all different forms of the same word that can be spelled differently or commonly mis-spelt. For instance, you can write, � Abscessed Tooth, (commonly mis-spelt as Absessed tooth) is �', thus smartly covering the mis-spelling without giving the user a feeling that the site owner does not know the correct spellings.
Avoiding Pitfalls

Don't get swayed by the Keyword Density formula many SEO experts profess, it's just over hyped. Though you may find a number of articles written on the importance of keyword density, we don't think it is mission critical. Write your language naturally while leveraging higher use of the keywords in places where it can be used, like substituting keywords in places of articles like �it', �this', etc.

The Title or the Description of your web page should not read like a thesaurus or a collection of keywords, but should be descriptive and enticing enough to make a user click on it and read further. It is important to note that our findings on user behavior have proved that sometimes a site ranking number 5th in Search Engines has drawn more clicks than a poorly titled site ranking number 1 in SERP. For instance, instead of simply writing �wisdom tooth extraction', a title that reads �painless wisdom tooth extraction' which is inclusive of your USP would result in enticing more users to click on your entry.

Place your keywords throughout the page, rather than just at the top, but be very very careful about over-repetition, as search engines would consider that as Spamming.

The whole idea behind the Keyword Research exercise is traffic optimization, not traffic maximization. In a nutshell, a good Keyword Research helps in bringing qualified traffic to your site that leads to high sales conversions, by being focused and targeting specific search terms.

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Related Reading:
Search Engine Copywriting
Choosing your Meta-Keywords
Title Tag and Meta Description Tag Optimization
Google PageRank Algorithm Explained
About the Author: Harjot Kaleka is an SEO Copywriter at http://www.redalkemi.com/search-engine-optimization-seo/keyword-research-article.php#, a leading Search Engine Optimization services company. She has a Masters degree in Mass Communications and Copywriting.
© Copyright 2004, RedAlkemi

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TwoSpots web design

Google's PageRank Explained

2011-01-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

What is PageRank?

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page's PageRank is calculated.
PageRank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.
From here on in, we'll occasionally refer to PageRank as "PR".
Notes:
Not all links are counted by Google. For instance, they filter out links from known link farms. Some links can cause a site to be penalized by Google. They rightly figure that webmasters cannot control which sites link to their sites, but they can control which sites they link out to. For this reason, links into a site cannot harm the site, but links from a site can be harmful if they link to penalized sites. So be careful which sites you link to. If a site has PR0, it is usually a penalty, and it would be unwise to link to it.
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How is PageRank calculated?

To calculate the PageRank for a page, all of its inbound links are taken into account. These are links from within the site and links from outside the site.
PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))
That's the equation that calculates a page's PageRank. It's the original one that was published when PageRank was being developed, and it is probable that Google uses a variation of it but they aren't telling us what it is. It doesn't matter though, as this equation is good enough.
In the equation 't1 - tn' are pages linking to page A, 'C' is the number of outbound links that a page has and 'd' is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.
We can think of it in a simpler way:-
a page's PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a "share" of the PageRank of every page that links to it)
"share" = the linking page's PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.
A page "votes" an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.
From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.
If the PageRank value differences between PR1, PR2,.....PR10 were equal then that conclusion would hold up, but many people believe that the values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) are set on a logarithmic scale, and there is very good reason for believing it. Nobody outside Google knows for sure one way or the other, but the chances are high that the scale is logarithmic, or similar. If so, it means that it takes a lot more additional PageRank for a page to move up to the next PageRank level that it did to move up from the previous PageRank level. The result is that it reverses the previous conclusion, so that a link from a PR8 page that has lots of outbound links is worth more than a link from a PR4 page that has only a few outbound links.
Whichever scale Google uses, we can be sure of one thing. A link from another site increases our site's PageRank. Just remember to avoid links from link farms.
Note that when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn't give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn't a transfer of PageRank. It is simply a vote according to the page's PageRank value. It's like a shareholders meeting where each shareholder votes according to the number of shares held, but the shares themselves aren't given away. Even so, pages do lose some PageRank indirectly, as we'll see later.
Ok so far? Good. Now we'll look at how the calculations are actually done.
For a page's calculation, its existing PageRank (if it has any) is abandoned completely and a fresh calculation is done where the page relies solely on the PageRank "voted" for it by its current inbound links, which may have changed since the last time the page's PageRank was calculated.
The equation shows clearly how a page's PageRank is arrived at. But what isn't immediately obvious is that it can't work if the calculation is done just once. Suppose we have 2 pages, A and B, which link to each other, and neither have any other links of any kind. This is what happens:-
Step 1: Calculate page A's PageRank from the value of its inbound links
Page A now has a new PageRank value. The calculation used the value of the inbound link from page B. But page B has an inbound link (from page A) and its new PageRank value hasn't been worked out yet, so page A's new PageRank value is based on inaccurate data and can't be accurate.
Step 2: Calculate page B's PageRank from the value of its inbound links
Page B now has a new PageRank value, but it can't be accurate because the calculation used the new PageRank value of the inbound link from page A, which is inaccurate.
It's a Catch 22 situation. We can't work out A's PageRank until we know B's PageRank, and we can't work out B's PageRank until we know A's PageRank.
Now that both pages have newly calculated PageRank values, can't we just run the calculations again to arrive at accurate values? No. We can run the calculations again using the new values and the results will be more accurate, but we will always be using inaccurate values for the calculations, so the results will always be inaccurate.
The problem is overcome by repeating the calculations many times. Each time produces slightly more accurate values. In fact, total accuracy can never be achieved because the calculations are always based on inaccurate values. 40 to 50 iterations are sufficient to reach a point where any further iterations wouldn't produce enough of a change to the values to matter. This is precisiely what Google does at each update, and it's the reason why the updates take so long.
One thing to bear in mind is that the results we get from the calculations are proportions. The figures must then be set against a scale (known only to Google) to arrive at each page's actual PageRank. Even so, we can use the calculations to channel the PageRank within a site around its pages so that certain pages receive a higher proportion of it than others.

NOTE:
You may come across explanations of PageRank where the same equation is stated but the result of each iteration of the calculation is added to the page's existing PageRank. The new value (result + existing PageRank) is then used when sharing PageRank with other pages. These explanations are wrong for the following reasons:-
1. They quote the same, published equation - but then change it
from PR(A) = (1-d) + d(......) to PR(A) = PR(A) + (1-d) + d(......)
It isn't correct, and it isn't necessary.
2. We will be looking at how to organize links so that certain pages end up with a larger proportion of the PageRank than others. Adding to the page's existing PageRank through the iterations produces different proportions than when the equation is used as published. Since the addition is not a part of the published equation, the results are wrong and the proportioning isn't accurate.
According to the published equation, the page being calculated starts from scratch at each iteration. It relies solely on its inbound links. The 'add to the existing PageRank' idea doesn't do that, so its results are necessarily wrong.
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Internal linking

Fact: A website has a maximum amount of PageRank that is distributed between its pages by internal links.
The maximum PageRank in a site equals the number of pages in the site * 1. The maximum is increased by inbound links from other sites and decreased by outbound links to other sites. We are talking about the overall PageRank in the site and not the PageRank of any individual page. You don't have to take my word for it. You can reach the same conclusion by using a pencil and paper and the equation.
Fact: The maximum amount of PageRank in a site increases as the number of pages in the site increases.
The more pages that a site has, the more PageRank it has. Again, by using a pencil and paper and the equation, you can come to the same conclusion. Bear in mind that the only pages that count are the ones that Google knows about.
Fact: By linking poorly, it is possible to fail to reach the site's maximum PageRank, but it is not possible to exceed it.
Poor internal linkages can cause a site to fall short of its maximum but no kind of internal link structure can cause a site to exceed it. The only way to increase the maximum is to add more inbound links and/or increase the number of pages in the site.
Cautions: Whilst I thoroughly recommend creating and adding new pages to increase a site's total PageRank so that it can be channeled to specific pages, there are certain types of pages that should not be added. These are pages that are all identical or very nearly identical and are known as cookie-cutters. Google considers them to be spam and they can trigger an alarm that causes the pages, and possibly the entire site, to be penalized. Pages full of good content are a must.
What can we do with this 'overall' PageRank?
We are going to look at some example calculations to see how a site's PageRank can be manipulated, but before doing that, I need to point out that a page will be included in the Google index only if one or more pages on the web link to it. That's according to Google. If a page is not in the Google index, any links from it can't be included in the calculations.

Let's consider a 3 page site (pages A, B and C) with no links coming in from the outside. We will allocate each page an initial PageRank of 1, although it makes no difference whether we start each page with 1, 0 or 99. Apart from a few millionths of a PageRank point, after many iterations the end result is always the same. Starting with 1 requires fewer iterations for the PageRanks to converge to a suitable result than when starting with 0 or any other number. You can use a pencil and paper to follow this.
The site's maximum PageRank is the amount of PageRank in the site. In this case, we have 3 pages so the site's maximum is 3.
At the moment, none of the pages link to any other pages and none link to them. If you make the calculation once for each page, you'll find that each of them ends up with a PageRank of 0.15. No matter how many iterations you run, each page's PageRank remains at 0.15. The total PageRank in the site = 0.45, whereas it could be 3. The site is seriously wasting most of its potential PageRank.

Example 1
Now begin again with each page being allocated PR1. Link page A to page B and run the calculations for each page. We end up with:-
Page A = 0.15
Page B = 1
Page C = 0.15
Page A has "voted" for page B and, as a result, page B's PageRank has increased. This is looking good for page B, but it's only 1 iteration - we haven't taken account of the Catch 22 situation. Look at what happens to the figures after more iterations:-
After 100 iterations the figures are:-
Page A = 0.15
Page B = 0.2775
Page C = 0.15
It still looks good for page B but nowhere near as good as it did. These figures are more realistic. The total PageRank in the site is now 0.5775 - slightly better but still only a fraction of what it could be.
NOTE:
Technically, these particular results are incorrect because of the special treatment that Google gives to dangling links, but they serve to demonstrate the simple calculation.

Example 2
Try this linkage. Link all pages to all pages. Each page starts with PR1 again. This produces:-
Page A = 1
Page B = 1
Page C = 1
Now we've achieved the maximum. No matter how many iterations are run, each page always ends up with PR1. The same results occur by linking in a loop. E.g. A to B, B to C and C to D.
This has demonstrated that, by poor linking, it is quite easy to waste PageRank and by good linking, we can achieve a site's full potential. But we don't particularly want all the site's pages to have an equal share. We want one or more pages to have a larger share at the expense of others. The kinds of pages that we might want to have the larger shares are the index page, hub pages and pages that are optimized for certain search terms. We have only 3 pages, so we'll channel the PageRank to the index page - page A. It will serve to show the idea of channeling.

Example 3
Now try this. Link page A to both B and C. Also link pages B and C to A. Starting with PR1 all round, after 1 iteration the results are:-
Page A = 1.85
Page B = 0.575
Page C = 0.575
and after 100 iterations, the results are:-
Page A = 1.459459
Page B = 0.7702703
Page C = 0.7702703
In both cases the total PageRank in the site is 3 (the maximum) so none is being wasted. Also in both cases you can see that page A has a much larger proportion of the PageRank than the other 2 pages. This is because pages B and C are passing PageRank to A and not to any other pages. We have channeled a large proportion of the site's PageRank to where we wanted it.

Example 4
Finally, keep the previous links and add a link from page C to page B. Start again with PR1 all round. After 1 iteration:-
Page A = 1.425
Page B = 1
Page C = 0.575
By comparison to the 1 iteration figures in the previous example, page A has lost some PageRank, page B has gained some and page C stayed the same. Page C now shares its "vote" between A and B. Previously A received all of it. That's why page A has lost out and why page B has gained. and after 100 iterations:-
Page A = 1.298245
Page B = 0.9999999
Page C = 0.7017543
When the dust has settled, page C has lost a little PageRank because, having now shared its vote between A and B, instead of giving it all to A, A has less to give to C in the A-->C link. So adding an extra link from a page causes the page to lose PageRank indirectly if any of the pages that it links to return the link. If the pages that it links to don't return the link, then no PageRank loss would have occured. To make it more complicated, if the link is returned even indirectly (via a page that links to a page that links to a page etc), the page will lose a little PageRank. This isn't really important with internal links, but it does matter when linking to pages outside the site.

Example 5: new pages
Adding new pages to a site is an important way of increasing a site's total PageRank because each new page will add an average of 1 to the total. Once the new pages have been added, their new PageRank can be channeled to the important pages. We'll use the calculator to demonstrate these.
Let's add 3 new pages to Example 3. Three new pages but they don't do anything for us yet. The small increase in the Total, and the new pages' 0.15, are unrealistic as we shall see. So let's link them into the site.
Link each of the new pages to the important page, page A. Notice that the Total PageRank has doubled, from 3 (without the new pages) to 6. Notice also that page A's PageRank has almost doubled.
There is one thing wrong with this model. The new pages are orphans. They wouldn't get into Google's index, so they wouldn't add any PageRank to the site and they wouldn't pass any PageRank to page A. They each need to be linked to from at least one other page. If page A is the important page, the best page to put the links on is, surprisingly, page A. You can play around with the links but, from page A's point of view, there isn't a better place for them.
It is not a good idea for one page to link to a large number of pages so, if you are adding many new pages, spread the links around. The chances are that there is more than one important page in a site, so it is usually suitable to spread the links to and from the new pages. You can use the calculator to experiment with mini-models of a site to find the best links that produce the best results for its important pages.

Examples summary
You can see that, by organising the internal links, it is possible to channel a site's PageRank to selected pages. Internal links can be arranged to suit a site's PageRank needs, but it is only useful if Google knows about the pages, so do try to ensure that Google spiders them.

Questions
When a page has several links to another page, are all the links counted?
E.g. if page A links once to page B and 3 times to page C, does page C receive 3/4 of page A's shareable PageRank?
The PageRank concept is that a page casts votes for one or more other pages. Nothing is said in the original PageRank document about a page casting more than one vote for a single page. The idea seems to be against the PageRank concept and would certainly be open to manipulation by unrealistically proportioning votes for target pages. E.g. if an outbound link, or a link to an unimportant page, is necessary, add a bunch of links to an important page to minimize the effect.
Since we are unlikely to get a definitive answer from Google, it is reasonable to assume that a page can cast only one vote for another page, and that additional votes for the same page are not counted.
When a page links to itself, is the link counted?
Again, the concept is that pages cast votes for other pages. Nothing is said in the original document about pages casting votes for themselves. The idea seems to be against the concept and, also, it would be another way to manipulate the results. So, for those reasons, it is reasonable to assume that a page can't vote for itself, and that such links are not counted.
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Dangling links

"Dangling links are simply links that point to any page with no outgoing links. They affect the model because it is not clear where their weight should be distributed, and there are a large number of them. Often these dangling links are simply pages that we have not downloaded yet..........Because dangling links do not affect the ranking of any other page directly, we simply remove them from the system until all the PageRanks are calculated. After all the PageRanks are calculated they can be added back in without affecting things significantly." - extract from the original PageRank paper by Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.A dangling link is a link to a page that has no links going from it, or a link to a page that Google hasn't indexed. In both cases Google removes the links shortly after the start of the calculations and reinstates them shortly before the calculations are finished. In this way, their effect on the PageRank of other pages in minimal.
The results shown in Example 1 (right diag.) are wrong because page B has no links going from it, and so the link from page A to page B is dangling and would be removed from the calculations. The results of the calculations would show all three pages as having 0.15.
It may suit site functionality to link to pages that have no links going from them without losing any PageRank from the other pages but it would be waste of potential PageRank. Take a look at this example. The site's potential is 5 because it has 5 pages, but without page E linked in, the site only has 4.15.
Link page A to page E and click Calculate. Notice that the site's total has gone down very significantly. But, because the new link is dangling and would be removed from the calculations, we can ignore the new total and assume the previous 4.15 to be true. That's the effect of functionally useful, dangling links in the site. There's no overall PageRank loss.
However, some of the site's potential total is still being wasted, so link Page E back to Page A and Calculate. Now we have the maximum PageRank that is possible with 5 pages. Nothing is being wasted.
Although it may be functionally good to link to pages within the site without those pages linking out again, it is bad for PageRank. It is pointless wasting PageRank unnecessarily, so always make sure that every page in the site links out to at least one other page in the site.
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Inbound links

Inbound links (links into the site from the outside) are one way to increase a site's total PageRank. The other is to add more pages. Where the links come from doesn't matter. Google recognizes that a webmaster has no control over other sites linking into a site, and so sites are not penalized because of where the links come from. There is an exception to this rule but it is rare and doesn't concern this article. It isn't something that a webmaster can accidentally do.
The linking page's PageRank is important, but so is the number of links going from that page. For instance, if you are the only link from a page that has a lowly PR2, you will receive an injection of 0.15 + 0.85(2/1) = 1.85 into your site, whereas a link from a PR8 page that has another 99 links from it will increase your site's PageRank by 0.15 + 0.85(7/100) = 0.2095. Clearly, the PR2 link is much better - or is it? See here for a probable reason why this is not the case.
Once the PageRank is injected into your site, the calculations are done again and each page's PageRank is changed. Depending on the internal link structure, some pages' PageRank is increased, some are unchanged but no pages lose any PageRank.
It is beneficial to have the inbound links coming to the pages to which you are channeling your PageRank. A PageRank injection to any other page will be spread around the site through the internal links. The important pages will receive an increase, but not as much of an increase as when they are linked to directly. The page that receives the inbound link, makes the biggest gain.
It is easy to think of our site as being a small, self-contained network of pages. When we do the PageRank calculations we are dealing with our small network. If we make a link to another site, we lose some of our network's PageRank, and if we receive a link, our network's PageRank is added to. But it isn't like that. For the PageRank calculations, there is only one network - every page that Google has in its index. Each iteration of the calculation is done on the entire network and not on individual websites.
Because the entire network is interlinked, and every link and every page plays its part in each iteration of the calculations, it is impossible for us to calculate the effect of inbound links to our site with any realistic accuracy.
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Outbound links

Outbound links are a drain on a site's total PageRank. They leak PageRank. To counter the drain, try to ensure that the links are reciprocated. Because of the PageRank of the pages at each end of an external link, and the number of links out from those pages, reciprocal links can gain or lose PageRank. You need to take care when choosing where to exchange links.
When PageRank leaks from a site via a link to another site, all the pages in the internal link structure are affected. (This doesn't always show after just 1 iteration). The page that you link out from makes a difference to which pages suffer the most loss. Without a program to perform the calculations on specific link structures, it is difficult to decide on the right page to link out from, but the generalization is to link from the one with the lowest PageRank.
Many websites need to contain some outbound links that are nothing to do with PageRank. Unfortunately, all 'normal' outbound links leak PageRank. But there are 'abnormal' ways of linking to other sites that don't result in leaks. PageRank is leaked when Google recognizes a link to another site. The answer is to use links that Google doesn't recognize or count. These include form actions and links contained in javascript code.
Form actions
A form's 'action' attribute does not need to be the url of a form parsing script. It can point to any html page on any site. Try it.
Example:
<form name="myform" action="http://www.domain.com/somepage.html">
<a rel="nofollow" href="javascript:document.myform.submit()">Click here</a>
To be really sneaky, the action attribute could be in some javascript code rather than in the form tag, and the javascript code could be loaded from a 'js' file stored in a directory that is barred to Google's spider by the robots.txt file.
Javascript
Example: <a rel="nofollow" href="javascript:goto('wherever')">Click here</a>
Like the form action, it is sneaky to load the javascript code, which contains the urls, from a seperate 'js' file, and sneakier still if the file is stored in a directory that is barred to googlebot by the robots.txt file.
The "rel" attribute
As of 18th January 2005, Google, together with other search engines, is recognising a new attribute to the anchor tag. The attribute is "rel", and it is used as follows:-
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.domain.com/somepage.html" rel="nofollow">link text</a>
The attribute tells Google to ignore the link completely. The link won't help the target page's PageRank, and it won't help its rankings. It is as though the link doesn't exist. With this attribute, there is no longer any need for javascript, forms, or any other method of hiding links from Google.
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So how much additional PageRank do we need to move up the toolbar?

First, let me explain in more detail why the values shown in the Google toolbar are not the actual PageRank figures. According to the equation, and to the creators of Google, the billions of pages on the web average out to a PageRank of 1.0 per page. So the total PageRank on the web is equal to the number of pages on the web * 1, which equals a lot of PageRank spread around the web.

The Google toolbar range is from 1 to 10. (They sometimes show 0, but that figure isn't believed to be a PageRank calculation result). What Google does is divide the full range of actual PageRanks on the web into 10 parts - each part is represented by a value as shown in the toolbar. So the toolbar values only show what part of the overall range a page's PageRank is in, and not the actual PageRank itself. The numbers in the toolbar are just labels.
Whether or not the overall range is divided into 10 equal parts is a matter for debate - Google aren't saying. But because it is much harder to move up a toolbar point at the higher end than it is at the lower end, many people (including me) believe that the divisions are based on a logarithmic scale, or something very similar, rather than the equal divisions of a linear scale.
Let's assume that it is a logarithmic, base 10 scale, and that it takes 10 properly linked new pages to move a site's important page up 1 toolbar point. It will take 100 new pages to move it up another point, 1000 new pages to move it up one more, 10,000 to the next, and so on. That's why moving up at the lower end is much easier that at the higher end.
In reality, the base is unlikely to be 10. Some people think it is around the 5 or 6 mark, and maybe even less. Even so, it still gets progressively harder to move up a toolbar point at the higher end of the scale.
Note that as the number of pages on the web increases, so does the total PageRank on the web, and as the total PageRank increases, the positions of the divisions in the overall scale must change. As a result, some pages drop a toolbar point for no 'apparent' reason. If the page's actual PageRank was only just above a division in the scale, the addition of new pages to the web would cause the division to move up slightly and the page would end up just below the division. Google's index is always increasing and they re-evaluate each of the pages on more or less a monthly basis. It's known as the "Google dance". When the dance is over, some pages will have dropped a toolbar point. A number of new pages might be all that is needed to get the point back after the next dance.
The toolbar value is a good indicator of a page's PageRank but it only indicates that a page is in a certain range of the overall scale. One PR5 page could be just above the PR5 division and another PR5 page could be just below the PR6 division - almost a whole division (toolbar point) between them.
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Tips

Domain names and Filenames

To a spider, www.domain.com/, domain.com/, www.domain.com/index.html and domain.com/index.html are different urls and, therefore, different pages. Surfers arrive at the site's home page whichever of the urls are used, but spiders see them as individual urls, and it makes a difference when working out the PageRank. It is better to standardize the url you use for the site's home page. Otherwise each url can end up with a different PageRank, whereas all of it should have gone to just one url.
If you think about it, how can a spider know the filename of the page that it gets back when requesting www.domain.com/ ? It can't. The filename could be index.html, index.htm, index.php, default.html, etc. The spider doesn't know. If you link to index.html within the site, the spider could compare the 2 pages but that seems unlikely. So they are 2 urls and each receives PageRank from inbound links. Standardizing the home page's url ensures that the Pagerank it is due isn't shared with ghost urls.
Example: Go to TwoSpots site - how's that for a nice piece of link text ;). Notice that the url in the browser's address bar contains "www.". If you have the Google Toolbar installed, you will see that the page has PR5 otherwise you can chack it from here. Now remove the "www." part of the url and get the page again. This time it has PR1, and yet they are the same page. Actually, the PageRank is for the unseen frameset page.
When this article was first written, the non-www URL had PR4 due to using different versions of the link URLs within the site. It had the effect of sharing the page's PageRank between the 2 pages (the 2 versions) and, therefore, between the 2 sites. That's not the best way to do it. Since then, I've tidied up the internal linkages and got the non-www version down to PR1 so that the PageRank within the site mostly stays in the "www." version, but there must be a site somewhere that links to it without the "www." that's causing the PR1.
Imagine the page, www.domain.com/index.html. The index page contains links to several relative urls; e.g. products.html and details.html. The spider sees those urls as www.domain.com/products.html and www.domain.com/details.html. Now let's add an absolute url for another page, only this time we'll leave out the "www." part - domain.com/anotherpage.html. This page links back to the index.html page, so the spider sees the index pages as domain.com/index.html. Although it's the same index page as the first one, to a spider, it is a different page because it's on a different domain. Now look what happens. Each of the relative urls on the index page is also different because it belongs to the domain.com/ domain. Consequently, the link stucture is wasting a site's potential PageRank by spreading it between ghost pages.

Adding new pages
There is a possible negative effect of adding new pages. Take a perfectly normal site. It has some inbound links from other sites and its pages have some PageRank. Then a new page is added to the site and is linked to from one or more of the existing pages. The new page will, of course, aquire PageRank from the site's existing pages. The effect is that, whilst the total PageRank in the site is increased, one or more of the existing pages will suffer a PageRank loss due to the new page making gains. Up to a point, the more new pages that are added, the greater is the loss to the existing pages. With large sites, this effect is unlikely to be noticed but, with smaller ones, it probably would.
So, although adding new pages does increase the total PageRank within the site, some of the site's pages will lose PageRank as a result. The answer is to link new pages is such a way within the site that the important pages don't suffer, or add sufficient new pages to make up for the effect (that can sometimes mean adding a large number of new pages), or better still, get some more inbound links.
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Miscellaneous

The Google toolbar
If you have the Google toolbar installed in your browser, you will be used to seeing each page's PageRank as you browse the web. But all isn't always as it seems. Many pages that Google displays the PageRank for haven't been indexed in Google and certainly don't have any PageRank in their own right. What is happening is that one or more pages on the site have been indexed and a PageRank has been calculated. The PageRank figure for the site's pages that haven't been indexed is allocated on the fly - just for your toolbar. The PageRank itself doesn't exist.
It's important to know this so that you can avoid exchanging links with pages that really don't have any PageRank of their own. Before making exchanges, search for the page on Google to make sure that it is indexed.
Sub-directories
Some people believe that Google drops a page's PageRank by a value of 1 for each sub-directory level below the root directory. E.g. if the value of pages in the root directory is generally around 4, then pages in the next directory level down will be generally around 3, and so on down the levels. Other people (including me) don't accept that at all. Either way, because some spiders tend to avoid deep sub-directories, it is generally considered to be beneficial to keep directory structures shallow (directories one or two levels below the root).
ODP and Yahoo!
It used to be thought that Google gave a Pagerank boost to sites that are listed in the Yahoo! and ODP (a.k.a. DMOZ) directories, but these days general opinion is that they don't. There is certainly a PageRank gain for sites that are listed in those directories, but the reason for it is now thought to be this:-
Google spiders the directories just like any other site and their pages have decent PageRank and so they are good inbound links to have. In the case of the ODP, Google's directory is a copy of the ODP directory. Each time that sites are added and dropped from the ODP, they are added and dropped from Google's directory when they next update it. The entry in Google's directory is yet another good, PageRank boosting, inbound link. Also, the ODP data is used for searches on a myriad of websites - more inbound links!
Listings in the ODP are free but, because sites are reviewed by hand, it can take quite a long time to get in. The sooner a working site is submitted, the better. For tips on submitting to DMOZ, see this this DMOZ article.

Article source:

TwoSpots web design

Google Adsense Secrets Revealed

2011-01-08T12:30:00.000-08:00

LEGAL NOTICE:
The Publisher (click for help desk) has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in the creation of this report, notwithstanding the fact that he does not warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are accurate due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet.
While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, the Publisher assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. Any perceived slights of specific persons, peoples, or organizations are unintentional.
In practical advice books, like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income made. Readers are cautioned to reply on their own judgment about their individual circumstances to act accordingly.
This book is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting or financial advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent professionals in legal, business, accounting, and finance field.
The Publisher is not affiliated to Google in any way. Trademarks used in this publication belongs to their respective registered owners.
You are encouraged to print this book for easy reading
>> You Have Giveaway Rights To This Report <<
This is Version 4.0 (Released June 28th 2010)
( http://Click-Here-For.Info/on/Bonuses )
Introduction
In recent years, there has been a great deal of discussion and information concerning Google’s AdSense program at
http://www.google.com/adsense.
There have been truckloads of eBooks and articles written on the topic.
But in the grand scheme of things, it is a profitable program that still gets overlooked by many who are just coming online to start a business, as well as those who have been around a while.
First, let’s take a look at exactly what AdSense is and what it is all about:
“AdSense is a program for webmasters which was implemented by the famous Google some years ago.”
Essentially, a webmaster (a person who owns and builds one or more websites) signs up for an account with the program, and once they are approved, they paste the Google AdSense javascript code into the pages on their websites.
Google then starts serving ads to those websites, based on the keywords that it finds in the text of the page. When a visitor clicks on one of those ads, the webmaster makes money – usually a few cents per click.
However, when a site has a great deal of traffic, and when the webmaster knows which keywords are the most profitable to target, there is a lot of money to be made.
It sounds simple enough, but it’s really NOT that easy. First of all, you have to be approved – and Google is picky these days. The good news is that once one site is approved, and you have a Google AdSense account, there is no need to seek Google’s approval to use AdSense on any other site that you own, as long as that site is within the Google’s terms of service guidelines.
Once you are approved, you have to know which keywords to target – the ones that will make you the most amount of money per click, and how to write (or have written for you) content that makes those high paying ads appear on your site.
Finally, you have to learn how to drive traffic to your AdSense site. Without the traffic, you won’t get any clicks, and without clicks, you won’t be making any money.
Getting real, targeted visitors that are eager to click on your ads is by far the hardest part of being an AdSense publisher. There really aren’t any secrets here – it is just a matter of learning to use some basic, proven site promotion techniques.
You may have heard gurus say that Google AdSense is dead?. If you haven’t heard this, there will come a point when you will. But that really isn’t true. In fact, there are thousands of people just like you that are making very nice livings from the Google AdSense program.
Usually when a guru says that you should not use Google AdSense, they generally mean that you are better off not using it, especially when you are promoting your own product, and your website is tightly focused on that product.
However, you can use Google AdSense for a site that was built specifically for the AdSense program (Adsense Ready Sites), or on sites that you are using to promote affiliate products as well.
You should also note that many successful AdSense publishers have more than one website. They typically have numerous websites, on a variety of topics on which they display the Google ads. However, there are also those that simply have one high traffic website, from which they make money from the AdSense program.
Regardless of this, all AdSense publishers start with just one website, and grow from there, and this is what you should be doing as well. You have to get the basics down, and learn the secrets that surround the profitability of Google AdSense before you can be successful with more sites.
Preparing For Your Adsense Account
The hardest part of getting started with AdSense is getting Google to approve your website. In fact, for many, it is easier to get a $100,000 bank loan than it is to get a free Google AdSense account. The key is to be prepared before you apply.
You can’t start using Google AdSense on your pages until you are approved. This means that you must prepare to open an account, before you apply for an account.
The very first thing you must do is read Google’s Terms of Service (TOS). If your site doesn’t fall within the guidelines that Google sets out, it will be denied. Furthermore, even after you are approved and you start running Google ads on your site, if you break the TOS, you will be removed, and possibly banned, from the program.
Specifically, what you are looking for is the Program policies, which can be found at http://www.google.com/adsense. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click on then Program Policies link. The first thing to note is that Google will not accept any site that is not complete.
This means that you can’t have any pages that are ‘under construction.’ All of the pages must be complete, and all of the links must be working. Make sure that all of your graphics are also appearing correctly, because even a broken graphic can prevent you from getting approved.
Google also has a set of Quality Guidelines that must be adhered to before you can be approved. These guidelines, along with the program policies, will tell you exactly what you can and can’t have on your site, and what is expected of you and your site in terms of meeting the qualifications for a Google AdSense account. You can find these guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html.
One mistake that so many would-be AdSense publishers make is not reading the TOS, the Program Policies, and the Webmaster Guidelines. Google lays these out in very specific terms, so there is no doubt as to the rules. They are also very serious about these rules.
Often, people skip this step in the preparation – reading the rules – work hard to build a site, only to be disapproved by Google, or to be approved, but then banned from the program later.
Don’t let this happen to you. These are rules that you must not only follow in order to get approved, but must continue to follow in order to stay in the program. You don’t want to spend days and weeks putting together sites, only to get kicked out of the program later. Google is very serious about this.
Once you’ve read the rules, and made sure you understand them, the next part of the preparation is doing research to find out which topics will be the most profitable for you, and getting the site built. We will cover these topics in more depth in a later article, but for now, you just need one website that will be approved by Google.
Remember that you only have to get approved for one site in order to get in the program, and from there on, you can publish as many sites as you want, on a wide variety of topics, and use Google AdSense on them, from the one account that you have been approved for.
While many just put up a website that will meet Google’s standards, without doing any research in order to get approved, you could also take a little longer, and go ahead and build a site that you can use to target the high paying keywords.
This is totally up to you, and it really doesn’t matter much which direction you go, as long as the site will get you approved for a Google AdSense account.
I usually recommend creating and building a blogger.com blog, and apply using that one. You may not know this, but Google owns Blogger...
Applying For Your Adsense Account
Once you are prepared to apply for a Google AdSense account, it’s as simple as filling out a form. But there are some aspects of that form that can be a bit confusing.
In this section, I’ll go over filling out the form, so that Google will approve you without any problems. You can find the form to apply for an AdSense account at:
http://www.google.com/adsense/g-app-single-1.
The first thing that the form asks for is the URL of your website. Note that even if you have multiple sites, Google only wants to see one. So, list the URL of the site that you have set up for the purpose of being approved for Google AdSense, and enter the URL like this: www.yourdomain.com.
You do not have to include the http:// part of the URL, and don’t include any subpages of the URL, such as www.mydomain.com/mypage.html. Google wants to see the main page of the site, at the top level domain.
Next, Google wants to know what language your site is published in. If your site supports multiple languages, this is fine, but this isn’t what Google wants to know. They want to know the primary language of the site – this would be the language that you used to write the pages, such as English.
The next question on the form throws a lot of people into a tail spin. It asks if you are setting up an individual or business account.
Here is a way to simplify this question: If you do not have an office or business that currently has 20 or more employees, you are an individual. It doesn’t matter what your future plans are. Next, select the country that you live in.
The following part of the form asks for your information: name, street address, city, and state. It is important to note that when Google pays you, the check will be made out to the name that you put here, and sent to the address that you put here. So, use the information that you need to use here in order to receive the check, and to cash or deposit the check.
After your name and address, Google wants your telephone number. They probably won’t call you, but sometimes they will, if there is a problem or a question. Give a good phone number where you can be reached. You do not have to provide a fax number.
Here, you can also choose to receive Google’s newsletter – or not. Choosing not to receive the newsletter will not have any affect on whether or not you are approved.
Following this, there are five check boxes, all of which must be checked, before you can submit the application.
By checking these boxes, you are saying that you will not click on the ads on your pages, that you will not encourage visitors to click on your ads (incentives), that you are able to receive checks that are made out to you, that you will not place ads on pornographic sites, and that you have read the AdSense program policies.
Finally, you submit the form, and prepare to wait. Your site will be checked by a live human being. Approval is manual, not automated, and it can take up to three business days (72 hours) before you hear from a Google representative. That contact usually comes via email.
- Wait, what is this “Product selection”?
This appears on some application forms and seems confusing to many -- choose both: AdSense for Content and AdSense for Search. This means that you can run both, but don’t have to run both.
You can have Google ads appear on your pages (AdSense for Content) and you can also include a Google search box on your pages (AdSense for Search), and when people use those search boxes, and click on sponsored ads in the results, you get paid for those clicks as well.
I Have My Account – Now What?
Congratulations!
Now that you’ve been approved for a Google Account, by building a site that Google would easily approve, and you’ve selected a high paying topic for your site, you are ready to get to work and build your first profitable AdSense website.
If you have not already done so (you should have), you really need to go and read the program policies that Google has set, as well as their Webmaster Guidelines. This will help you to build a better site, and to avoid issues that can and will get you banned from the Google AdSense program.
Your site should be full of content that uses your keywords. A keyword density of between 2 and 3% is great. This means that your keyword should be used approximately 2 to 3% of the time in your content. So, for a page that has 600 words of content, the keyword would appear twelve to eighteen times (600 x 2% or 600 x 3%).
There is more to it than targeting keywords. The content must be accurate. It must be readable and understandable by visitors – and most importantly:
“It Must Be Unique!”
You should use all of the search engine optimization techniques as possible when building your site. Not only will this attract the right ads, but it will also help your site to move up in the search results, for the purpose of driving traffic to your site.
You want your site to look nice, to be informative, and to load fast. You want it to attract the right ads. You do not want anything on your pages that will irritate your visitor, such as blinking, blinding text or music.
Make it a site that you would want to visit, and then ask an uninterested party, such as your neighbor (not your best friend or your mother) if it is a site that they would want to visit, if they were interested in the topic.
Now, you are ready to place the AdSense javascript code on your pages. Log in to your AdSense account. Click on the AdSense Set up tab at the top of the page.
First, click on Channels, and set up a Channel for the topic of your site. This will come in handy later on, when you are analyzing which of your sites is pulling in the most money.
Next, click on palettes, and create a color palette that matches your site well. You want your Google ads to blend into your site. If they stand out like a sore thumb, they will get fewer clicks, simply because people really do try to avoid advertisements.
You want the ads to look like content on your site. Once you’ve set up a palette that matches your site, click on products. Choose AdSense for content to create your ad units.
Here, you can choose ads that are enclosed in a box, or ads that are more free standing, but still just text links. It is a good idea to choose the link unit to add above or below your navigational links, and you can design your site navigation links to look just like the Google link units.
Above – the perfect example of a well optimized ad placement
Source: Instant-Adsense-Templates.com
You can use the ad units (boxed in) on other sections of your site. Those who have been in the Google AdSense game for a while have done years worth of testing on the topic of ad unit placement.
Ideally, you will use ‘text ads only’ as your setting. Note that Google has limits as to how many Google ads can be used on your page, please check with the TOS.
As you can see, it is fairly easy enough setting things up, but it takes a lot more thought and effort than that. What you must remember is that you often only make a few cents when someone clicks an ad. Each click can pay as little as one cent, but I have seen amounts up to three dollars.
The most successful AdSense publishers are targeting keywords that pay the most amount of money. These AdSense publishers use a variety of tools to find out what the high paying keywords are. These tools include keyword research tools, such as Word Tracker and Keyword Elite.
http://www.wordtracker.com
http://www.keywordelite.com
They spend a great deal of time researching those keywords, finding out what the top keywords are, in terms of number of people searching for them, and what word combinations are being used. These are words and phrases that they will target in the content of their sites.
Next, they determine which of those top keywords topics pay the most money per click. Those who have been in the AdSense “game” for a while are not going to build sites that target keywords that only pay one cent per click!
These AdSense publishers use the tools that Google provides to help determine which keywords are paying the most to the publishers. Unfortunately, you won’t find these tools inside your Google AdSense account. No, You need a Google AdWords account for this - http://adwords.google.com/
You see, Google has two programs that work together: Google AdSense and Google AdWords. Business owners use Google AdWords to promote their products and websites and it’s those ads that are shown on your Google AdSense ads. The business owner pays Google for each click generated on your website, and Google pays you for the service.
It’s free to create a Google AdWords account. Once created, You just get in there and start using the tools that are there to see how much bids are for the keywords that you’ve discovered using keyword selection tools such as Word Tracker and Keyword Elite.
By doing this, you have access to the same information that the people who are paying for ads has, and this helps you to build more profitable AdSense websites.
This is a nice trick that Google won’t tell you about, and that most AdSense publishers won’t care to share it with you. Having a Google AdWords account is the key to finding out which keywords are going to pay you the most amount of money per click.
Choosing the right high paying keywords, however, isn’t everything; You need traffic – and lots of it, simply because low traffic sites will NOT make you a full-time living. This is why most publishers have more than one website.
They find the top keywords in terms of number of searches, figure out the keywords from that list that pay the most amount of money per click, and then build sites, lots of sites...
A successful AdSense publisher may have sites on topics such as fishing, weight loss, video games, making money, and many more. When you have multiple sites, you can make a nice living with a mid level amount of traffic to each site.
If you have hundreds of sites, like I have, you can make a living even with low traffic. So, here is some food for thought: The more traffic you have per site, the fewer sites you will need to earn a living from AdSense.
“You need to decide on which path to go: Quantity or Quality?”
Topic Selection?
Next you need to learn how the experts select topics for their Google AdSense sites. Choosing the right topics (keywords) is the difference between success and failure!
Let’s take a look at the various tools that you will use, and how you will use them. First, you need keyword research tools. You can find out what the top keywords that are being searched for are with a web based tools such as Word Tracker, at http://www.wordtracker.com. There is a fee for using this tool, but you can sign up for a free trial.
But finding the most frequently searched for keywords isn’t enough. Once you have a good list of what people are searching for the most, the next step is to find out how profitable those keywords are.
Not all frequently searched for keywords are profitable, and if you hope to make a full time living with Google AdSense, you need high paying keywords.
Now, before you rush out in search of a list of high paying keywords, note that even if there was such a list, it would constantly be changing, just as the list of frequently searched for keywords changes.
Furthermore, you don’t seriously believe that other AdSense publishers are going to share such a list, if one even existed, do you? They wouldn’t. You have to find this information yourself.
Here is where having a Google AdWords account will come in handy. You can see what the advertisers are paying to get in the top position of the search results for their keywords. Simply log in to your free Google AdWords account, and click on ‘tools.’ Next, click on Keyword Tool.
...or in case you don’t have an Adword account, just go to:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Enter your keywords, and then in the drop down box below that, select ‘Cost and Ad Position Estimates.’ Type 5.00 in the last box, and hit ‘calculate.’ Now, Google will display possible keywords, based on the main keyword that you entered. Next to each keyword, you will see the estimated average CPC (cost per click) and the estimated position.
You want to view the CPC for the keywords that will fall into the top five on position, stated as 1 – 3 or 1 – 5. As of this writing, using the keyword phrase ‘weight loss’ you would see that the estimated CPC for ‘weight loss operations’ is $5.95. Now, as an advertiser, that is what you would pay per click for an ad that is being run on position 1 – 3 when that keyword phrase is searched for.
As a publisher, however, you would not make $5.95 per click. Google wants their share as well. Google doesn’t state what percentage is earned by the publisher, however. It varies, and how that percentage is figured is Google’s secret, and they are not sharing that information!
You basically have to pull a percentage out of the air to work with. Try using 30% as a guide.
Once you start getting clicks, you can then look to see what the estimated CPC is in AdWords, and then see how much you were paid for that click in AdSense to find out how much Google is paying you per click for that keyword. Again, this varies from one keyword to the next, so there are no set guidelines here.
Keep in mind that it’s maximum bid that’s displayed, meaning that’s what the advertiser would have to pay per click on an ad being shown on positions 1 to 3 in the sponsored search results.
Now imagine if you have lots of ad blocks on your page -- that will enable the cheaper ads to be displayed as well. You will discover that most of the time you’ll end up getting clicks on those, thereby making only a few cents...
“My suggestion: Less Ad Blocks! - This Will Get You More Revenue Per Click!”
Traffic Generation - Methods To Avoid
There are many ways to get traffic to a site. You will most likely do research to find out about those traffic generation methods.
Methods such as article marketing, forum marketing, pay-per-click advertising, social networking, blogging, and social bookmarking all work very well. But in the world of Internet Marketing, there are also traffic techniques that you should avoid, for various reasons.
“Incidentally, we’ll kick start this section of Adsense Profits Blueprint with traffic techniques you should avoid”
1. First, do not ever pay for traffic from a site that promises you a great deal of traffic in a short amount of time. The traffic that you get will not be targeted, and will be of no use to you at all. The same applies to traffic exchange sites.
In fact, many of these sites are scam sites, and the traffic that you get will actually be automated traffic, not real traffic. Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC as it is known, is not the same as these sites that promise traffic for a fee.
Go to Google and do a search for “buy website traffic” and make sure NOT to buy from any of those, because this is useless traffic that in the end will get you banned!
2. Do not spend hours, or even use automated software to submit your site to free classified ad sites or free for all link sites. This only results in lots of spam for you. It does not result in traffic.
3. Don’t use pop ups. People hate these, and most people now have software installed that keeps pop ups from popping. Avoid other irritating elements on your site as well, such as blinking text and music, and colors that clash. Your visitors will hit the back button in one second flat! Besides – popups are against the Adsense TOS.
4. Don’t use false statements or exaggerated statements in your advertising. This may get you visitors, but it will irritate them, and they won’t click on links.
Instead, they will either close the browser, or hit the back button. You may not be selling anything, but this is false advertisement none-the-less, and it makes people very angry.
There are two huge mistakes that many newcomers make:
1. The biggest is doing nothing at all. You can build a site, but if you don’t advertise it in anyway, you are not going to get a drop of traffic. The old quote “Build It And They Will Come” does NOT apply here (Ref: the Kevin Costner movie “The Field of Dreams”)
2. The second biggest mistake is not tracking your advertising. If you don’t know what works, and what doesn’t, you will be wasting time and possibly money.
Track all of your advertisements to see where your traffic comes from, and where it doesn’t come from. In the end, you will be glad that you did.
Overall, that’s all that you need to avoid. Other than that, you need to make sure that you are using proven site promotion techniques, which are listed above.
These other outdated methods simply do not work. They are not worth your time, effort, or money. You need to know where the traffic comes from, and you also need to know how well your ads are performing.
You may have a great amount of traffic, but very few clicks. It’s important to track the traffic and the ad performance, so you know what to fix!
Traffic Generation - Article Marketing
If you have an AdSense website, you need traffic to make money from that site! There are numerous ways to get traffic, but since we all have limited time, you want to cut right to the chase, and find out what works. Article marketing is one of the best traffic generation methods you can use.
Article marketing is a very successful and easy concept. It is used by all successful Internet Marketers, and when it comes to website promotion, you must look at things from an Internet Marketers point of view, even though, as an AdSense publisher, you aren’t exactly selling any product.
Again, the concept is easy. You write a short article, approximately 400 words long. At the bottom of the article, you write an ‘author’s resource box.’ This is just a simple paragraph of text that says who the author is, gives a little background info on the author, and most importantly - a link to the author’s website. It’s about five to seven sentences long.
Once the article is ready, you visit numerous article directories, which are also referred to as article banks and article repositories, and submit your article. That’s all there is to article marketing.
Now, many people use these article directories. They go there to find information, or to find content for their own websites, blogs, or newsletters. The article that you submitted is free for them to use, as long as they publish it with the author’s resource box intact, and they don’t make any changes to the article.
Because so many other people can (and will) publish your article elsewhere, it becomes viral. This drives traffic to your site, on a continual basis. But one article submission is not going to be enough. You need to be submitting one article per week, to at least the top ten article directories.
Note that there are faster ways to get traffic, such as using Google AdWords, but article marketing is free, and again, the traffic that you will eventually get from the articles being published is fairly steady.
Here are five important tips for article marketing:
1. Don’t use the same content that you have on your site. Your site could end up getting penalized for duplicate content.
2. Before you write your first article, visit one of the popular directories, such as Ezine Articles at http://www.ezinearticles.com/ to see what your article should be like. You can also get ideas for your author’s resource box here.
3. Writers Block? Lack of time? Use PLR articles, or hire a ghostwriter to write and submit articles for you. Make sure that you are submitting one article per week! If you use private label rights (PLR) articles, make sure that you rewrite them before submitting them.
4. Make sure that the topic of your article matches the topic of your site, and the topic of the ads that are being displayed through your Google AdSense ads. This will get you the best results.
5. Use your keywords in your article. This is search engine fodder; it drives the article up in the search engine results, which in turn brings more traffic to your site.
Don’t expect immediate results. Sometimes, it takes the article directories several days, and in some cases, several weeks, to publish your article. You need to be using additional traffic generation techniques as well.
Even if you aren’t seeing results from your article marketing techniques, keep at it. Remember, it takes time for it to ‘kick in,’ but when it does, it is well worth the effort.
Make sure to watch my Automated Traffic Blueprints video on how to outsource your traffic generation tasks..
Automated Traffic Blueprints
( http://www.AutomatedTrafficBlueprints.Net )
Here’s another product (ebook + video) that reveals a lot of free “traffic getting” methods, mainly from Google...
Ths Free Google Traffic System
( http://www.FreeGoogleTrafficSystem.com/ )
Traffic Generation – Blogs
You’ve probably heard that there is a great deal of money to be made by using blogs – whether you are into affiliate marketing, or an AdSense publisher. You can use a blog in several different ways.
First, you can use just the blog, as opposed to having a separate static website. You can also use a blog to drive traffic to a static website. Either way works, but in the long run, it’s easier to have a blog, with your own domain, hosted on a web server, than it is to operate both a blog and a website.
Promoting a blog is much easier and faster than promoting a website, because blogs are so interactive.
For instance, people can come to your blog, subscribe to it, leave comments on it, and go to their own blogs and write about something that you wrote about, quote you and leave a trackback. This works the opposite way as well.
To promote a blog, there are very specific things you do:
1. You ping your blog after each post. You can do this at a site such as http://www.pingomatic.com/, which will send the ping to multiple blog directories at one time.
2. You use social bookmarks each time you make a post, tagging the post with your keywords. You can quickly and easily send out multiple bookmarks at one time by using a service such as http://www.onlywire.com/
3. You burn your feed at a free site such as http://www.feedster.com/. This lists your feed in their directory, so that people may subscribe before they’ve ever even visited your blog.
4. You visit relevant blogs that belong to others, and leave relevant comments (not comment spam) with a link back to your own blog.
5. You quote other people’s blogs – just portions, not the entire post – and link to it using your trackback feature. Your link to that post will automatically appear on their trackback list for that post, if they have enabled trackbacks.
6. You use the same promotional techniques that you use for a static website, along with the five techniques listed above. If you can, make a blog post each day. Otherwise, you should be making a blog post each and every week, once a week. If you’re blog isn’t updated, you can’t really promote it very well.
If you want to use the other method, where you have a blog and a website, you can do this as well. The idea here is to use the same promotional techniques for the blog, and then in each blog post, point to your website.
As you can see, if you are an AdSense publisher, this may be a bit redundant, since you can publish the same information on your blog, and it gets promoted in much the same way – and you can put AdSense on your blog just as you can on static webpages.
Generally, if someone has both a blog and a website, it is because they are promoting several products, or their own product. Again, as an AdSense publisher, with no other source of revenue, it makes sense to just have a blog, instead of a static website as well.
A Blog Auto Poster can automate lots of the tedious tasks of getting new content to your blogs. Here’s a cool tool you can use if you are using Wordpress blogs..
Auto Blog Feeder
( http://www.Auto-Blog-Feeder.com/ )
Here’s an awesome free service you can use to get free content (and if you upgrade: links to your site), also if you are using Wordpress blogs..
SEO Link Vine
( http://www.click-here-for.info/on/linkvine )
Traffic Generation – Video Marketing
Video is becoming increasingly more important to cyber citizens, and essentially to online business owners, and even to AdSense site owners. You can drive traffic to your sites with the use of video and free video websites. Everybody loves video. Even Google now offers video ads for AdSense.
Sites like Google Video, You Tube, and Yahoo Video get tons of traffic every single day, and you can easily take advantage of that. You have two options for creating video. You can use a digital video camera, or you can use screen capture video software.
With a digital video camera, you can make a video of basically anything, and then upload that video to your computer, and then to the video websites. With screen capture video software, you don’t need a camera. You can just make a video of what is appearing on your computer screen.
For instance, if you have a website that reviews software, for which you earn AdSense revenue and affiliate revenue from software sales, you could purchase the software, and make a video that shows people how to use it. Videos such as these are in high demand. Just make sure that the video that you produce is relevant to the topic of your website.
Once you have a video, you want to be sure that it is of high quality. It should sound right and look right, and you may want to try it out on different computers to make sure that it is as good as you can get it. You do not want to present a video to the public that doesn’t have good quality, because this is a bad reflection on you.
Next, sign up for a free account at the three popular video sites, and upload your video. Create a profile, and of course include your website address in that profile. You can also use software to watermark your URL on your video, so that while it is being viewed, the URL remains in plain site. When you write descriptions for your videos, be sure to include your keywords, and your URL.
There is another way that you can use video, without creating it. Again, visit the video websites, and find video that is already there, which relates to your site. It’s there and free for you to use. Start the video, and look for a button near it that says ‘embed.’ You will be given code. Paste that code on your webpage where you want the video to appear.
Now, make sure that you put a description of the video, again using your keywords, above the video. Your AdSense ads will be served focused on the keywords in that description. Make sure you list this page with the search engines as well. This is not duplicate content, as long as you write your own unique description. The search engine spiders can see that there is a video there, but they can’t watch the video.
They will pay more attention to the description that you write. This is a great way to fill up a site with content, in a very short amount of time, without having to write very much. Just simply make your site video based, or a combination of text and video or audio.
Even though the video is available elsewhere, people will still come to your site to view it. Hopefully, while they are there, they will click on some ads! You can use audio in the same way, again ensuring that you write a textual description of the audio file. This may get you even more clicks, because there is nothing to watch!
Have you ever heard of “Video Web Wizard”? - Using this software, you could have one of more streaming videos on your website in just 10 minutes!
Video Web Wizard
( http://www.six-bucks.com/prod7may31/proda/index.html )
Traffic Generation - Forum marketing
Forum Marketing has been around as long as forums have existed. Forums are known by a variety of names: bulletin boards and message boards are common names.
A forum is essentially where people with an interest in a specific topic post messages, where other people who are members of that forum can reply to them. It’s a great way to share and learn information about a topic of interest.
Forum marketing is a great way to drive traffic to your site. Now, before you run to the nearest forum that relates to your topic and post a message about your wonderful website, you need to know that the quality forums (the forums that you want to participate in) are not going to allow you to do that.
So, how can you advertise your AdSense site in the forums, without advertising?
- You use a signature file. This is allowed in most forums. A signature file is essentially text that has your name, your website address, and maybe a small slogan. It looks like this:
First and Last Name
http://www.yourwebsite.com
Everything You Wanted To Know About Your Topic – And Then Some.
You use your signature file at the bottom of all of your posts. Some forums allow you to set up your signature file in your profile, and every time you make a post, it will automatically be inserted at the bottom.
Now, there are several ways that you can use the forums. First, you can seek out posts that you can reply to. Second, you can post questions that others reply to. You can also just post pertinent information.
To find forums that relate to your topic, go to any search engine, and type in your topic discussion. If your topic is fishing, you would type in fishing discussion. You will get a huge number of results.
You want to pick out about five forums to actively participate in. Ideally, you will make at least one post per day in each forum that you participate in, so choose a number of forums that you have time to post in each day.
When looking at the forums, you want forums where there are a large number of members – 500 to 1000 are good. You also want one that is active. Look at the dates of the most recent posts. Were they today or yesterday? If not, the forum isn’t active enough for your purposes.
You want to avoid forums where all of the posts are advertisements, where http://www.freeadvertisingforum.com/ is the perfect example. They may have a huge number of members, and it may be active, but nobody is reading the posts. Instead, they are just posting advertisements.
Make sure that your posts are relevant and stay on topic. Failing to do so can get you banned from the forum, and it can also quickly ruin your reputation within your niche. When you make a post, make sure that it is grammatically correct, and that everything is spelled correctly.
Never, ever ‘flame’ people in the forums. When you flame someone, you are essentially starting a fight. This won’t be tolerated. It is, however, okay to disagree with someone in the forums, as long as it is done in a civil and polite way. Always remember your purpose – to drive traffic to your website.
When you see a post that relates to specific information on your site, you can drive people to that page within your post. This is not advertising, because you aren’t selling anything.
There is another way to use forums to your advantage. Set up a forum on your own website. You can publish your AdSense ads there, and you can build up a following.
These people will visit your forum on a regular basis, because they are interested in the topic, and they want to communicate with others who are interested in the topic.
Traffic Generation – Social Networking
Have you heard of Twitter.com ? If not, it means that you’ve been living in a cave somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with no access to any news what-so-ever.
Seriously - Twitter has exploded lately to be one of the most popular social networking sites, and it’s one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet today.
What does this mean for you? It means that you can use it to drive traffic to your AdSense site. You can take advantage of all of the traffic that Twitter gets. It’s sitting there waiting for you to come and get it!
Social Networking is an element of Web 2.0 that has really gained in popularity over the years. Everyone is doing it, and this is a great way to find and drive traffic.
Simply go to http://www.twitter.com/ and set up your profile. It’s free. You can find a multitude of free layouts for your Twitter page, and really dress it up. Be sure to post your website on your profile as well for your followers to see and visit. Once your page is ready to go, start networking with other people.
Visit other people’s pages, and follow them. When they discover that you follow them, they will in most cases follow you. Build your twitter followers’ list.
From Wikipedia:
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as “tweets”.
Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers.
Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
The key is to be active. Post your tweets several times a day, reply to your followers tweets, and find new twitter friends to follow as well.
You can find more information about social networking, and more social networking sites, by typing in ‘social networking’ in your favorite search engine. Social networking is big. It’s where people are going when they log on to their personal computers (and often their computers at work).
Traffic comes from traffic. You get traffic from the search engines not only because you rank high, but because that search engine gets traffic. You get traffic from forum marketing because the forums that you participate in get traffic.
Since traffic essentially comes from traffic, you need to make social networking a part of your overall traffic generation strategy – because the social networking sites have tons of traffic.
Be careful! Social Networking is fun, and you can find that you spend too much time doing it, and not pay attention to other promotional techniques. This is a mistake. Make sure that you participate regularly, but on a schedule. Have a starting and stopping time before you login to the site! Remember your purpose.
I’ve found the perfect guide on how to use Twitter to generate traffic, which will take you by the hand and guide you through all the pitfalls...
Twitter Traffic Swarm
( http://www.six-bucks.com/prod9jun15 )
Traffic Generation - Social Bookmarking
The potential in Social Bookmarking has increased dramatically during 2007.
“You need Social Bookmarking!”
Social bookmarking is a key element of Web 2.0, and it is a great way to get a great deal of traffic, in a very short amount of time. It is very easy and fast to do, and it’s also free.
Social bookmarking sites are essentially places where people who are registered can list – or bookmark – their favorite sites. Those bookmarks are shared with all other users of the social bookmarking site as well. Millions of people use these sites on a daily basis.
Here is what you do. You go to http://www.onlywire.com/ and register. Once you’ve registered and logged in, you will be presented with what looks like a form. This is actually a list of social bookmarking sites, and you need to open up each of those sites (in a new page or tab) and register with them.
Go back to the page at onlywire.com and put in the username and password you used for each of those sites, and click the save button. Now, follow the directions on the site, and move the onlywire.com icon up into your toolbar. You are ready to start social bookmarking!
Go to each page on your website. Click the icon in your toolbar, and you will be brought to a page at onlywire.com. Fill in the information, tagging that page with the keywords that are relevant to it. Hit the submit button. Onlywire.com instantly sends that bookmark, along with its tags (i.e. keywords), to all of those social bookmarking sites.
Do that for each page on your site, and each time you add a new page to your site. Now, when other members of those social bookmarking sites are looking for information, they go to their favorite social bookmarking site, type in their keyword, and if it is a keyword that you used, your site pops up in the results. Again, you get traffic fairly fast from social bookmarking.
It takes approximately one hour to get fully set up for social bookmarking, but bookmarking one page takes less than one minute. So, even if you have a twenty page website, it will only take you an hour and twenty minutes to get fully set up, and get each of those pages bookmarked.
You can also ask others to add your page to their favorite social bookmarking site. Unlike search engines, where there are a variety of factors in play that determine how high you rank, with the social bookmarking sites, when more people add your site to their bookmarks at the social networking sites, the higher your page appears in the search results at those sites.
You can’t pay them for a higher listing. So, ask friends and relatives to bookmark your site, and also post an invitation to do this on your website directly as well.
You will also be building inbound links to your site, which will aid in search engine optimization. Remember that these sites are considered ‘important’ by the search engines, which makes those inbound links very valuable.
Note that many people now use social bookmarking sites to find information that they are interested in more than they use search engines. The search engines seem to have become polluted with advertisements that may not even be related to the keywords.
For a more visual approach to social bookmarking, here are some videos that I highly recommend...
The Tag & Ping Video Tutorial
( http://www.six-bucks.com/prodoct12th/prodb/ )
Traffic Generation – Google Adwords
Some AdSense publishers use Google AdWords to drive traffic to their sites. Now, in case you didn’t know, Google AdWords is the program that supplies the ads that you are showing on your site with Google AdSense. Does it make sense to use AdWords to promote an AdSense site? In some cases, it does – it’s called “Adsense Arbitrage”
It is tricky, however. Remember that you are targeting high paying keywords. This means that if you target those same keywords with your own AdWords campaign, you would not only be paying a large amount of money, you would also run the risk of not having the money that you earn from AdSense cover the cost of your AdWords ads.
Here is the secret. First, set a budget for your AdWords campaign that you can afford to pay, regardless of your AdSense income. Next, don’t choose the same keywords for your AdWords ads as you do for your AdSense site. Now you are probably wondering how that would work out.
Let’s say that your website is focused on the topic of weight loss for diabetic women. You could target a lower paying keyword for your AdWords campaign, such as diabetes or diabetic supplies. Again, it is tricky, and it does take some thought.
It is vital that you keep a close eye on your ad campaigns and your clicks. You can easily see how much you’ve spent, and how much you’ve earned in relation to what you have spent. If you are spending more than you are earning, you need to rethink using Google AdWords, or tweak and tune until you are earning more than you spend.
Aside from that, setting up a Google AdWords campaign is very easy. You simply sign up for the program, write your ad, choose your keywords, set your budget, set how much you are willing to pay for each click, and activate the ad to run.
While you are targeting different keywords, those keywords may be relevant enough to your site for the ad to appear on your own site! You don’t want this to happen. Go into your AdSense account, and using the filter, exclude your site from appearing in ads on your site.
You can target your own keywords with your AdWords ads also, but again, this is tricky, and you need to make sure that you are bidding low for those keywords. That, in turn, gets you less traffic, but with a budget set, Google will work to get your ad clicked on each day until the daily budget has been met.
Ideally, you should not use Google AdWords to promote a Google AdSense site until you have a thorough understanding of how each program works, and you are sure that you can generate more income than you are spending on the AdWords ads.
Again, use caution, and remember that you will be paying for each click that you receive.
Also, take advantage of free credits for AdWords. Google offers free credits for signing up, and you can elect to take surveys and such for which you will be given credits as well.
These credits can add up, and you should take advantage of them whenever possible.
It is important to note that if you are going to pay for traffic, you should not waste that traffic. That’s why you should always make sure to capture your visitors email; building an opt-in list, so that you can recycle that traffic!
To build an opt-in list, you need an Autoresponder, such as Aweber.com and you need to put code on every single page for people to sign up for your list. Once someone signs up, you can bring them back to your site over and over again through email marketing.
Recommended Resource: Learn how to use master Google Adwords with Steven Holdaway, owner of GMoneyPro.com
GMoney Pro
( http://click-here-for.info/on/GMoneyPro )
Traffic Generation – SEO
Last, but certainly not least...
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, plays an important role in advertising a website. This is how you get a higher listing in the search results, when keywords that are relevant to your website are searched for. The more optimized your site is, the higher it will be in the search engine results.
This brings what is known as natural search traffic to your website. Natural search traffic means that someone found your site in the search engine results because it was naturally listed high enough for them to find it. You didn’t pay to get it listed higher.
There are two types of SEO: on site and offsite. Off site is the easiest to explain, and all it entails is getting inbound links to your site. This means that you get a link to your site listed on other people’s websites.
However, they must be quality links for the search engines to pay any attention to them. You want to get your link on sites that are important. The search engine considers sites that have a high Google page rank, and a low Alexa rank important.
The more quality inbound links you get, the more important your own site becomes, as far as the search engines are concerned. Above all, do not use link farms, and avoid reciprocal linking (i.e exchange links). You can get your link on sites by participating in the forums with a signature file, or by commenting on blogs and such.
Another way to get more links is to participate in N-Way Link Exchange Services, that enables you to exchange links without having to go looking for webmasters willing to exchange links. These services does not do rely on or support reciprocal linking, but rather on 1-way linking, and 3-way linking schemes.
I highly recommend getting all three of these services – I use them myself and without them you wouldn’t have found this free ebook on adsense…
1waylinks.net
3waylinks.net
mywaylinks.net
.. and make sure to read all the testimonials - Awesome!
When you are getting links on other sites, mix it up. Don’t just link to your main page all the time. Search engines become more interested when they see multiple sites linking to various pages on your site, instead of just the main one. Build inbound links slowly. Search engines become suspicious when you get too many inbound links too fast!
There are numerous elements of on site SEO. First, you want very clean HTML code. Search engines don’t like messy code that contains numerous errors. Use an HTML code validator to check your code. Make sure to put javascript and style sheet code in separate include files.
Make sure that you use your keywords appropriately. First, you should have a keyword density of 2 to 3%. If there are 1200 words on the page, your keyword should appear 24 to 36 times in that content.
Use your keywords in all ‘alt’ tags. There are alt tags for images, tables, and links. Also use your keywords in the ‘title’ tag which is in the ‘head’ tag at the top of the code. Search engines love links. Remember this. Do some internal linking in your content, using text links.
When linking, avoid linking words like ‘here’ or ‘click here.’ This does nothing for SEO. Instead, for example if your keyword was weight loss, you might have a link that says ‘weight loss information for women over 40.’ Make sure that you put your keywords in bold letters, and use the H1 or H2 tags for your titles and subtitles, which should also contain your keywords.
Build a site map, upload it to your server, and link to it on all of your pages. Search engines love site maps. In fact, Google makes it easy to create a free site map that you can use for your site.
Do not use any hidden text. Do not spam your keywords. Use them in natural ways. Write natural sentences. Search engines are very hard to fool, and if you use ‘black hat’ SEO techniques, the search engine spiders will simply stop visiting, and your site won’t get listed!
Finally, do not use any content on your site that can be found elsewhere. All of your content must be original, or the search engine will view it as duplicate content, and ignore it.
Keys To Success
There are numerous factors that will determine your success in the Google AdSense program. There is no luck to it. You can be the most unlucky person in the world, and still succeed with Google AdSense. It’s all about understanding exactly how to run your Google AdSense Empire.
Note the word ‘empire.’ That’s where a great deal of your success will come from. If you just have one site that you run Google AdSense on, your chances for success are very limited.
You will have to drive huge amounts of traffic to that site in order to make Google AdSense worth your time and effort. Ideally, you should have numerous sites on a variety of topics.
Choosing the right topics – the highest paying topics – is also another factor for AdSense success. If you have ten sites, all with keywords that only pay five cents a click, you will need to keep your traditional job, or look for another source of income.
You will make a little money, but not enough to live on. Choose topics based on the highest paying keywords for success.
Choosing topics that have a high amount of searches is also a factor, but there is a trick to it. For instance, weight loss is a highly searched for topic, but it’s too varied, and too competitive.
Instead, narrow your focus on weight loss, and choose a niche within a niche, such as Hoodia weight loss, or weight loss for diabetic women. While you may earn a little less per click, you will be able to focus more greatly on getting traffic to the site.
Your ad units, ad links, and search boxes should match your site for best results. If the ads stand out too much, they will get fewer clicks. AdSense publishers have been testing ad placement and palettes since the the AdSense program started, and you would do well to follow what that research has found.
Traffic is the next factor for determining Google AdSense success. Without traffic, there is no success.
You need to use all of the proven traffic driving techniques at your disposal to drive as much traffic to your site as possible, on a continual basis. Content may be king, but if that is so, Traffic is the Pope, and even the king answers to the Pope.
Another factor for Google AdSense success is continuing to build. You need to continually add new content to your site, and create new sites. Keep an eye on the most frequently searched keywords.
Publish sites for at least the top ten, and then continue to build that empire. Even if you just added one page a month to each site, you could still keep it under control and have time to do other things.
For best results, get a server that will allow you to host unlimited domains. This will make it easier to keep track of everything and to update sites. Also use content management systems for your sites, where you can easily add content, without having to design a new page. Blogs are also great for AdSense.
Writing fresh content is time consuming, and buying fresh content can get expensive. If you find yourself in this dilemma, purchase private label rights articles, and pay a writer to rewrite them.
You will find that the content is produced much faster, and much cheaper. You could also opt to rewrite the content yourself.
The most important success factor for AdSense, however, is how much time and effort you are willing to put into it. The less time you put into it, the less success you will have. The more you put into it, the more success you will have, as long as you are taking the other factors into consideration.
My site MakeMoney-1.com offers not only Adsense Ready Sites, but also lots of Private Label Rights (PLR) material on various topics, Unmetered Hosting with Unlimited Domains and tons of eBooks and Tools with Master Resell Rights! You can even purchase domains for a low yearly cost!
http://www.MakeMoney-1.com
Keys To Failure
“Help! Google banned me from the AdSense program!”
This is a common cry that you will hear on AdSense related forums. Yet another person who failed to read and adhere to the Google AdSense program policies. It happens every single day. Will it happen to you?
The worst mistake you can possibly make in the Google AdSense program is not reading the rules, or not following those rules. So, if you have not already done so, stop what you are doing, and go read the Google AdSense Program Policy, as well as the Webmasters Guidelines that Google has provided. These are found within your Google AdSense account.
Other than breaking the rules and getting banned, there are also numerous mistakes that people make that cause them to fail with Google AdSense. The biggest mistake is failing to do research before choosing a topic for your site.
If you’ve chosen a topic that few people are interested in, you will fail. It won’t matter how nice or informative your site is. If people aren’t interested, they aren’t going to search for it, and they aren’t going to visit.
Failing to blend the Google AdSense ads in with your site is another common mistake. Learn to use the tools that Google gives you. Use the palette to make your ads look like content on your pages.
For example, use the ad link ads above or below – or even in the middle of – your navigational links on your page. This will get them more clicks. See below for an example from the Adware/Spyware site:
Also, use the limits that Google has set on the ad units, ad link unit, search units, and referral units on each and every page of your site. The more you have on there, the more clicks you will receive.
Keep in mind my suggestion on fewer ad units; the highest paying ads are always shown, and if you have fewer ad blocks, it will make you more money per click. Your site’s design and layout will ultimately decide what’s best – you need to test it to make sure.
Another common mistake that people make is assuming that they can hurry up and get rich from Google AdSense sites and throwing together sites in two minutes. While you do want an empire of sites, those sites must be valuable to the visitors.
They must be worth visiting. In fact, even if your purpose is to earn income from Google AdSense, AdSense rules specifically state that you are not to build sites with the specific purpose of running AdSense ads.
Tweaking and tuning is vital to your success. Let’s say that you’ve done the research, chosen a well searched for, high paying niche, and built a fabulous site.
You’ve placed AdSense code on the site, and you are getting a good amount of traffic to that site, but your ads aren’t being clicked on. Something is wrong somewhere and it is your job as an AdSense publisher to find the problem and fix it.
Then there are those that do have AdSense success, and act too quickly on it. One month, they become a member of the ‘UPS Club,’ which is the AdSense publishers term for people that make so much money from AdSense that their checks are literally delivered via UPS, not postal mail.
So, you become a member of the UPS club, and you quit your day job.
That’s a huge mistake. First, Google could change their rules at the drop of a hat, and your AdSense revenue could fall dramatically. Many things can go wrong.
That doesn’t mean that AdSense can’t replace your income, it can if you do it right, but because things can change so fast, it is wise to have a years worth of salary equal to what you earn from your traditional job, in the bank, before you quit that job and depend on AdSense.
If you do this, and Google makes changes that have a negative impact on your income, you will still be okay financially until you can make changes to your sites that will get the AdSense income flowing again.
How To Increase Adsense Revenue
There is a great deal more to making money from AdSense than just putting up a site and putting Google AdSense ad code on those pages. In fact, successful AdSense publishers spend several hours per week – after the site is built and the ads are running – ensuring that they are getting the absolute most possible revenue from those AdSense sites, by using a variety of optimization techniques.
First, use the channels feature in your AdSense account. This allows you to assign different sites to different channels, so that you are able to see which topics/sites are the most profitable for you.
With this information, you can easily focus more time and energy on those sites that are making the money, and less time and energy on those that are not.
Successful publishers also like to experiment. They can create customized reports in their AdSense account, and then try different colors, different ad formats, and different placement to see what is getting the best results for their sites.
You should do this, and continue doing this, until you feel that you are getting the best possible results for each of your websites.
What works on one website may not work well on another. However, according to Google and many successful AdSense publishers, placing a rectangular ad unit just below your headline, but above the main content of your page, will yield higher clicks. Also, placing link ads in, above, or below your navigational links will also increase clicks.
According to Google, if you elect to display image ads, you will have more advertisers bidding to have their ads show specifically on your pages.
This usually results in more money per click, and this is definitely worth looking into for your site. Make sure you use Google Channels and reports to find out if it is working out well for you or not!
Make sure that you disable on-site advertiser sign up. This is how advertisers can elect to advertise specifically on your site. This link will in most instances NOT make you any money when clicked on, and thus should be removed.
“Basic rule: - only use links that makes you money!”
More experienced AdSense publishers have learned to use section targeting. This allows them to enclose specific parts of their content within tags that causes
Google to pay special attention to that section, and serve ads accordingly. This will help to keep the ads that are being served very specific.
If you publish a blog, as opposed to static web pages, you will need to do things a bit differently. You can tweak your template to have the ad code appear in the basic layout of your pages, but you also need to add the code at the bottom of each post that you make.
This way, on your main page, where more than one post appears, visitors will see the ads at the bottom of each of those posts.
It is always a good idea to find out what works for others. Again, each site is different, but this will save you a great deal of time in researching. Become a regular visitor to AdSense related forums.
There are many out there to choose from, and you can find a lot of useful information from other publishers who have already done the testing and research for you in many cases.
Believe it or not, Google wants you to succeed. When you succeed, they succeed. Read all of the information inside of your Google AdSense account. There you will find optimization tips and other advice that will help you get the highest possible profit from your Google AdSense ads.
One part that you should pay special attention to is the Heap Map, which visualizes where most clicks occur on a given site:
Here are nine more things that you can do to improve your AdSense revenue:
1. Build An Empire: There are two ways to succeed with AdSense. You either have to have a very high traffic site, or you have to have a multitude of low to mid traffic sites. Most publishers have the latter.
When you build your sites, your first order of business should be to get them listed in the major search engines. However, you should also get listed in more specialized directories as well, and use traffic generation techniques such as article marketing, forum marketing, social networking, and social bookmarking.
2. Learn To Use Google Analytics: Google Analytics will give you a ton of information about the traffic that comes to your site. You can use that information to make adjustments and additions to your site, which will increase your AdSense revenue.
If you don’t make changes to your site, as analytics indicates are needed, you won’t make as much revenue as you would if you do make changes. Find out how people travel through your website to get better results.
http://www.google.com/analytics
3. Choose The Right Keywords: Choose topics based on keywords that get a high number of searches each month, and then check the amount that advertisers are paying per click for those keywords. Choose the popular ones that pay the highest, and then focus in on more defined niches within that niche.
4. Add Fresh Content: Adding fresh content on a regular basis keeps people coming back to your site, and also gives you the opportunity to have more defined ads appear on those pages.
For example, if you have a site that was built for weight loss for those who are wheelchair bound, you might have a page on there for exercises for these people. This page will have the ability to target ads that are of interest to wheelchair bound people that need exercises that they can do.
5. Choose the Right AdSense Ad Unit Format: There are three ad units that seem to work well, regardless of the topic or layout of the site overall. Those three are the 336 x 280 rectangle, the 160 x 600 skyscraper, and the 300 x 250 rectangle.
6. Put Enough Ads On The Page: Google allows you to have three ad units, one link ad, two search boxes, and two referral units on each and every page of your site. Use them, but be careful not to spam your site with
them! Some gurus may say “The more ads you have, the more money you will make”, however that is not always true...
7. Put The Ads In The Right Place: Start by adding link ads to your navigation menu. These will get a large number of clicks. Other recommended actions is to place ad units under headlines, a skyscraper on the right side of the page, and another rectangle ad at the bottom of each page, just under the text.
8. Set up Your Palette: Your ads need to blend in. Set up your palette so that the border color matches the background of your web page. The background color of your ad units should also match the background of your web page. The link color should match the color of links on your page.
Finally, the text color should match the color of text that you use on your page. I have found that the normal black text on a white background works especially well on content sites. Furthermore, always keep the caption link blue, because most visitors are used to links being blue, right?
9. Use the Google AdSense Preview Tool: You can find this tool inside your Google AdSense account. Use it to see what ads will appear on your page, before they actually appear. This will help you to tweak and tune your pages until it is displaying the ads that you want.
Final Words
Here we are at the end of this report and You’ve learned a great deal. The new found wisdom will definitely make you ready to start cashing in with your own Google AdSense sites. Let’s go over five vital points that I’ve covered...
1. You need more than one site, in most cases. One low traffic site is not going to yield you more than twenty bucks a month or so. If you choose high paying topics, you may net about a hundred bucks a month from one site. Ideally, you should have at least ten sites – but preferably, you will have a great deal more than that!
Work out a schedule for yourself. Publish a certain number of new sites each month, and add a certain number of pages to existing sites each month. Keep adding until you’ve filled up the amount of time that you are willing to spend on your Google AdSense Empire. Develop processes that you can follow over and over again for success.
2. You must follow Google’s Rules at all times! This is a huge pitfall for many. First, Google has regulations for your site, as to how functional it should be. Second, Google has rules pertaining to what your site may not include. Third, Google has rules about incentives for getting people to click on your ads, and they definitely have rules against clicking on your own ads.
All of these rules are in place to protect the integrity of the program – not to prevent you from making money. Before you publish your first AdSense website, go and read the AdSense Program Policy, the Google Terms of Service, and the Webmaster Guidelines.
3. You need traffic. You should be working on bringing traffic to your site each and every day. Write and submit articles, participate in the forums, get into social networking and social bookmarking. See if Google AdWords will work out for you. Do everything that you possibly can to bring traffic to your site.
If you have no traffic, you have no Google AdSense revenue. It is as simple as that. Most AdSense publishers divide their time, spending about twenty percent of their time adding to existing sites, or building new ones, and spending the other 80% of their time promoting their existing sites.
4. You must keep track of results, and compare results. You need to not only make changes to your pages, and track those results, but you must also track your advertising efforts as well.
By testing and tracking results for your pages, you will find out what ad formats, ad placement, and ad colors work best for your site. By testing and tracking promotional efforts, you will be able to see what techniques are working best in driving traffic to your site.
When you know what works, you can focus your time and energy on those activities, and leave the techniques that don’t work behind. This not only saves time, it increases AdSense revenue.
5. You can make a fulltime living from Google AdSense, but it takes time and effort. You apply for Google AdSense, get approved, and get the AdSense code on your site. The first day, you make ten bucks. You quickly add that up, and see that if you made ten bucks each day, you would make 300 per month from one site. You quickly add again, and see that if you had ten sites, all making 300 a month, you could quit your traditional job.
Unfortunately, that may or may not be true. Before you quit your job, make sure that you have a years worth of salary saved in the bank. This will prevent financial ruin in the event that Google makes program changes that affect your AdSense income.
Overall, if you are seriously considering ways of making a profit from running an online business, or are already running one and wish to expand, then it may well be worth your while taking a more in depth look at just what the Adsense program can offer you.
Good Luck!
Anders Eriksson

HOW TO GET A TOP RANKING IN GOOGLE AND YAHOO THE D.I.Y GUIDE!

2011-01-08T10:05:00.000-08:00

HOW TO GET A TOP RANKING
IN GOOGLE AND YAHOO
THE D.I.Y GUIDE!
By
Sean McPheat
http://www.lifecoachwebsolutions.com
Contents
Introduction………..4
The Google and Yahoo monopoly……..5
Develop your keywords………7
How Google ranks your website……….11
Page Rank………..12
Beating the competition………….14
Your website address………..17
Keywords in your text………..18
Title tags………..18
The first 25 words!…………20
Using heading tags………..21
Keyword density………..22
Link popularity……….24
Manual link collection………..26
Submitting your site to Google………..29
A step by step success plan………….31
ALGORITHIM UPDATES
For those of you that are familiar with the goings on at Google you might have heard
about the “Florida Update” that took place in November 2003
Just as we name hurricanes after peoples names, the update called “Florida” was so
intense and severe that millions of sites worldwide lost their rankings in the biggest
shake up of rankings in Googles history.
What was the objective of this shake up?
Well, it was basically to get rid of highly optimized websites.
So, when you are reading through the material in this ebook bare in mind that if you
OVER OPTIMIZE your site to get into the top 5 rankings, Google WILL penalize you
for this.
But as long as you follow my instructions within this publication and do not abuse all
of the information that you are going to learn – you will be okay and soon you will
be enjoying the high rankings that you are after!
After all, Google wants to return the most relevant results for each search term.
So, if you offer a quality product, with quality content and do not over optimize your
site – you will be onto a winner.
Google just wants to penalize those people that cheat and try to get around the
system at your expense.
All of the information within this ebook is based upon what Google recommends that
you do to your websites to ensure that you have high rankings.
Through years of following these guidelines myself I have been able to offer content
rich, relevant websites that enjoy very high rankings in Google and Yahoo – and now
you can do the same!
Another important note is that YAHOO have finally broken away from Google and are
using their own search technology to rank sites in their listings.
Although it is still very early days I have added some of my thoughts as to what the
new algo is all about.
Watch this space for more info when I have proven some results
I hope you enjoy the ebook and good luck!
Introduction
Let’s face it right up front!
If you don’t get traffic coming to your website you have got no chance of
making a profit online.
No matter how good your product is, and it could be the very best in the
world, if you don’t get people coming to your site so that you can sell them
your product – you’re not going to be around for long.
Then you have to think about where to advertise your product.
Should you use banners, emails, search engines, links?
The list is endless!
Then you have to think about what search engines to use, what banners etc
Let me put this as simple as I can:
GETTING A TOP 5 SEARCH RANKING IN GOOGLE AND YAHOO WILL
GENERATE MORE TRAFFIC THAN ALL OF YOUR OTHER
INTERNET MARKETING EFFORTS COMBINED!
And that is what this report is all about!
I’ve been there and done that and got the T-shirt.
I can optimise websites for them to get into the top 5 rankings of Google AND
Yahoo no sweat.
You see, it’s easy when you know what to do!!!!!!
AND NOW YOU CAN DO THE SAME!
Throughout this ebook I am going to tell you exactly what you must do to
your website and marketing efforts in order to get that TOP 5 ranking you so
desperately want.
And along with a TOP 5 ranking comes SALES!!!
LOTS OF THEM!
So, grab yourself a coffee and let’s begin….
THE GOOGLE AND YAHOO MONOPOLY
So why is it so vital to get a TOP 5 ranking in GOOGLE and YAHOO?
Well, 78% of all searches in the world are made on either GOOGLE or
YAHOO!
Google 35.11% 112 Million
Yahoo 32.79% 105 Million
MSN 12.00% 39 Million
AOL 9.00% 29 Million
Overture 5.60% 18 Million
AltaVista 1.74% 6 Million
Lycos 1.57% 5 Million
Netscape 1.10% 4 Million
LookSmart .59% 2 Million
AllTheWeb .21% 1 Million
Hotbot .10% Less than 1 Million
Open Directory .01% Less than 1 Million
FindWhat .0028% Less than 1 Million
Ask Jeeves / Temoa
Total 99.72% 321 Million
Source - Wordtracker
AOL and NETSCAPE use Google’s search technology so they will come up with
the same results.
I constantly use the fact that “I am ranked number 1 in Google and AOL” in
my sales literature for some of the Directory’s I own – it’s just great publicity.
So when you get a top ranking in Google, you will be the same ranking in
AOL and NETSCAPE as well!
Winner!
A QUICK UPDATE ON THE NEW YAHOO SEARCH ALGORITHIM
As you are probably aware Yahoo have broken free of using Google’s listings.
Their new technology is called YahooSlurp.
Here are a couple of early indications as to what you should be doing, as I
prove the new results on my own listings you will then be the first to know.
However, I have kept 95% of my top listings with the current information that
I have given you in the ebook – so just follow what I say and you will be
okay!
Here are some quick tips:
* YahooSlurp will work a lot like GoogleBot in that it will follow every HREF
link on found a website. YahooSlurp will NOT follow SRC links such as images
or FRAMES. When optimizing a site that uses FRAMES, correct use of the
<noframes> tag will be necessary.
* YahooSlurp can follow dynamic links but Yahoo is advising webmasters to
post static pages with HREF (text) links directed to specific sections featuring
dynamic content. This tells us that the use of a sitemap will continue to be an
SEO Best Practice technique.
* Yahoo will respect common ROBOTS.TXT statements. For more information
on ROBOTS.TXT files, please visit:
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html
* Paying to get into Inktomi database should attract more attention from
YahooSlurp. I am pretty sure if YahooSlurp will find your site if you don't pay
however paying will buy you much greater frequency of visits from the Slurp
spider.
* Inktomi is very old-school when it comes to Keyword densities, keyword
arrangement and simple-site structure. Optimizing for Inktomi is a lot like
optimizing for AltaVista was a few years back (without the leader-pages and
gateways that were once so popular).
* Yahoo loves larger sites with many pages so bear this in mind
* Yahoo also pays a lot of attention to how well optimized your pages are –
keyword density, headings, titles etc
What we are now going to do is go through a step by step approach of what
you need to do in order to beat your competition into the TOP 5 position for
GOOGLE and YAHOO.
DEVELOP YOUR KEYWORDS
Whether you are starting with a brand new site or already have an existing
one, you need to spend a little time on the keywords that you want your site
to be ranked in the TOP 5 for.
It is usually best to select from 1-3 of these.
Choosing your words wisely is very important.
After all, it is no good getting a TOP 5 listing for a word that is either not
relevant to your site or one that no-one is searching for!
Get a blank piece of paper and brainstorm all of the terms that you think a
prospective customer/visitor to your site would enter into the search engines.
Write as many as you can think of.
Don’t limit this to yourself either!
Get friends, family, colleagues and associates to help you out.
Sometimes they come out with some real beauties!
Why?
Probably because they are not as close to your business as you are and they
can really take a step back and put themselves in the shoes of your
customers.
Think about the following:
• What is the purpose of your site? List down some keywords of phrases
that best describes your site
• If someone were looking for your site, what keywords would they most
likely enter into a search engine?
• Put yourself in the position of someone searching for your site. What are
they like? How do they think?
There is a very good tool for helping you find your keywords:
Check it out: WORDTRACKER
Got your keywords?
Okay - The next step is to see how many times people are searching for these
on the internet and to see what your competition is like for these words.
The Overture Search Suggestion Tool is probably one of the most important
resources I use when optimizing my websites.
What is it?
Well, you type in a search term and the tool tells you how many searches
were made on the web for that keyword in the last month!
Here is the link for the tool:
FOR US SEARCH TERMS
http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ays/index.jhtml
FOR UK SEARCH TERMS
http://www.content.overture.com/d/UKm/ays/index.jhtml
Look for “search term suggestion tool”
This will give you a great idea of how popular your keywords are.
Just enter your keyword and the suggestion tool will tell you how many times
that has been searched for in the past month.
Also, type in your keyword into the GOOGLE search engine and see what it
comes up – this will be your competition!
Note down what sites come up for each keyword and how many sites there
are in total in GOOGLE for that keyword. This is normally in the TOP right
hand corner when it says:
Results 1 - 10 of about 661,000. Search took 0.14 seconds
Results 1 - 10 of about 661,000. Search took 0.14 seconds
That means that the results showing for your keyword are the top ten sites
out of 661,000 in GOOGLE for that keyword.
Do this research for each of your keywords as we are going to use this
information later to get you that TOP 5 position.
Produce a table like this for each keyword:
KEYWORD = WIDGETS
DATE: 11/11/11
SEARCHED FOR IN OVERTURE: 25,265 times in October
NUMBER OF WEBSITES IN TOTAL: 661,000
Website:Search ratio: 661,000/25,265 = 26-1
TOP 10 WEBSITES:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
COMPLETE THE ABOVE FOR EACH OF YOUR KEYWORDS
----------------------------------------------------------------
After you have completed your analysis look for the keywords with the
highest number of searches and the best WEBSITE:SEARCH ratio as this
means that there is less competition around for you to beat!
Okay – got your keywords?
Happy with them?
Let’s move on.
Side Bar
Please make sure that you bookmark the download page as I will be posting
amendments and additions to the ebook as and when they happen.
--------------------------------------------------------
Of course, you may want to get a professional to do everything for you to get
your site to the top.
If that’s the case why not drop me an email and I’ll give you a quote.
Sean.mcpheat@ntlworld.com
Just send me your website address and your 3 keywords and I’ll take a look
at your site and get back to you.
We offer a number of SMALL BUSINESS optimization packages – ask us today
for details.
Here are some satisfied customers:
“Hi Sean, I am happy to confirm that after carrying out your advice on setting out
my website it went from 2/10 to 4/10 in a day without any links being added, I am
now in the process of adding links, which should further increase my page rank, I
also appreciated the rapidity of your replies for support. OK Sean next time you fly
out of Heathrow give us a call for some free car parking!!!”
Malcolm B
Director
www.heathrowcarparking.info
"Sean, I have found your service to be invaluable. I would highly recommend your
services to anyone interested in getting to the top if google.com. I am now ranked
NUMBER 1 in over 5 keywords and making more money than ever
before - thanks Sean!"
Sincerely,
Adam Ciboch
http://www.colspringshomes.com
HOW GOOGLE RANKS YOUR WEBSITE
So, how does GOOGLE determine what site’s get into the TOP 5?
Well, it goes on a number of factors:
• How many sites link to yours
• How many pages your website has
• Words in your title tag
• Keywords showing in links
• Words on bold
• Words in URL
• More Weighting is given to the first 25 words on the page
• Having greater than 300 words on your homepage
• Keyword density
• Google page rank
There are scores of others but these are the most important.
So armed with the knowledge above, your keywords and your competition
listed from the previous chapter – IT IS NOW TIME TO GO TO WORK!
The importance of link popularity
GOOGLE places a lot of importance on how many links there are to your site
with a page rank of 4 and above.
What does page rank mean?
Well, it doesn’t mean where you are ranked in the searched engines, it means
the importance of your page according to some of Google’s chief criteria.
Each of your pages on your site gets a page rank score out of 10 with 10
being the highest.
In a way GOOGLE is saying that because you have many pages in your
website that link back to your homepage and that you have also got a lot of
links from other sites – YOUR SITE MUST BE VERY IMPORTANT and hence it
gives you are good ranking.
This is very important!
You will really struggle to get a top ranking if you do not have many quality
links coming into your site.
Do you know how many links are linking to you with a page rank of over 5?
Type this URL into the Google search box putting your website address
instead of where it says alexa.
link:http://www.alexa.com
GOOGLE Page Rank
Each month GOOGLE sends out it’s search spider called GOOGLEBOT!
What that does, through a complex series of algorithms is actually go through
all of the list criteria above and it also gives your site a PAGE RANK out of ten.
This is a measure of importance of how many sites are linking to you.
But how do you know what your rank is?
Well, to find out your rank and any other page that you surf to all you need to
do is download the GOOGLE tool bar.
http://toolbar.google.com/ - - be sure to download it with the "Advanced
features".
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU DO THIS AND I RECOMMEND
THAT YOU DO IT RIGHT NOW.
The GOOGLE tool bar looks like that above.
If you move your mouse over where it says PageRank and then keep your
mouse still, a yellow box will pop up and tell you the Google PageRank of that
page.
PageRank is on a scale of 0 to 10.
PageRank is directly related to the "quality" or "importance" of your Back
Links.
The Google website explains PageRank as:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its
vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence,
Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page
B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page
receives; it also analyses the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages
that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other
pages "important." - Google.
As you get more quality links to your site, your PageRank will increase.
--------------------------------------------------------
Downloaded your GOOGLE toolbar yet?
If you have, that’s great.
IF NOT, PLEASE DO IT NOW!
Have a look at your own page rank and then go to the websites of your
competitors’ homepages that you listed before and see what there page ranks
are.
List these down.
The next step is to see HOW MANY links are linking to your competitors
homepage.
You can do this by going to your competitors homepage and by using you
GOOGLE toolbar once again!
Click on the option that says PAGE INFO:
Then, just click on the backward links and it will tell you HOW MANY links that
website has coming into it.
Write these down next to your competitors names.
-------------------------------------------------------
BEATING YOUR COMPETITION!
The reason why you are doing this research and spying on your competitors is that
these are the guys that you have to beat into top spot!
They are there because the GOOGLEBOT has ranked them there.
So, if you use the key characteristics of HOW they have been ranked – you will soon
be there also.
But you need to be better than they are!
The sites in the top spot are there for a reason and that reason is that they have
been placed there by Google.
So look at the way their site is set up, look at how many links they have got, look at
their keyword density and match and mirror as much as you can.
If they have got a page rank of 6 – you must get enough links to make sure you
have got around that mark.
If they have got 55 backlinks – make sure you get 100!
If they have got 150 pages on their site – beat and match them!
If they have got a certain % keyword density then match that as well!
Right now before we do anything else let’s consolidate all of the information that you
have gathered so far and put them in the table on the next page:
KEYWORD:
SEARCHES:
WEBSITES:
PLACEMENT WEBSITE PAGE RANK/PAGES BACK LINKS
e.g www.msn.com
PR = 8, PAGES = 346 268
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

KEYWORDS IN YOUR WEBSITE ADDRESS
You will notice a trend that websites with medium to low competition that
have the keyword in their website address are classed as more relevant and
more important than those that do not.
And also if your search term comes first in your url i.e with no words before
it, is better.
So for example;
Let’s look at an example:
www.confidenceworld.com
And one of my keywords is “confidence”
So:
www.confidenceworld.com is better than www.worldofconfidence.com
This is because the keyword “confidence” comes before any other words.
www.confidence.com would be even better because it has no other words in
it’s name but this URL was taken when I was looking for a website address.
Key Learning from this
It might be an idea to have part or all of your keywords in your website title.
But first check the sites that are already listed in Google for your keyword.
For example:
If you search Google for the keyword confidence and there are many sites
with that term in their URL name – then you are safe.
But if the results returned that there were hardly any then you might want to
change your website address.
The jury is still out with this one after Florida and it is a case of seeing what is
there already in the rankings and then adjusting accordingly
For the best ranking just have the keyword in the title i.e
Search term is “widgets” your website address is www.widgets.com
Next best is if you have your search term at the beginning of your website
address.
Search term is “widgets” your website address is
www.widgetsmadeforyou.com
Last best is www.seanswidgets.com
You will find that some sites do not have their keyword in their address.
This is because they have such a high page rank and high number of back
links.
The page rank and links seem to take priority over everything else!
KEYWORDS IN YOUR TEXT ON THE PAGE
I mention earlier that GOOGLES search spider GOOGLEBOT comes visiting all
listed sites once a month to re-evaluate the site.
Well, how does it know what search term you want it to index your site
under?
Let’s take a look at this.
You must mention the terms and phrases that you want to get found within
your page's text.
In other words, if you are marketing a phrase, then that phrase had better be
mentioned at least once on the page to have a chance of showing up in the
results.
This is called keyword density.
You can boost your keyword density in 4 ways:
1. Keyword placement in the title <title> tag
When a web page is chosen by Google as a match for a specific search term,
the title and the first pieces of text that Google picks up are shown.
For example, when you search for “confidence building” my ConfidenceWorld
site shows up at number 1 as:
Confidence World - Confidence, confidence building, self ...
Your confidence will no longer be an issue with our free resources. Improve
your self confidence with our confidence building exercises and tools. ...
Note how I have the term “confidence building” in the top title and also in the
description/first bit of text that Google picks up.
Google places a lot of importance in this, so please please please make sure
that you include your keywords in the title and the description.
Each page of your website needs to include your keywords in the title and
description.
Let’s have a look at an example of how this can be done in practise.
Let’s assume that you run a website in confidence building and that your top
keywords and phrases are:
Confidence
Confidence building
Build Confidence
Self Confidence
Building Confidence
Let’s also assume that you have 10 pages on your site.
You could therefore spread out your keywords over the titles and descriptions
on your 10 pages.
For example:
HOMEPAGE TITLE – Confidence, confidence building, self confidence
PAGE 2 TITLE – Confidence and build confidence
PAGE 3 TITLE – Building confidence and build confidence
PAGE 4 TITLE – Confidence and self confidence
PAGE 5 TITLE – Building confidence and self confidence
PAGE 6 TITLE – Build confidence and self confidence
PAGE 7 TITLE – Confidence and building confidence
PAGE 8 TITLE – Confidence, confidence building, build confidence
PAGE 9 TITLE – Build confidence, confidence building, self confidence
PAGE 10 TITLE – Confidence
Please don’t forget that Google doesn’t really mind what order your keywords
are in as well. It doesn’t matter which one comes first in the title tag
whatsoever.
So now it’s your turn to do a little work!
Dig out your keywords and mix and match them over your webpages.
Make sure that you include them in your description tags as well.
2. The first 25 words on your page are vital
After your title and description, Google will look at the first 25 words of
readable text on your page to see whether they are included in that are not.
I assume that google thinks that:
“If KEYWORD 1 is in the title and description tags of this page and
also it is featured a couple of times in the first 25 words on the page
IT MUST BE RELEVANT to this page and I will return a search for it”
Notice how I say readable text!
Google doesn’t pick up text in graphics, JPEGS, GIFS or in FLASH.
It must be text!!!
So how do you know what Google will pick up on your page?
Well, here is a lovely tool that you can use.
http://www.delorie.com/web/ses.cgi
it’s called the search engine simulator – just type in your URL and it will
return what Google will pick up on your site.
Remember, you will want to include your keywords a couple of times within
the first 25 words on your page.
But a word of warning!
Do not just list your word 25 times!
Google has clever programmes that will penalise you for this.
3. Use <h1> and <h2> tags to emphasize keywords
One thing that Google does search for are HEADING TAGS.
So make sure that you include your keywords in them!
Heading Tags are normally used for a heading to a section on your page or a
particular paragraph.
There are a number of heading tags that you can use ranging from <h1>,
which returns large text to signify a new section through to <h6> which could
signify a sub heading.
So for example, let’s have a look at how a piece of HTML code would look for
the heading called “Confidence Building”
<p>
<h1>Confidence Building<h1>
</p>
On the page this would look like:
Confidence Building
The reason why this is so important is because Google will hunt out these
<h1> headings and will then pick up your keywords between these headings.
It will view your text between headings as being more significant than others
Some homework for you!
Are you using <h1> and <h2> headings on your pages?
Or are you using just <font> or <b> tags?
Look down your pages and see where a natural heading could fit and put
them in!
We’ll cover off the text in between these headings in a moment but for now
go to every page and make the changes.
Do this before we move on!
4. Keyword Density
So what is keyword density?
Put simply, it is the number of times that your keywords how up on your
page.
This is usually expressed in percentage terms – for example 9%.
This means that for every 100 words on your page your keyword is
mentioned 9 times.
In between your heading tags you should have text rich content that includes
your keywords.
Try to attain as close a keyword density ratio to the top sites for your
keyword as you can.
Once again I can give you a nice little tool that will do the job for you!
Check out:
http://www.webjectives.com/keyword.htm
Simply enter your website address into the interface and put in your keyword
and it will tell you what the keyword density ratio is!
Clever hey!
This is a truly awesome resource and it will save you many along night
counting the words up like I used to do before I came across it!
Picture this:
GOOGLEBOT visits your site.
You have “confidence” in your url www.confidenceworld.com
You also have “confidence” in your title and description
You have it a number times in your <h1> headings
It notes that the term “confidence” is shown 23 times on your homepage
which equates to 9% of the total text words on your page.
You have a page rank of 6 out of 10
You have 1,234 links coming into your site.
YOU ARE IN THE TOP 5 BABY!!!
Don’t forget, your stats above will be compared to your competition
and winner takes all!
A WORD OF WARNING
GOOGLEBOT has “cheat” mechanisms contained within it so you cannot just
contain one page with just your keyword listed 1000 times or the same
websites linking to you over and over again from different pages.
IF YOU DO THIS YOU WILL GET PENALISED!
Another myth is about webdesign.
Don’t think just because you have fancy designs and pictures that GOOGLE
will reward you for it because it doesn’t!
GOOGLEBOT can not view pictures.
It can not see if the site looks "Pretty" or "not".
It also doesn't read Meta Tags the way that the older search engines once
did.. Meta Tags are not bad, but they are mostly a thing of the past.
CONTENT RULES!
Google just loves content.
The more pages you have and the greater number of pages you have with
plenty of text the better!
Sites with fewer than say 50 pages will struggle to get to the very top of the
rankings but will still show strong results if you get many backlinks coming in
your site (but you will have to get hundreds of these)
On your homepage or on a page that is just 1 click away from your homepage
list all of the pages on your site as a sitemap.
This will ensure that Google will pick up how many pages your site has in
total and will then give you a big tick in the box!!!!
This is a very important point.
If you have not got many pages in your site Google says to itself
“This is not providing the end user with a lot of information” and you will not
score so many ranking points as a site that had say 238 pages.
Google sees this as that you are providing more to the end user than the
other site.
Key Learning Points
• Make sure you have between 300 – 500 words on your homepage
• Include your keywords on your homepage
• How many times should you include your keywords?
Well, check out this piece of kit -
http://www.webjectives.com/keyword.htm
It works out how many times a keyword is found on any page.
Put in your competitors URL and keyword and see what the density ratio
is.
For example, they might have 650 words on their homepage and the
keyword is mentioned 25 times. That has a density ratio of 3.84%. Make
sure yours is similar to that
• Google seems to put more emphasis on the first 25 words on a page and
how many times your keyword features within this. Once again, it is best
to check out the competition and then match this. You can do this by
visiting the search engine simulator - http://www.delorie.com/web/ses.cgi
• Don’t put keywords in fancy gif or jpeg images – GOOGLEBOT will just
ignore them!
• Have lots and lots of pages!
GETTING A HIGH LINK POPULARITY RATING
Google places a lot of weight for ranking your website on the number of links
that are linking back to your site.
This is know as link popularity.
But it is no good if you get 20,000 sites linking back to yours!
Why? I hear you cry!
Well, each site that links back to yours has to contain quality content and
have a good page rank itself.
A good page rank is anything which is 5 and above out of 10.
Sites that have a page rank of 6+ are awesome!
Do you remember how to know how many sites are linking back to you?
Type this into the Google search box:
Link:www.yoururl.com
Please note that Google will only return those sites with a Page Rank of 4 and
above.
Anything less than 5 does not count!
Google wants quality!
By now I hope that I have explained the importance of link popularity for a
high ranking in GOOGLE.
Improving the amount of links coming into your site is usually a lot of hard
work if you do it manually.
Some of the links pages that I see are just crammed with lists of links.
GOOGLE does not like this!
It is not adding value to the site and hence they penalise sites who just spam
links like this.
GOOGLE likes a well managed links programme with links that are similar to
yours.
What do I mean by this?
Well, if you run a training website you will want to link to and get links from
other training companys.
Relevance is key here!
Some call this link neighbourhoods.
So when selecting your link partners think to yourself “If someone came to
my site looking for training, what other sites would they want to get look at?”
And then ask these sites to exchange links with you.
One way links are even more powerful – i.e links that just come into your site.
Also, would you like to know what your link popularity is like for search
engines link ALTA VISTA, MSN AOL AND HOTBOT?
Check out: http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
It is also good practise to have your keyword in the text that is linking back to you.
So instead of just getting links coming into your site like your bog standard url
include your keywords in a short statement then hyperlink these back.
For the Life Coaching Studio I have:
Life coaching resources
You will see that “life coaching” is one of my keywords.
But don’t call all of the links the same, mix them up – so they could be:
One stop shop for life coaching
Life Coaching Studio
Top Life Coaching
Do you get what I mean?
Another Key Indicator (KI) that is a useful tool to use to monitor your progress is
your Alexa Traffic Rank.
What is this you may ask?
Well its statistical information about your website held by a company called Alexa.
Traffic Rank is basically aggregated traffic data and is the average of the number of
net users and page views for any particular site.
Basically the idea here is that you should seek to reduce the number quoted on your
website by Alexa.
The smaller the number quoted basically the more powerful the site i.e. the more
number of visitors it receives and the more popular it is.
Initially numbers can be up in the millions, then down into the hundreds of thousand
and then below 100,000 reducing right down to 1.
Currently the Number 1 spot is held by Yahoo.
A very good mile stone to aim for is to get down below 100,000 and then if you can
attain 30,000 this would be considered very good.
Generally as your link popularity increases, your Alexa Traffic Rank will lower (get
better).
Alexa URL: http://www.alexa.com/
HOW TO MANUALLY GET YOUR LINKS
You may wish to put the hours in and build up your links campaign manually.
If you would like to do this, here is the best way to go about it!
Step 1
Select the keyword that you would like a NUMBER 1 ranking for
Step 2
Enter this keyword into the Google search box
Step 3
Click on the site that is ranked number 1 as long as it is relevant to your site.
Step 4
If you have got the Google Tool Bar loaded up on your desktop then click on
the INFO icon and then on “backlinks”
If you have not loaded up the Tool Bar yet then put the URL of the NUMBER 1
ranked website into the line below and put it into the Google Search Box:
Link:www.number1rankedsiteinhere.com
Step 5
You now have a list of all of the sites that have a Page Rank of 5 and above
that are linking into the NUMBER 1 ranked website for the search term that
you want to be TOP for.
Visit each page and fire off an email to them asking each site to link back to
you.
You can do this using 2 methods.
1. You can add their link to your site first and then send an email to them
Or
2. Just send them an email asking for a link exchange
Over the page are examples of the types of emails that you can send other
sites asking for a link exchange. Bear in mind that you need to set up a links
page on your website!
Sample letter 1
- Sending an email to a website asking for a link exchange
Hi NAME,
My name is [YOUR NAME] from [YOUR SITE].
I was just searching the internet for possible link partners with a similar
theme to mine and I came across your site.
Would you like to swap links with me?
If so, please send me your link details and I will get it up on my site
immediately.
Please place my link on your site, here are the details:
[YOUR TITLE]
[YOUR URL]
[YOUR DESCRIPTION]
Thanks for reading my email and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Regards
[YOUR NAME]
[YOUR WEBSITE]
-------------------------------------------------------
Important Note:
Where possible try to address the email to an actual person.
The personal touch makes a big difference and will save your email from
being deleted as spam!
The number of reciprocal link returns that I got when I added someone’s
name to the email increased by about 20% so it is well worth the extra time
and effort it takes to find out who to address the email to.
Over the page is another sample letter.
This time, you have already added their link to your site and are now asking
them to reciprocate your link.
Sample letter 2
- Sending an email to a website asking for a link exchange – you
have already added their link to your links page.
Hi NAME,
My name is [YOUR NAME] from [YOUR SITE].
I was just searching the internet for possible link partners with a similar
theme to mine and I came across your site.
Would you like to swap links with me?
I have already added your site to my links page, you can find it out
[YOUR LINKS PAGE URL]
Please place my link on your site if you are interested and let me know where
it is located, here are the details:
[YOUR TITLE]
[YOUR URL]
[YOUR DESCRIPTION]
Thanks for reading my email and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Regards
[YOUR NAME]
[YOUR WEBSITE]
SUBMITTING YOUR SITE TO GOOGLE
There are two ways to get listed in GOOGLE.
The first way is to actually submit your site yourself.
This is easy to.
Just go to:
http://www.google.com/addurl.html
Add your site and the next time that GOOGLE updates it’s pages yours will be
visited, ranked and indexed.
By the way, if your site is already indexed and you want to know what page
GOOGLE has ranked, got to the GOOGLE search page and enter:
allinurl: yourdomainnamehere.com
You can also let GOOGLE index you automatically if you wish.
This works by getting other sites that are already listed in Google to link to
you.
When Google revisits these sites, it will find your link and go to your site and
index it.
Google "works" by following links, and finding who is linked to who.
If your site gets other "good" sites to link to yours then you will never have to
worry about having to submit, or ever having to resubmit, or being "lost" from
the index.
You will also get a higher page ranking if you submit your site to the GOOGLE
directory:
www.DMOZ.org
Quick question
How do I know when GOOGLEBOT is visiting websites and is re-indexing
the websites?
GOOGLE IS IN THE PROCESS OF “THE GOOGLE DANCE” WHEN ALL OF THE
FOLLOWING 4 NUMBER OF LINKS ARE DIFFERENT.
Results 1 - 10 of about 661,000. Search took 0.14 seconds
http://google-dance.miniunternehmen.de/google-dance-machine.html?quick=y
THE STEP BY STEP ARROACH TO GETTING THE TOP 5 LISTING
To finish things off here is a step by step approach of what you should do to get
your TOP 5 listing.
Carry out the EXACT instructions that I say and there is simply no way that you can
fail
-------------------------------------------------------
STEP 1
Formulate your keywords.
Select no more than 3 of them – make sure that they are relevant.
Check out how many searches there are for each term.
STEP 2
Check out the competition for you keywords.
Go to the GOOGLE homepage, enter your first keyword and note down:
• The top 10 sites
• How many sites there are altogether for your keyword
• Repeat that for all of your keywords
STEP 3
Download the GOOGLE tool bar.
STEP 4
Obtain the GOOGLE pagerank for your competitors sites in STEP 2.
Note this ranking down for each site.
STEP 5
Obtain how many backlinks there are for each of your competitors sites in STEP 2
STEP 6
Check out the keyword density for each of your competitors site for each of your
keywords. Note these down.
STEP 7
Check out the first 25 words on your competitors websites. Note how many times the
keywords feature.
STEP 8
Check out the keywords in your competitiors URL
STEP 9
Armed with all of this information it is time to get to work
-------------------------------------------------
1. Choose a website address with your keyword in it
2. Use the keywords in the TITLE and descriptions
3. Use the keywords in your heading tags <h1> and <h2>
4. Make sure your homepage has between 300 – 500 words and your keyword
density matches that of your competitors or alternatively is somewhere in the
region of 6-10%
5. Make sure the first 25 words on your homepage contains your keywords in the
same ratio of your competitors.
6. Put your keywords in bold on your page
7. Get relevant themed links
8. Submit your site to DMOZ
9. Submit your site to GOOGLE
-------------------------------------------------
Extras:
Link Building Service
If you would like us to manage your link building programme we can do that for you.
We have a team of Internet Marketing experts who will do it all for you.
Please email: sean.mcpheat@ntlworld.com
Professional Service
If you would like us to do ALL of the analysis, research, website amendments and
link building or any part of this, please email us with your requirements and we will
give you a quote.
Please email: sean.mcpheat@ntlworld.com
Website Audit
We will audit your website and your competitors and TELL YOU how much it would
cost for us to do the work to get you a TOP 5 ranking. Just give us your keywords
and we will do the rest for you.
Please email: sean.mcpheat@ntlworld.com
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