Online Education Delhi

Bounce Rate

2013-01-28T23:23:00.003-08:00

What Is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who enter a site and “bounce” rather than continue to view additional pages on the same site. Bounce rate is a very important metric for website owners. It basically tells you what percentages of your visitors are “bouncing” away after landing on your site (e.g., they just visit one page and leave before clicking on to a second page inside your site).

Google Analytics Benchmark Averages for Bounce Rate:

40-60% Content websites

30-50% Lead generation sites

70-98% Blogs

20-40% Retail sites

10-30% Service sites

70-90% Landing pages

A Bounce Rate can occur for several reasons:

(i) The visitor hit the “Back” button on his browser.

(ii) The visitor closed his browser.

(iii) The visitor clicked on one of your ads.

(iv) The visitor clicked on one of your external links.

(v) The visitor used the search box on his browser.

(vi) The visitor typed a new URL on his browser.

All the actions above would cause the visitor to leave your site. Provided he did any of these actions right after arriving at your site (and before clicking on to a second page), it would be counted as a bounce. In fact the formula for finding the bounce rate on your website is:

Bounce rate = Visits that left after one page / Total number of visits

A low bounce rate is an indication that your website is performing optimally, as visitors are spending a significant amount of time on it. On the other hand, a high bounce rate shows that visitors are clicking away instead of seeing all that your website has to offer. To reduce your website's bounce rate and increase its stickiness, motivate visitors to spend more time on your website with the following tips.

1. Create Compelling Content:

One of the factors that motivate people to stay on a website longer is content. Well-written content that speaks directly to the interests of your target audience will grab and hold their attention. For example, if your website is about dog breeding, your content should provide helpful tips and advice about the subject and present solutions to your target audience's most difficult challenges. Relevant, engaging content will pique the interest of your prospects and motivate them to explore your website further.

2. Maintain Keyword Integrity:

Make sure the keywords you are using in your metadata have low bounce rates and that you are reinforcing the term in the copy and content you are showing to site visitors. Your own brand or site name should have the lowest bounce rate for a keyword.

In your search marketing efforts, if the bounce rate is high for keywords you are buying, you need to either improve the landing page to reinforce the topic or bid on keywords that are more relevant to your content.

3. Encourage Visitors to Comment:

Encourage your readers to leave comments after consuming your content by asking them intriguing questions or covering hotly debated topics. Your readers will be motivated to share their views. Furthermore, reply to all comments in a friendly manner to encourage new visitors to participate in the conversation.

4. Interlink Your Articles:

When writing an article, link to other articles you've written in the past to make it easier for readers to find additional content on your website. Not only will this minimize your website's bounce rate, it will also have a positive impact on your website's SEO.

5. Make Links Open in New Windows:

The idea behind reducing bounce rate is to ensure that visitors check out more than one page of your website, so when you link to external websites, make sure that those links open in new tabs or windows. That way, your visitors will keep the landing page (the page they reached upon visiting your site) open and also spend some time on the newly opened pages.

6. Leverage Your Sidebars:

Don't leave your sidebars empty or fill them with distracting widgets. Make good use of your sidebars by linking to valuable resources that your visitors won't be able to resist. In your sidebars, feature links to new, popular, or essential content. This will encourage people to explore your website. In addition, organize your content archives neatly to enhance the user experience and make it easier for visitors to browse all of your content.

7. Make Your Search Box Highly Visible:

If visitors can’t find what they are looking for on your website, they may get frustrated and click away, unless you give them the option to perform searches. Be sure to include a prominent search box on every page of your site to enable visitors to find the exact information they seek.

8. Display Excerpts of Content on Your Home Page:

One factor that will influence visitors' decisions regarding whether or not to explore your website further upon landing on the home page is the layout of the content. Display excerpts of your articles on the home page to entice visitors to click through and read more. Your visitors may get overwhelmed and leave if you display your content in its entirety.

9. Display Additional Articles Readers Might Like:

At the bottom of each piece of content you publish on your website, display links to other relevant articles that visitors can consume once they're finished reading. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, there are plugins created exclusively for this purpose.

10. Create an Informative “About” Page:

After your home page, your “about” page is likely the most visited page of your website. This is because people want to find out more about you and your business. So, put your “about” page link next to your home page link in your website's main navigation bar, and provide relevant details about yourself and your products or services on your “about” page.

11. Improve Page Load Times:

Your website visitors have limited attention spans. If your website takes too long to load, they might get fed up and leave. Improve your site's page load times by getting rid of unnecessary social media widgets, images, pop-ups, and ads. Perform tests to determine what your website's page load times are and how you could improve them.

12. Check Browser Performance:

The developer who built your site might have worked exclusively in Firefox and failed to check its performance in Internet Explorer, Safari, and Google Chrome. Unfortunately, parts of your site that load fine in one type of browser struggle in others, says Whit-more. Your analytics tool can break down bounce by browser type to see if this is the culprit.

Note: Bounce rate is an important factor to consider when evaluating the performance and usability of your website. A high bounce rate indicates that something is not right. To significantly reduce your website's bounce rate and compel visitors to stick around longer, follow the above tips and improve your website's overall user experience.

Successful Code: 2xx

2012-12-13T03:38:00.001-08:00

This class of status code indicates that the client's request was successfully received, understood, and accepted.

Code: 200 OK

The request has succeeded. The information returned with the response is dependent on the method used in the request

Created: Code 201

The request has been fulfilled and resulted in a new resource being created. The newly created resource can be referenced by the URI(s) returned in the entity of the response, with the most specific URI for the resource given by a Location header field. The response SHOULD include an entity containing a list of resource characteristics and location(s) from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate. The entity format is specified by the media type given in the Content-Type header field. The origin server MUST create the resource before returning the 201 status code. If the action cannot be carried out immediately, the server SHOULD respond with 202 (Accepted) response instead.

A 201 response MAY contain an ETag response header field indicating the current value of the entity tag for the requested variant just created, see section 14.19.

Accepted: Code 202

The request has been accepted for processing, but the processing has not been completed. The request might or might not eventually be acted upon, as it might be disallowed when processing actually takes place. There is no facility for re-sending a status code from an asynchronous operation such as this.

The 202 response is intentionally non-committal. Its purpose is to allow a server to accept a request for some other process (perhaps a batch-oriented process that is only run once per day) without requiring that the user agent's connection to the server persist until the process is completed. The entity returned with this response SHOULD include an indication of the request's current status and either a pointer to a status monitor or some estimate of when the user can expect the request to be fulfilled.

Non-Authoritative Information: Code 203

The returned met information in the entity-header is not the definitive set as available from the origin server, but is gathered from a local or a third-party copy. The set presented MAY be a subset or superset of the original version. For example, including local annotation information about the resource might result in a superset of the met information known by the origin server. Use of this response code is not required and is only appropriate when the response would otherwise be 200 (OK).

No Content: Code 204

The server has fulfilled the request but does not need to return an entity-body, and might want to return updated met information. The response MAY include new or updated met information in the form of entity-headers, which if present SHOULD be associated with the requested variant.

If the client is a user agent, it SHOULD NOT change its document view from that which caused the request to be sent. This response is primarily intended to allow input for actions to take place without causing a change to the user agent's active document view, although any new or updated met information SHOULD be applied to the document currently in the user agent's active view.

The 204 response MUST NOT include a message-body, and thus is always terminated by the first empty line after the header fields.

Reset Content: Code 205

The server has fulfilled the request and the user agent SHOULD reset the document view which caused the request to be sent. This response is primarily intended to allow input for actions to take place via user input, followed by a clearing of the form in which the input is given so that the user can easily initiate another input action. The response MUST NOT include an entity.

Partial Content: Code 206

The server has fulfilled the partial GET request for the resource. The request MUST have included a Range header field (section 14.35) indicating the desired range, and MAY have included an If-Range header field (section 14.27) to make the request conditional.

Redirection Code: 3xx

2012-11-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

This class of status code indicates that further action needs to be taken by the user agent in order to fulfill the request. The action required may be carried out by the user agent without interaction with the user if and only if the method used in the second request is get or head. A client should detect infinite redirection loops, since such loops generate network traffic for each redirection.

Note: previous versions of this specification recommended a

maximum of five redirections. Content developers should be aware

that there might be clients that implement such a fixed

limitation.

Multiple Choices: Code 300

The requested resource corresponds to any one of a set of representations, each with its own specific location, and agent- driven negotiation information (section 12) is being provided so that the user (or user agent) can select a preferred representation and redirect its request to that location.

Unless it was a head request, the response should include an entity containing a list of resource characteristics and location(s) from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate. The entity format is specified by the media type given in the Content- Type header field. Depending upon the format and the capabilities of the user agent, selection of the most appropriate choice may be performed automatically. However, this specification does not define any standard for such automatic selection.

If the server has a preferred choice of representation, it should include the specific URI for that representation in the Location field; user agents may use the Location field value for automatic redirection. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.

Moved Permanently: Code 301

The requested resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource should use one of the returned URIs. Clients with link editing capabilities ought to automatically re-link references to the Request-URI to one or more of the new references returned by the server, where possible. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.

The new permanent URI should be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was head, the entity of the response should contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s).

If the 301 status code is received in response to a request other than get or head, the user agent must not automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.

Note: When automatically redirecting a post request after

receiving a 301 status code, some existing HTTP/1.0 user agents

will erroneously change it into a get request.

Found: Code 302

The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client should continue to use the Request-URI for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field.

The temporary URI should be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was head, the entity of the response should contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s).

If the 302 status code is received in response to a request other than get or head, the user agent must not automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.

Note: RFC 1945 and RFC 2068 specify that the client is not allowed

to change the method on the redirected request. However, most

existing user agent implementations treat 302 as if it were a 303

response, performing a get on the Location field-value regardless

of the original request method. The status codes 303 and 307 have

been added for servers that wish to make unambiguously clear which

kind of reaction is expected of the client.

See Other: Code 303

The response to the request can be found under a different URI and should be retrieved using a GET method on that resource. This method exists primarily to allow the output of a POST-activated script to redirect the user agent to a selected resource. The new URI is not a substitute reference for the originally requested resource. The 303 response must not be cached, but the response to the second (redirected) request might be cacheable.

The different URI should be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was head, the entity of the response should contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s).

Note: Many pre-HTTP/1.1 user agents do not understand the 303

status. When interoperability with such clients is a concern, the

302 status code may be used instead, since most user agents react

to a 302 response as described here for 303.

Not Modified: Code 304

If the client has performed a conditional GET request and access is allowed, but the document has not been modified, the server should respond with this status code. The 304 response MUST NOT contain a message-body, and thus is always terminated by the first empty line after the header fields.

Use Proxy: Code 305

The requested resource MUST be accessed through the proxy given by the Location field. The Location field gives the URI of the proxy. The recipient is expected to repeat this single request via the proxy. 305 responses MUST only be generated by origin servers.

Note: RFC 2068 was not clear that 305 was intended to redirect a

single request, and to be generated by origin servers only. Not

observing these limitations has significant security consequences.

Temporary Redirect: Code 307

The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection may be altered on occasion, the client should continue to use the Request-URI for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field.

The temporary URI should be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response should contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s) , since many pre-HTTP/1.1 user agents do not understand the 307 status. Therefore, the note should contain the information necessary for a user to repeat the original request on the new URI.

If the 307 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent must not automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.

Client Error Code: 4XX

2012-10-29T06:27:00.001-07:00

The 4xx class of status code is intended for cases in which the client seems to have erred. Except when responding to a head request, the server should include an entity containing an explanation of the error situation, and whether it is a temporary or permanent condition. These status codes are applicable to any request method. User agents should display any included entity to the user.

If the client is sending data, a server implementation using TCP should be careful to ensure that the client acknowledges receipt of the packet(s) containing the response, before the server closes the input connection. If the client continues sending data to the server after the close, the server's TCP stack will send a reset packet to the client, which may erase the client's unacknowledged input buffers before they can be read and interpreted by the HTTP application.

Bad Request: Code 400

The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. The client should not repeat the request without modifications.

Unauthorized: Code 401

The request requires user authentication. The response must include a www-authenticate header field (section 14.47) containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource. The client may repeat the request with a suitable Authorization header field (section 14.8). If the request already included Authorization credentials, then the 401 response indicates that authorization has been refused for those credentials. If the 401 response contains the same challenge as the prior response, and the user agent has already attempted authentication at least once, then the user should be presented the entity that was given in the response, since that entity might include relevant diagnostic information. HTTP access authentication is explained in "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication".

Payment Required: Code 402

This code is reserved for future use.

Forbidden: Code 403

The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. Authorization will not help and the request should not be repeated. If the request method was not head and the server wishes to make public why the request has not been fulfilled, it should describe the reason for the refusal in the entity. If the server does not wish to make this information available to the client, the status code 404 (Not found) can be used instead.

Not Found: Code 404

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. no indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. The 410 (Gone) status code should be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.

Method Not Allowed: Code 405

The method specified in the Request-Line is not allowed for the resource identified by the Request-URI. The response MUST include an Allow header containing a list of valid methods for the requested resource.

Not Acceptable: Code 406

The resource identified by the request is only capable of generating response entities which have content characteristics not acceptable according to the accept headers sent in the request.

Unless it was a head request, the response should include an entity containing a list of available entity characteristics and location(s) from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate. The entity format is specified by the media type given in the Content-Type header field. Depending upon the format and the capabilities of the user agent, selection of the most appropriate choice may be performed automatically. However, this specification does not define any standard for such automatic selection.

Note: HTTP/1.1 servers are allowed to return responses which are

not acceptable according to the accept headers sent in the

request. In some cases, this may even be preferable to sending a

406 response. User agents are encouraged to inspect the headers of

an incoming response to determine if it is acceptable.

Proxy Authentication Required: Code 407

This code is similar to 401 (Unauthorized), but indicates that the client must first authenticate itself with the proxy. The proxy must return a Proxy-Authenticate header field (section 14.33) containing a challenge applicable to the proxy for the requested resource. The client may repeat the request with a suitable Proxy-Authorization header field (section 14.34). HTTP access authentication is explained in "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication".

Request Timeout: Code 408

The client did not produce a request within the time that the server was prepared to wait. The client may repeat the request without modifications at any later time.

Conflict: Code 409

The request could not be completed due to a conflict with the current state of the resource. This code is only allowed in situations where it is expected that the user might be able to resolve the conflict and resubmit the request. The response body should include enough information for the user to recognize the source of the conflict. Ideally, the response entity would include enough information for the user or user agent to fix the problem; however, that might not be possible and is not required.

Conflicts are most likely to occur in response to a PUT request. For example, if versioning were being used and the entity being PUT included changes to a resource which conflict with those made by an earlier (third-party) request, the server might use the 409 response to indicate that it can't complete the request. In this case, the response entity would likely contain a list of the differences between the two versions in a format defined by the response Content-Type.

Gone: Code 410

The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent. Clients with link editing capabilities should delete references to the Request-URI after user approval. If the server does not know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition is permanent, the status code 404 (Not Found) should be used instead. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.

The 410 response is primarily intended to assist the task of web maintenance by notifying the recipient that the resource is intentionally unavailable and that the server owners desire that remote links to that resource be removed. Such an event is common for limited-time, promotional services and for resources belonging to individuals no longer working at the server's site. It is not necessary to mark all permanently unavailable resources as "gone" or to keep the mark for any length of time -- that is left to the discretion of the server owner.

Length Required: Code 411

The server refuses to accept the request without a defined Content- Length. The client may repeat the request if it adds a valid Content-Length header field containing the length of the message-body in the request message.

Precondition Failed: Code 412

The precondition given in one or more of the request-header fields evaluated to false when it was tested on the server. This response code allows the client to place preconditions on the current resource metain formation (header field data) and thus prevent the requested method from being applied to a resource other than the one intended.

Request Entity Too Large: Code 413

The server is refusing to process a request because the request entity is larger than the server is willing or able to process. The server may close the connection to prevent the client from continuing the request.

If the condition is temporary, the server should include a Retry- After header field to indicate that it is temporary and after what time the client may try again.

Request-URI Too Long: Code 414

The server is refusing to service the request because the Request-URI is longer than the server is willing to interpret. This rare condition is only likely to occur when a client has improperly converted a post request to a get request with long query information, when the client has descended into a URI "black hole" of redirection (e.g., a redirected URI prefix that points to a suffix of itself), or when the server is under attack by a client attempting to exploit security holes present in some servers using fixed-length buffers for reading or manipulating the Request-URI.

Unsupported Media Type: Code 415

The server is refusing to service the request because the entity of the request is in a format not supported by the requested resource for the requested method.

Requested Range Not Satisfiable: Code 416

A server should return a response with this status code if a request included a Range request-header field (section 14.35), and none of the range-specifier values in this field overlap the current extent of the selected resource, and the request did not include an If-Range request-header field. (For byte-ranges, this means that the first- byte-pos of all of the byte-range-spec values were greater than the current length of the selected resource.)

When this status code is returned for a byte-range request, the response should include a Content-Range entity-header field specifying the current length of the selected resource (see section 14.16). This response must not use the multipart/byteranges content- type.

Expectation Failed: Code 417

The expectation given in an Expect request-header field (see section 14.20) could not be met by this server, or, if the server is a proxy, the server has unambiguous evidence that the request could not be met by the next-hop server.

Server Error Code: 5XX

2012-10-27T06:04:00.002-07:00

Response status codes beginning with the digit "5" indicate cases in which the server is aware that it has erred or is incapable of performing the request. Except when responding to a HEAD request, the server SHOULD include an entity containing an explanation of the error situation, and whether it is a temporary or permanent condition. User agents SHOULD display any included entity to the user. These response codes are applicable to any request method.

Internal Server Error: Code 500

The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.

Not Implemented: Code 501

The server does not support the functionality required to fulfill the request. This is the appropriate response when the server does not recognize the request method and is not capable of supporting it for any resource.

Bad Gateway: Code 502

The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, received an invalid response from the upstream server it accessed in attempting to fulfill the request.

Service Unavailable: Code 503

The server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. The implication is that this is a temporary condition which will be alleviated after some delay. If known, the length of the delay MAY be indicated in a Retry-After header. If no Retry-After is given, the client SHOULD handle the response as it would for a 500 response.

Note: The existence of the 503 status code does not imply that a

server must use it when becoming overloaded. Some servers may wish

to simply refuse the connection.

Gateway Timeout: Code 504

The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, did not receive a timely response from the upstream server specified by the URI (e.g. HTTP, FTP, LDAP) or some other auxiliary server (e.g. DNS) it needed to access in attempting to complete the request.

Note: Note to implementors: some deployed proxies are known to

return 400 or 500 when DNS lookups time out.

HTTP Version Not Supported: Code 505

The server does not support, or refuses to support, the HTTP protocol version that was used in the request message. The server is indicating that it is unable or unwilling to complete the request using the same major version as the client, as described in section 3.1, other than with this error message. The response SHOULD contain an entity describing why that version is not supported and what other protocols are supported by that server.

Google Dance

2012-10-20T05:59:00.000-07:00

Google Dance is an out-dated slang term used to describe the period of time in which Google used to rebuild its rankings, and as a result of this rebuilding, rankings of Web sites on Google's SERP may fluctuate in order during a several day period. The "Google Dance" would happen anywhere up to 36 times per year, however in 2003 Google begin updating its index on a weekly basis, which all but eliminated the Google Dance.

"Google Dance can be defined as an update of the search engine giant for indexing the results, recalculating the Page Ranks of every page the bot has crawled."

Approximately once a month, Google update their index by recalculating the Page Ranks of each of the web pages that they have crawled. The period during the update is known as the Google dance.

Because of the nature of Page Rank, the calculations need to be performed about 40 times and, because the index is so large, the calculations take several days to complete. During this period, the search results fluctuate; sometimes minute-by minute. It is because of these fluctuations that the term, Google Dance, was coined. The dance usually takes place sometime during the last third of each month.

Google has two other servers that can be used for searching. The search results on them also change during the monthly update and they are part of the Google dance.

For the rest of the month, fluctuations sometimes occur in the search results, but they should not be confused with the actual dance. They are due to Google's fresh crawl and to what is known "Ever flux".

PPC Campaign

2012-03-28T05:23:00.003-07:00

How to set up PPC Campaign :

Purchase of sponsored links on the pages of the search engines that display results. Many people think that it is a stop-gap measure that is used in the intervening time before a sustained SEO campaign take effect. However, if used effectively and systematically, Pay per Click can be used for a long period of time and in conjunction with all kinds of internet marketing campaigns.

Some Step To PPC Campaign Setup

Account Structure Determination :

The first step is to understand how your account will be structured. It is usually best to consider the product or service that you are offering at it's most granular level and create your account like a tree. So if you have a site selling a software product or products, you should create a new campaign for each feature. For example, if you are selling some sort of image editing software, you should have a different campaign for "image editing" and a different campaign for "photo editing" and so and so forth. Inside each of your campaigns you should have generic ad groups (like a "cheap image editing software" group and a "buy image editing software" group) as well as an ad group for all the features relating to the root keyword (image editing). This may seem blindingly obvious but you'd be surprised how many advertisers just lump everything into a "software" adgroup with the default "campaign #1″ name. The tree should branch out immediately, more like a bush. So keeping image editing as an example, a single campaign will look like the attached image. Note, there are actually a few in this example.

Keyword Research :

The second step is keyword research. There have been a million posts on a million blogs about this topic, so I won't go into it. Let's just assume that you have generated a nice keyword list for each of your ad groups using your favourite keyword research tool. Wordtracker, SEO book's KW tool, Keyword Discovery and HitWise are all great tools. Each has individual pros and cons but for now, compile your list an move on. We will expand on this later on in the campaign setup but for now, we should have as big a keyword list as possible with all the keywords and phrases not related to your business taken out and put in a separate "negative" list/file. We will also use this at a later stage in the setup.

Set Up Campaign :

The third step in setting up your PPC account is creating a new search network only campaign. I wont go through the steps to create a new keyword targeted campaign but please look out for the options that are not set by default. The first setting you need to change is the network settings by removing the check from the "Content Network" checkbox. The content network can be very valuable so I do not recommend ignoring the content network completely. We will set up a new content network only campaign later or in another account. You also need to make sure that your ad serving option is set to "rotate" so you can split test your ads and your delivery method is set to "accelerated". The last option may not apply to you if you are working with a very small budget, but in general, you want to max out your budget initially if you can afford it to get some numbers to work with.

Build A Negative Keyword List :

The fourth step is creating a new keyword list. A list of terms you do not want your ads triggered for. Google has recently removed/hidden it's negative keyword builder so have a read of our negative keyword tips. You should have at least a few terms already from building your keyword list in step 2. You also know your business so sit down with your colleagues for 5 minutes and brainstorm some negative words too. Another tip is to run a search query report in AdWords if you are already running a PPC campaign and mine the negatives out of that. You can also go into your analytics package and look at what keywords people are finding your site for and take negatives out of that. For those queries in the search query report that Google does not want you to see, have a read of apollo SEM's guide to extract all the data. Once you think you have all the negative keywords you can think of, add them to your campaign immediately. In my opinion no campaign should ever start without negative keywords.

Create Your Root AdGroup & Ads :

What we need to do now is create a default, generic adgroup and ad. The ad should be action oriented and describe your product. Create your ad with strong words and use our guide to link them words with a strong call to action. This ad is only going to be our default ad for setup. We will not be using this ad in production. It should accurately reflect your product or service so you do not start off with a poor quality score. So assuming we are setting up the "Image Resize Software" campaign, we create an ad with "Image Resize Software" in the title and at least once in the ad copy. No need to tweak just yet, this is only for setup. We like to call this initial adgroup "Campaign Name Root". What we need to do now is dump all the keywords from our keyword list into this adgroup. There could be thousands, that does not matter. We will separate them all further on. The important thing is to setup this root campaign and have all the keywords possible thrown in. Once setup is complete, confirm all your actions and your campaign will go live. Pause this campaign immediately. We will be doing a lot more work on the campaign so we do not want it live.

Download Your New Campaign & Split It Up :

Now we really get to have some fun. If you have not done so already, download AdWords Editor and download your account containing your new campaign with the root adgroup. What we need to do now is use the "keyword grouper" tool within AdWords editor to group our keywords by theme (Check the screenshot to see how to access this tool). When given the option to "copy text ads from a template" select yes as we will use our default root text ad for now. Finish the process and you will have lots of ad groups divided into common "themes". Upload the new campaign with the newly separated adgroups to Google and log out of AdWords editor for now.

Manually Create New Ads For Each AdGroup :

The next step we need to take is to go back into AdWords and create new and custom ads for each adgroup. If you are stuck for time, create a minimum of two ads per group. If you want to start off strong, create at least four ads for testing. It is absolutely essential that we use the "theme" keyword in in our ads titles. AdWords editor makes this easy by naming the adgroup the same name as the "theme" word. The "theme" word should also be used in the ad copy if possible and absolutely in the display URL as either a "fake" sub directory or a "fake" subdomain. The reason for this is so that AdWords will assign a decent initial quality score to your keywords and so that anyone searching for your keyword will see the exact keywords they searched for bolded in your ad. You should set the destination URL to either the category/product page or if you have the time, an individual landing page for that product and keyword combined. Make sure that your ads are compelling, are grammatically correct and have a clear call to action. You may also want to take this opportunity to create some Dymanic Keyword Insertion powered ads

Expand Your Keywords :

At this point we like to go into each adgroup and use the AdWords keyword too to expand our keyword list. Copy all the keywords from your adgroup and paste them into the keyword tool making sure the "use synonyms" box is checked. The AdWords keyword tool will give you a list of possible other terms you might want to add to the adgroup that you may not have thought about (as well as give some additional keywords for your negative list). In some cases, you may also want to use the in built keyword pad tool to duplicate all your keywords using different match types. A lot of times different match types cost different prices and convert differently. Once you have a packed up your adgroups with relevant keywords, you are almost good to go.

Duplicate,Track,Monitor,Succeed :

Once you have all your search campaigns ready to go, your final step is to make sure that your analytics package is installed correctly and that your ads are showing up in the countries you are targeting. Insure that your conversion tracking is working correctly and place a test order if necessary. Once you are sure you are setup correctly, you can now duplicate your campaigns for content network use (Simply copy and paste in AdWords Editor) and for use on other PPC networks. Please note that your campaigns will almost always perform differently on the content network and on your other PPC accounts. You should modify your bids and check your status on these accounts individually.

Google Analytics Funnels

2012-03-24T05:06:00.005-07:00

What is Funnels ?

A funnel represents the path that you expect visitors to take on their way to converting to the goal. Defining these pages allows you to see how frequently visitors abandon goals, and where they go. For example, funnels in an e-commerce goal may include the first page of your checkout process, then the shipping address info page, and finally the credit card information page. The only report that shows the funnel path is the Funnel Visualization report.

“A Funnel is a series of pages through which a visitor must pass before reaching the goal conversion. The name comes from a graph of visitors who reach each page - the first page counts the most visitors, and each successive page shows less visitors as they drop off before reaching the final goal.”

To know more visit at :

http://sixrevisions.com/tools/google-analytics-in-depth-goals-and-funnels/

Google Analytics Goal

2012-03-23T09:21:00.005-07:00

What is Goal ?

A goal is typically a website page that provides you with climaxing joy when it is visited by your customers. For most, the ultimate goal page is the checkout Thank you page. When your customers land on that page, it means they've bought something from you. Another goal example would be the static Thank You page you've set for a newsletter subscription.

How to set up goals in Google Analytics :

Sign into your Google Analytics account. https://google.com/analytics/
Click on “Edit” (on the right hand side of the Overview page).
Under the “Goals” section, select one of 4 goal sets to create your goal in. (Each set can have up to 5 mini-goals, so you can organize up to 20 mini-goals divided into 4 main goal sets!) Enter an easily recognizable goal name.
Choose between 3 types of goals: URL Destination, Time on Site, or Pages/Visit.

URL Destination :

URL Destination is the most common option and is used when visitors get a specific page to visit. For example, a completed checkout page in an ecommerce site.

Time on Site :

The Time on Site goal type will track users who spend either more or less than a specified amount of time on the site.

Pages/Visit :

Pages/Visit keeps track of people who visit more than, less than or an exact number of pages on the site.

To know more visit at :

http://sixrevisions.com/tools/google-analytics-in-depth-goals-and-funnels/

Google Analytics

2012-03-23T05:30:00.004-07:00

What is Google Analytics ?

Google Analytics is a free statistics tracking and analysis service that allows web site administrators to analyze traffic flow on a web site. Although most hosting solutions come with similar software, it may not be as easily understood or as easily navigated as Google Analytics. One of the more impressive features of Google Analytics is the ability to flag certain pages as “goals.” This is specifically beneficial to e-commerce web sites. However, regardless of the purpose of a web site, Google Analytics can help make that web site better.

"Google Analytics is a free Web analytics service that provides statistics and basic analytical tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes. The service is available to anyone with a Google account."

Whenever someone visits a web site, a variety of information is stored on the server in the form of access logs. These files are simple text files that are formatted in a specific way to allow programs to analyze the stored information and present it in a way that can be more easily understood. This data includes the IP address of the computer, the amount of data transferred, the URL visited, the time and date of the visit, the operating system and the browser used by the visitor to the web site. The most common information used to tell whether a web site is doing well is the number of visitors. This is certainly valuable information, but it tells us nothing about what visitors are doing when they visit a web site. Standard statistics software will guess at how much time people spend viewing a specific page, but this is also not as valuable as the information collated by Google Analytics.

Since HTTP connections are not persistent, it's impossible to actually track a visitor's path through a web site. An HTTP connection is a simple two-way communication between a computer and the server that ends as soon as the data is transferred. The visitor's computer makes a request, and the server sends some information back. The computer and the server do not have any additional contact until the visitor requests more information from the server. There are other types of connections used to create a persistent connection to the server, but those are not used for browsing web sites. This causes a number of problems for web site developers, and there are a number of solutions to overcome it. In the case of web site statistics tracking and analysis, a visitor's path through a web site can be built by comparing individual requests to the server and gathering requests that share a number of pieces of information. If a number of requests come from a single IP address, it is a good guess that they are all from the same user. In this way, statistics software like Google Analytics can build the paths that users take as they browse a web site.

For each “goal” you can configure a set of funnel pages that lead up to the “goal” page. By analyzing how many users follow the funnel, you can analyze where people are stopping, getting lost, or just leaving your site. Analyzing this data will help you make your web site more effective in helping people to reach the “goals.” In addition to goal tracking, Google Analytics will help you analyze web site loyalty, bounce rates and visit depth. Loyalty means, what percentage of your visitors are repeat visitors. This is also related to the percentage of new visitors you are seeing compared to the number of repeat visitors. Bounce rates show you what percentage of visitors only view one page before leaving. Visit depth will show you how many pages visitors request before leaving.

One of the biggest advantages Google Analytics provides over other analysis software is ease of use. With a few clicks, you can define any range of dates from which statistics can be viewed. You can also easily navigate from general data to more specific data. Everything from bounce rates to conversion rates (how many visitors reach the goal) can be easily found by a few clicks. Google Analytics can also help you understand each report that you see. Helpful tips can be viewed at the bottom right hand corner of many pages that give short descriptions of the data included in the report and sometimes even what the numbers could mean for your web site.

2012-02-21T03:08:00.001-08:00

The Advantages of using a Linkwheel :

The linkwheel is a godsend for website owners and marketers who want to be visible to a large number of people in order to sell as well as promote their product. A linkwheel works more or less on the principle of franchise as the main or the head URL is located at the center of the system and a whole network of Web 2.0 sites is created around the keywords, providing the reader with many reference points.

Now, the various advantages of the linkwheel should be explained in details. The people who design and frame new websites understand the fact that a linkwheel placed in the correct location can help them to build a good reputation. The advantages can be summarized:

Targeted Audience:

When a site owner wants to build a stream of viewers for there website, they must look at building a good readership of the contents in that specific site. A linkwheel should be placed in popular and relevant sites so that the viewers can easily reach it.

A Great way to gain Visibility:

A certain portion of the viewers are always in search of fresh and good content. When one of such viewers land on a page with proper and interesting content, it gets pretty easy to attract even more visitors. With word of mouth publicity or with the help social networking sites a lot of fresh visitors are guaranteed for that site. The social bookmarking sites like digg or stumbleupon also play their part in this whole process of publicity. A linkwheel thus creates many indirect ways of publicity, which contribute in gaining Credibility.

Keyword Domination:

The most exciting feature of using a linkwheel is to display one’s content specific to a keyword such that anyone in search for content closely related to the keyword is directly connected to a page which not only provides them with the information but also being a part of the wheel, gives alternatives and no matter how much the person wants to research about the keyword, it all heads back to the Main Site.

Economical Mode:

In today’s busy world, nobody has the time to build links in hundreds or thousands of websites. They obviously will look for better, easier and less time consuming methods. For these factors, linkwheels are more favorable for most webmasters. The use of a linkwheel is extremely easy as well as less time consuming. Time compares with money these and linkwheels are economical in both senses, less time consuming to construct and at the same time, a lot cheaper as well.

Link Wheel

2012-02-21T03:05:00.001-08:00

What is Link Wheel ?

Link wheel basically is a process in which you build a dozen or so new blogs/web pages using web 2.0 properties such as squidoo, blogger, hubpages and etc, all on the same topic as your main blog or website. Then, on each of these mini sites, you write one (or more) unique quality article that includes a link to your main website or blog and another link to one of the other new blogs you just built.

Link Wheel is a very powerful link building concept because it tries to imitate the natural internet pattern and search engines always love natural link building. Rather than getting links from unrelated websites and dubious sources, link wheel tries to get their links from related niches on the internet. Moreover, link wheels have the ability to multiply your links count over a period of time. Previously, network websites were created in an effort to boost the ranking of particular websites but the problem with such websites were that they easily raised the suspicion because it looked very artificial as they did not follow any link wheel pattern but all of them just pointed to one website they targeted. Link building through link wheel is a refined version of network websites. It has proven to be the best link building strategy.

Helping Your Website Soar High In Search Results :

Today link wheel is the buzzword in website link building industry. This is one of the best ways of building links in the most natural way and Google will love your website just for that. Link wheel is certainly the most powerful way of making use of the power of multiplication to build links for your website. If you do not have the required knowledge to build links for your website through link wheel or if you do not have the required time for boosting your website's ranking through link wheel do not worry, SubmitEdge is there to assist you every step of the process. Using SubmitEdge-Link Wheel service you will be able to enhance your websites SERPs. SubmitEdge-Link Wheel provides highest quality link wheel service that stands unmatched in the industry. We have over five years of experience in the SEO industry and SEM industry. We have helped over 15,000 websites rank well in the search engines through various SEO services. Signup today for the best link wheel services.

Understanding How a Link Wheel Works :

Link wheels are nothing but a group of websites that are interconnected which try to improve the ranking of a target website by linking to target website. For example if you have 50 websites in your link wheel and the website you are targeting is "yourdomain.com", then:

Site 1 links to Site 2 and back to the "yourdomain.com"

Site 2 links to Site 3 and back to the "yourdomain.com"

Site 3 links to Site 4 and back to the "yourdomain.com"

.......

Site 13 links to Site 14 and back to the "yourdomain.com"

Site 14 links to Site 1 and back to the "yourdomain.com"

Search Engine Results Page

2012-01-17T04:43:00.003-08:00

SERP ( Search Engine Results Page ) :

A search engine results page (SERP), is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the Keywords have matched content within the page. A SERP may refer to a single page of links returned, or to the set of all links returned for a search query.

Different types of results :

SERPs of major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing may include different types of listings: contextual, algorithmic or organic search listings, as well as sponsored listings, images, maps, definitions, videos or suggested search refinements.

The major search engines visually differentiate specific content types, such as images, news, and blogs. Many content types have specialized SERP templates and visual enhancements on the main search result page.

Generation of SERPs :

Major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing primarily use content contained within the page and fallback to metadata tags of a web page to generate the content that makes up a search snippet.[citation needed] The html title tag will be used as the title of the snippet while the most relevant or useful contents of the web page (description tag or page copy) will be used for the description. If the web page is not available, information about the page from dmoz may be used instead.

SERP tracking :

Webmasters use search engine optimization (SEO) to increase their website's ranking on a specific keyword's SERP. As a result, webmasters often check SERPs to track their search engine optimization progress. To speed up the tracking process, programmers created automated software to track multiple keywords for multiple websites.

Calculation

2012-01-17T04:33:00.001-08:00

Google Page Rank calculation :

Google's most mysterious ranking influencer, the Google PageRank (PR), has been the topic of many discussions and observations. The way the Google PageRank calculation works is still not 100% clear today, but I thought it might be useful to write the concept of the original mechanism down in plain English and show it using a simple example.

The Google PageRank (PR) is calculated for every webpage that exists in Google's database. It's real value varies from 0,15 to infinite, but for representation purposes it is converted to a value between 0 and 10 (from low to high). The calculation of the PR for a page is based on the quantity and quality of webpages that contain links to that page.

According to Sergey Brin and Lawrence (Larry) Page, Co-founders of Google, the PR of a webpage is calculated using this formula:

PR(A) = (1 - d) + d * SUM ((PR(I->A)/C(I))

Where:

PR(A) is the PageRank of your page A.

d is the damping factor, usually set to 0,85.

PR(I->A) is the PageRank of page I containing a link to page A.

C(I) is the number of links off page I.

PR(I->A)/C(I) is a PR-value page A receives from page I.

SUM (PR(I->A)/C(I)) is the sum of all PR-values page A receives from pages with links to page A..

In other words: The PR of a page is determined by the PR of every page I that has a link to page A. For every page I that points to page A, the PR of page I is devided by the number of links from page I. These values are cumulated and multiplied by 0,85. Finally 0,15 is added to this result, and this number represents the PR of page A.

To illustrate how this calculation works we defined the following simplified example.

Example:

In this example we use an imaginary Google database containing only four (4) pages that all have an initial PR value of 1 (the above formula needs an assumed start PR value for every page). These four pages have the linkstructure as shown in the first picture. In practice Google calculates the PageRank for billions of pages. Our model is simplified to show the evaluation of a PageRank.

To determine the PR for pages A to D the formula has to be executed several times. For every calculation we use the PR results of the former calculation. In this example the final PageRanks are found after 20 iterations. The next picture shows the calculated PR for every page.

Google Page Rank

2012-01-17T04:20:00.001-08:00

What is Google Page Rank :

Google Page Rank is a system for ranking Web pages used by the Google search engine. It was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University. In the context of their researches Page and Brin checked the idea that if a search engine will determine the most relevant pages according to the relationships between web sites, it should be more effective, then other search engines of that time.

This conception became the basis of the foundation of Google Search Engine and nowadays PageRank is the heart of Google's algorithm and makes it the most complex of all the search engines.

Google PageRank uses the Internet's link structure as an indication of each web page's relevancy value. A link from page A to page B is interpreted as a vote, by page A, for page B. In Google PageRank the page that casts the vote is also analyzed. “Votes” made by competent web sites weigh more heavily and give an opportunity to linked site to be considered as a qualitative one.

Web page that has links from many pages with high Google PageRank receives a high rank itself. But only relevant links, which are connected to your sphere and are useful for your customers, could be valued. The absence of links means that there is no support for that page and it will not get satisfactory Google PageRank.

Sites with high Google PageRank get a higher ranking in Google results. Further, since Google is currently the world's most popular search engine, the ranking a site receives in its search results has a significant impact on the volume of visitor traffic for that site.

Above mentioned states on the fact that on the way of organizing a qualitative web resource, it’s important to concentrate on such appearance as Google PageRank, and provide web site with competent links. Of course PageRank isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is rather important one to pay attention to it.

But not every link is good for your site. Some of them can cause web site to be penalized by Google. It’s evident that sometimes you cannot control which sites link to yours one, but you should control which sites you link to. That’s why inbound links cannot make harm, but if a page links to penalized ones the result can be grievous. So, try to be more scrupulous in your link building campaign aimed to better Google PageRank.

You can take advantage of an opportunity of using Google Toolbar to check your PageRank. It could be uploaded for free at http://toolbar.google.com/index_xp.html. Google Toolbar provides several services, among which you can notice 10-grade scale, in which green line shows Google Page Rank of the page you visit. Such solution is not perfect because it’s not enough of 10 grades to have the full view of situation. Moreover, there is such opinion that this toolbar doesn’t perform true activities and is only for entertainment purposes; that Google constantly updates its Page Rank because of hacker’s attempts to this data and toolbar presents out-of-date activities.

To get success in the sphere of Internet, it is necessary to be well-informed in Google PageRank. The ascendancy of Google in the search engine world and the importance in its essential principles, of such notion as Google PageRank, couldn’t be underestimated.

Alexa Rank

2012-01-12T03:39:00.000-08:00

What is Alexa traffic rank?

The Alexa traffic rank of a website compares how much traffic websites are getting on the Internet with a site ranked number 1 having the most visitors. Currently, Google is ranked number 1, Facebook is ranked number 2, and YouTube is ranked number 3.

Your Alexa traffic ranking is based upon three months of Data collected by millions of Alexa toolbar users and data from various traffic data sources.

Your Alexa traffic ranking will improve as you gain visitors through relevant content, publicity, referrals from other sites, social media, organic leads through SEO, etc.

How to Increase Your Alexa Rank

Alexa offers a useful tool for free that you can use to promote your Flash website. It is a free toolbar that can be downloaded and used for searches. What makes it so useful is that it only pulls sites from Alexa’s database.

This means that, if you can get your customers and clients to use it, your competition is dramatically reduced and your Alexa rank increases. Advertisers, networks, and webmasters use your Alexa rank to gauge your website. While some feel this is unfair, it is still a fact of life on the Internet.

The trick is to get the people to use the toolbar. There are some easy ways to do this and, as you start to build your traffic, you may think of other ways to get the Alexa toolbar on your visitors’ and potential visitors’ desktops.

SEO Basics

Organic SEO is the best way to build your page rank in any search engine’s database. Content can make or break your website so be sure your content is engaging, dynamic, and valuable to visitors. Google places a large amount of emphasis on content in its algorithms. It also relies heavily on inbound and outbound relevant links. A network of links from articles and blog posts (including their comments) and bookmarked on article directories can increase the value of your website in a search engine’s eyes. Only use organic SEO to promote your site; non-organic or black hat SEO may produce short and quick results, but they will not be lasting.

Promoting Your Flash Website to Increase Your Alexa Rank

One of the most effective ways to increase your Alexa rank is to promote your website and the Alexa toolbar. The toolbar is free so it is relatively easy to get people to download it. Offer it on all pages of your website. Include the link in all of your e-mails in your signature and in all e-mail ads and newsletters. Convince friends and family to use it exclusively to search for your site. Each time a searcher uses Alexa’s toolbar and goes to your site, it raises your rank.

Use the Alexa Site Audit

Not only does Alexa offer a free toolbar, they also offer a site audit. If you sign up for an audit, their bots crawl your site and give you a detailed report that includes several important factors that affect your site’s rank. In your audit report, you not only find out what needs to be improved, but ways you can do it. An audit report includes some of the following:

Reachable – how easy is it for people to find your site

On-site links – how many links do you have and are they working and related to your site

Your site reputation – quality of incoming links from other sites

Page optimization – warnings for any duplicate content or duplicate links, duplicate title tags warnings, low word count on pages, dead-end pages, and links that do not work

Keywords – quality of keywords and their effectiveness

Link recommendations – how you can fix your links

This report can be used to increase your rank in Alexa as well as your site’s rank in other search engines. A prioritized list of suggested improvements is included in your site audit that you can implement to increase your rank. For example, if Alexa finds that you content is lacking or that your keywords are not effective, you can do keyword research and include them in your rewritten content. Broken links kill your SEO and your site rank. The site audit will find any broken links so that you can fix them. You audit report will also suggest where you can place links to be more effective and make your site more attractive to search engine’s bots. Meta descriptions are summaries of the page’s content. Search engines use these in their results summaries if they are high quality. Meta descriptions also tell the search engine’s bots what your page is about and make it easier to rank. Alexa will tell you if your meta descriptions are up to snuff or if they are missing altogether. By using the tools that Alexa gives you and having your Flash website properly optimized, you can increase not only your rank in Alexa but all across the Web.

Site Map

2012-01-07T04:25:00.001-08:00

The sitemap is a very important and necessary component in each website. In short, the sitemap is an index page of your website, which offers links to all pages of your website. These links are categorized and organized in hierarchical form, which makes finding them very easy. In case the visitor of your website cannot find the needed page, he or she should refer to the sitemap. Moreover, the sitemap helps the search engines to index your website. Providing text-based links to key pages makes the sitemap a great way to be found by the search engines. Some of you probably know that Google's Webmaster Guidelines include multiple references to sites maps, which mean that site maps must be important.

I guess you have referred to the sitemap of many websites. You have found out that sitemaps help you save your time that otherwise you would waste searching for the website you have interest in. we all have spent hours searching for a certain page. Today using a sitemap, you just have to follow the link.

All web site owners, web designers, usability experts, and search marketers agree

that having a sitemap is very important for the success of each website. Actually for most of them each website must include several very important pages such as a home page, an about us page, a contact us page, and a site map. So far, the first three have proven to be an irreplaceable part of each web site. However, the sitemap page is gaining more and more popularity.

When building the structure of your web site do not forget to create a link to the sitemap. As well, validate the functionality of the links you created in order to avoid following troubles. In case this sounds scary and you think that you are not able to accomplish these tasks because they are too complicated you?d better look for something to help you. There are various online programs which will do all these work for you. These programs are very simple. All you have to do is to type in the URL or the link of your website and they will create the sitemap for you.

Each website must offer a large or small sitemap for sure. The site maps make it easier for search engine spiders to discover and crawl every page of your website. That is why the bigger the sitemap is the better.

It is easier with small sites because their sitemap could contain text links to single every page just following the site's folder structure. The different topics could be categorized either in a directory-like format or as table of contents. Unfortunately, this type simple site map organization gives satisfactory results only for a site of 100 pages or less.

In case your site contains more than 100 pages it is meaningless to link to every single page in a site map. Visitor would feel lost in the great number of links and they won?t be able to find the one that they are looking for. Moreover, Google recommends maximum 100 links per page. If you are planning to create a sitemap for a 10,000-page or fewer web site, it is a good idea to add links only to core pages throughout the site.

When creating a sitemap for a larger site you will have to optimize the content up to a dozen different categories. In this case, you?d better add a brief description of each core page in order to make the sitemap user-friendly. If the link to each core page is accompanied by a short text describing the page's content which itself offers links that go deeper into the site from these core pages, both visitors and search engines can navigate the varying themes of a larger site.

When it comes to extremely large sites, which contain more than 100,000 pages the sitemap must be organized in a similar way. It has to include a classification of the core hierarchal content with links to different products, services, or other content.

Sitemaps are usually an index page, which summarizes the content of the pages within a single site. However, there is another type of sitemaps, which consists of a series of links to pages of different sites.

Sitemaps are the main way to help search engine spiders when crawling a site's content. In order to make your website visible on the Web you need to have it indexed. However, sitemaps are still not the only way to optimize your website.

What is Google AdSense?

2011-12-30T07:00:00.001-08:00

Google AdSense is a free, simple way for website publishers of all sizes to earn money by displaying targeted Google ads on their websites. AdSense also lets you provide Google search to your site users, while earning money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages.

Google AdSense is a simple and absolutely free method for website owners, bloggers and ad publishers to earn money by placing and integrating Google ads into their websites or blogs. Google has these facilities whereby you can earn revenue that is generated from your website when people search from your site, resulting in Google ads being displayed in the search results, which can help monetize the website.

Google AdSense offers the owner the facility of customized ads where the ads are of the same compatible level as that of the website, so targeted ads will increase the revenue of your website. You can choose the placement of your ads, making it suitable for the aesthetic view of the website and not cluttered and also get online reports that actually track your earning in real time, for the benefit of the owner.

Once the month is completed, Google will issue checks or pay you through payment processors of great reputation so that you can get your money without any hassles. The money is collected via the billing of those companies which Google had spaced out their ads to, and after the payment is made to Google, Google takes the initiative to pay the owners of that website with the money.

How does it work?

· Choose the type and placement of ad units to be displayed

· Specify where you want ads to appear

· Choose what types of ads can compete for those slots

· Highest-paying ads display

· Advertisers bid on your inventory in a real-time auction

· Always show the highest-paying ad

· Get paid

· Google bills advertisers and ad networks

· Get paid through our reliable payment options

History

2011-12-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

The original idea was invented by Bill Gross of Idealab who, in turn, borrowed the idea from the model of the Yellow Pages. Google wanted to buy the idea but a deal could not be reached.[citation needed] Not wanting to give up on this form of advertisement, the company launched its own solution, AdWords in 2000. AdWords followed a model that was significantly similar to Bill Gross' creation which led to legal action between the two parties. Eventually the dispute was settled out of court.[citation needed]

At first AdWords advertisers would pay a monthly amount, and Google would then set up and manage their campaign. To accommodate small businesses and those who wanted to manage their own campaigns, Google soon introduced the AdWords self-service portal. Starting in 2005 Google provided a campaign management service called Jumpstart[18]. Google's Jumpstart program offers free telephone support from a Google specialist to help users start their online advertising campaign.

In 2005, Google launched the Google Advertising Professional (GAP) Program to certify individuals and companies who completed AdWords training and passed an exam. Due to the complexity of AdWords and the amount of money at stake, some advertisers hire a consultant to manage their campaigns.

In 2008, Google launched the Google Online Marketing Challenge (http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/), an in-class academic exercise for tertiary students. Over 8,000 students from 47 countries participated in the 2008 Challenge, over 10,000 students from 58 countries took part in 2009, about 12,000 students in 2010 and almost 15,000 students from 70 countries in 2011. The Challenge runs annually, roughly from January to June. Registration is at the instructor rather than student level.

In 2009, Google revised the AdWords interface, introduced Local Business Ads for Google Maps and Video Ads.

Google Click-to-Call

2011-12-28T09:44:00.001-08:00

Google Click-to-Call

Google Click-to-Call was a service provided by Google which allows users to call advertisers from Google search results pages. Users enter their phone number, Google calls them back and connects to the advertiser. Calling charges are paid by Google. It was discontinued in 2007. For some time similar click-to-call functionality was available for results in Google Maps. In the Froyo release of Google's Android operating system, in certain advertisements, there is a very similar functionality, where a user can easily call an advertiser.

Legal context

AdWords has generated lawsuits in the area of trademark law (see Google, Inc. v. Am. Blind & Wallpaper Factory and Rescuecom Corp. v. Google Inc.), fraud (see Goddard v. Google, Inc.), and click fraud. In 2006, Google settled a click fraud lawsuit for US$90 million.

Overture Services, Inc. sued Google for patent infringement in April 2002 in relation to the AdWords service. Following Yahoo!'s acquisition of Overture, the suit was settled in 2004 with Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license under the patent.

Technology

The AdWords system was initially implemented on top of the MySQL database engine. After the system had been launched, management decided to use Oracle instead. The system became much slower, so eventually it was returned to MySQL. The interface has also been revamped to offer better work flow with additional new features, such as Spreadsheet Editing, Search Query Reports, and better conversion metrics.

Ad content restrictions

As of April 2008 Google AdWords no longer allows for the display URL to deviate from that of the destination URL. Prior to its introduction, Google paid advertisements could feature different landing page URLs to that of what was being displayed on the search network. Google expounds that the policy change stems from both user and advertiser feedback. The concern prompting the restriction change is believed to be the premise on which users clicked advertisements. Users were in some cases, being misled and further targeted by AdWords advertisers.

As of December 2010 Google AdWords has decreased its restrictions over sales of Hard Alcohol. It now allows ads that promote the sale of hard alcohol and liquor. This is an extension of a policy change that was made in December 2008, which permitted ads that promote the branding of hard alcohol and liquor.

Allowed keywords

Google has also come under fire for allowing AdWords advertisers to bid on trademarked keywords. In 2004, Google started allowing advertisers to bid on a wide variety of search terms in the US and Canada, including the trademarks of their competitors and in May 2008 expanded this policy to the UK and Ireland. Advertisers are restricted from using other companies' trademarks in their advertisement text if the trademark has been registered with Advertising Legal Support team. Google does, however, require certification to run regulated keywords, such as those related to pharmaceuticals keywords, and some keywords, such as those related to hacking, are not allowed at all. These restrictions may vary by location. From June 2007, Google banned AdWords adverts for student essay writing services, a move which was welcomed by universities.

Google has other restrictions, for example the advertising of a book related to Facebook was restricted from advertising on AdWords because it contained the word "Facebook" in its title — the rationale being that it was prohibited from advertising a book which used a trademarked name in its title.

AdWords account management

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AdWords account management

To help clients with the complexity of building and managing AdWords accounts search engine marketing agencies and consultants offer account management as a business service. This has allowed organizations without advertising expertise to reach a global, online audience. Google has started the Google Advertising Professionals program to certify agencies and consultants who have met specific qualifications and passed an exam. Google also provides account management software, called AdWords Editor.

Correct choice of keywords is very important because the targeting of ads by Google is totally dependent upon the keyword selection. Keyword choice is also a very large factor in determining the level of exposure the Google ad receives, and to a large extent, who sees the ad.

Another useful feature is the My Client Center available to Google Professionals (even if not yet passed the exam or budget parameters) whereby a Google professional has access and a dashboard summary of several accounts and can move between those accounts without logging in to each account.

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool provides a list of related keywords for a specific website or keyword.

AdWords distribution

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AdWords distribution

All AdWords ads are eligible to be shown on www.google.com. Advertisers also have the option of enabling their ads to show on Google's partner networks. The "search network" includes AOL search, Ask.com, and Netscape. Like www.google.com, these search engines show AdWords ads in response to user searches, but do not affect quality score.

The "Google Display Network" (formerly referred to as the "content network") shows AdWords ads on sites that are not search engines. These content network sites are those that use AdSense and DoubleClick, the other side of the Google advertising model. AdSense is used by website owners who wish to make money by displaying ads on their websites. Click through rates on the display network are typically much lower than those on the search network and are therefore ignored when calculating an advertiser's quality score.

Google automatically determines the subject of pages and displays relevant ads based on the advertisers' keyword lists. AdSense publishers may select channels to help direct Google's ad placements on their pages, to increase performance of their ad units. There are many different types of ads that can run across Google's network, including text ads, image ads (banner ads), mobile text ads, and in-page video ads.

Google AdWords' main competitors are Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.

In 2010, Yahoo formed a partnership with Microsoft, giving Microsoft the control over powering the Yahoo search marketing ads. Both accounts are now run through Microsoft AdCenter. When ads are displayed on Yahoo now, it is powered by Microsoft AdCenter and is run through the Microsoft software interface.

AdWords features

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AdWords features:

IP address exclusion

In addition to controlling ad placements through methods such as location and language targeting, ad targeting can be refined with Internet Protocol (IP) address exclusion. This feature enables advertisers to specify IP address ranges where they don't want their ads to appear.

Up to 20 IP addresses, or ranges of addresses, can be excluded per campaign. All ads in the campaign are prevented from showing for users with the IP addresses specified.

Location-based exclusion is also offered as a method of narrowing targeted users.

Frequency capping

Frequency capping limits the number of times ads appear to the same unique user on the Google Content Network. It doesn't apply to the Search Network. If frequency capping is enabled for a campaign, a limit must be specified as to the number of impressions allowed per day, week, or month for an individual user. The cap can be configured to apply to each ad, ad group, or campaign.

Placement targeted advertisements (formerly Site-Targeted Advertisements)

In 2003 Google introduced site-targeted advertising. Using the AdWords control panel, advertisers can enter keywords, domain names, topics, and demographic targeting preferences, and Google places the ads on what they see as relevant sites within their content network. If domain names are targeted, Google also provides a list of related sites for placement. Advertisers may bid on a cost-per-impression (CPM) or cost-per-click (CPC) basis for site targeting.

With placement targeting, it is possible for an ad to take up the entire ad block rather than have the ad block split into 2 to 4 ads, resulting in higher visibility for the advertiser.

The minimum cost-per-thousand impressions bid for placement targeted campaigns is 25 cents. There is no minimum CPC bid, however.

Pay Per Click

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Pay Per Click Advertisements (PPC) :
Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the publisher (typically a website owner) when the ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system. PPC "display" advertisements are shown on web sites or search engine results with related content that have agreed to show ads. This approach differs from the "pay per impression" methods used in television and newspaper advertising.

Advertisers select the words that should trigger their ads and the maximum amount they will pay per click. When a user searches on Google, ads (also known as "creatives" within Google) for relevant words appear as "sponsored links" on the right side of the screen, and sometimes above the main search results. Click-through rates (CTR) for the ads are about 8% for the first ad, 5% for the second one, and 2.5% for the third one. Search results can return from 0 to 12 ads.

The ordering of the paid-for listings depends on other advertisers' bids (PPC) and the "Quality Score" of all ads shown for a given search. The search-engine system calculates the quality score on the basis of historical click-through rates, relevance of an advertiser's ad text and keywords, an advertiser's account history, and other relevance factors as determined by Google. The quality score is also used by Google to set the minimum bids for an advertiser's keywords. The minimum bid takes into consideration the quality of the landing page as well, which includes the relevancy and originality of content, navigability, and transparency into the nature of the business. Though Google has released a list of full guidelines for sites, the precise formula and meaning of relevance and its definition is in part secret to Google and the parameters used can change dynamically.

The auction mechanism that determines the order of the ads is a generalized second-price auction. This is claimed to have the property that the participants do not necessarily fare best when they truthfully reveal any private information asked for by the auction mechanism (in this case, the value of the keyword to them, in the form of a "truthful" bid).

Conversion Tracking

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Conversion Tracking:

It is important when you are spending money with Google Adwords that you monitor where your money is going and more important what enquiries or sales are being generated from the budget you are spending.

Google provides many tools to assist in monitoring and measuring performance of Google Adword campaigns. One such tool is the provision of conversion tracking code. This code, when inserted into “Contact Us” pages or “checkout” pages of a website allow you to monitor how many enquiries or sales originated from your client finding you via the Google Adwords Campaigns. In addition to this, your Google Adwords Account will display which phrases generated a “conversion” . Of course this also means you can see which phrases did not generate a “conversion” and so you can better manage your budget and campaigns by pushing the more productive phrases.

Virtualnet Marketing Additional Code

As an accompaniment to your Google Adwords Conversion Tracking, we have developed code that goes one step further, this code will ensure that for every form or sale produced, you will see the name of each client who converted that resulted from Google Adwords and more importantly the exact phrase used that generated the visit in the first place.

This code is again inserted into contact or check out pages and allows you to audit your Google Adwords Campaigns better. Please note we can only use this code if we host and maintain the website we are marketing via Google Adwords.

Example:

If a visitor typed into Google a phrase such as "Conference Venue" and found the Google Adword advert for our client website; then clicked on this ad to get to the clients website; then the visitor went further and clicked through to a contact form and completed this, our client would receive the contact form but in the subject line, the words would be something like: