Search Engine Optimization

Google introduces the Knol

2008-07-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

Google introduces a new feature called as Knol. Knol is a article project. Google went live with Knol, a platform to read and write articles on all kinds of subject. This project is somewhat reminiscent of Wikipedia, though there are many differences as well. Everyone write and read the articles. Google was announced on December 13, 2007, and was opened in beta to the public on July 23, 2008. The term knol, named after a "unit of knowledge", refers to both the project and an article in the project.

Everyone write and share any topics and industry such as scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information and all.

Each knol article will be written by a single author or group of authors. Other users may suggest changes which the author or authors may accept, reject, or modify. All must sign in first with a Google account. Readers may rate or comment on the articles. There can also be multiple articles for the same topic, each written by a different author. Google [believes] that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.

When you log-in within your Google account to write an article on a subject you’re familiar with, you’ll use the kind of live-layout editor typical for Google (and much easier to use than Wikipedia’s editor). For every article you can also choose your licensing, your collaboration, and your advertising model. For instance, you can connect an article to your AdSense account – this triggers a verification process. You can pick a license; either a Creative Commons Attribution license, or a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial license, or the old-style “all rights reserved.” And for collaboration, you can pick open (everyone who’s signed in can edit), moderated (everyone can suggest edits but you or another author will be able to approve these before they would go live – this is the default setting), and closed (meaning only owners – i.e. admins – and authors can edit).

Google PageRank Explained

2008-07-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

Google PageRank or PR for short is numeric value assigned by Google to pages that represents how important a page is. The more important and known your pages are, the better PR they will get. PR is a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is an unknown page for Google and 10 is the highest PR that can be assigned.

PageRank provides the basis for all of web search tools. It is always updated by Google in order to improve it and optimize it.

How is PageRank Calculated?

No one knows for sure how PageRank is currently calculated by Google (except Google itself). Some speculations about the algorithm are made by webmasters all of them are based on the original PageRank published by Google.
In essence, Google interprets a link for page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. This means that page A is considered important (at least by page B).
The more votes (more links) page A gets the higher its PR will be.

Going into more details
As stated above, the main factor in PR is links (or backlinks as they are called). But no all links weight the same when it comes to PR. So an 'important' page linking to you gives you more PR than a 'less important' one.
There for you should always try to get backlinks from pages that have a high PR. These will benefit your page the most.
Another factor in PR propagation is the number of out-links the 'voting' page have. So a PR4 page with only one out-link on it might give you more weight than a PR5 page with 100 out-links on it.
An typical example here would be the famous milliondollarhomepage. This page is PR7 page with hunderds of out-links therefore its weight is would contribute very little to your page PR.

How to increase my PageRank?

Well as you would have probably guessed, PR can be increased by getting more backlinks for your page. The more backlinks and the higher quality they are the more your PR will be.
Here are some tips:

* Submit your site to directories.
* Write important content to your site that would make people link to you.
* Write articles and distribute them.
* Although I don't recommend it but some people recommend it: Do link exchanges.
* Participate in forums (while adding your signature which includes a link to your site).
* Buy some links on high PR pages.

When does Google calculate PRs?

Google calculates pages PRs once every few months, this is called PR update. After a PR update is done, all pages are assigned a new PR by Google and you will have this PR until a new PR update is done.
New sites that were just launched will have a PR of 0 until an update is done by Google so that they are assigned an appropriate PR.

Other 'possible' factors considered
The following are some other factors might be considered by Google for calculating the PR lately:

* Site age: The older the better, Google seems to like old sites.
* Backlink relevancy: Googles seems to be taking into account how relevant is the page linking to you, if it is not that relevant, the link won't weight much.
* Backlink duration: How long was the backlink up? The more the better.

5 Surefire Ways to Increase Google Adsense Earnings

2008-07-10T11:12:00.000-07:00

I have been adding Google Adsense to my websites for a couple of years now with great success. It's amazing how adsense earnings can turn into another significant monthly income stream with little effort on your part. Once the ads have been added to your site there is little or no maintenance.

Some internet marketers are earning $100s and even $1000s per day with Adsense. Although I haven't reached that level I have learnt a little over the years to make the most profit from the Adsense ads on my pages.

Here are my 5 most effective ways to maximise your Adsense earnings:

1. Blend the Ads in with your Site - Create colors for your ads that will blend in with the colors on your website. The idea is to make the ads look less like ads and more like just another part of your site. To do this, make the Adsense ad border and background the same color as your website background. Also make the link text the same color as your website link text. This small change should significantly increase your Adsense click thru rate.

2. Place the Ads Correctly - Place the ads in a prominent position on your website. No point placing the ads where they are not going to be seen by the vast majority of your websites visitors. The most effective places to position your ads are at the top centre of your site and at the top right hand-side. Website visitor eyes tend to move from top centre to top right so anywhere in this area is good and of course you can find the most appropriate ads to fit well in these areas.

3. Choose the Most Profitable Ad Format - Through testing it has been found that the most effective Google Adsense format is the (338x280) large rectangle. This ad will outperform all the others but do not sacrifice the design of your website by squeezing one of these ads in where it just doesn't look right. Placing a large rectangle in the centre of the page is more preferable to putting it in one of the side columns where the layout will be effected.

4. Wrap Your Content - Through proper formatting you can wrap the content of your site around the ads. This is especially effective when wrapping a website article around a (338x280) ad. If you visit any of my sites that have articles on them you can see how this looks. For instructions how to do this just Google "wrap text around Google adsense".

5. Maintain Relevant Content - Although Google's automatic script for targeting ads to the content of your site is mostly first class there are times when it doesn't match the right ad to your content. The way to avoid this is to place good quality targeted content on your pages. If you are creating websites specifically to earn from Google then make sure to focus the keywords around one topic. Placing various keywords on a variety of unrelated topics will result in untargeted ads on your site.

The most important point when placing Google adsense on your websites is to stay within Google's terms of service which you can find on their site. Many people have lost their Adsense accounts through flirting with dodgy practices in order to increase earnings. This may pay off in the short term but Google will always catch you out in the end.

100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner

2008-07-08T15:12:00.000-07:00

For those unfamiliar with the term, a learning style is a way in which an individual approaches learning. Many people understand material much better when it is presented in one format, for example a lab experiment, than when it is presented in another, like an audio presentation. Determining how you best learn and using materials that cater to this style can be a great way to make school and the entire process of acquiring new information easier and much more intuitive. Here are some great tools that you can use to cater to your individual learning style, no matter what that is.

Visual Learners

Visual learners learn through seeing and retain more information when it’s presented in the form of pictures, diagrams, visual presentations, textbooks, handouts and videos. Here are some Web resources that cater to those needs.

Mind Mapping

Get your ideas charted out in a visual format with these easy-to-use online brainstorming and organizational tools.

Bubbl.us: This flash-based mind mapping tools allows you to chart out your thoughts in a colorful format, share them with friends or embed them in blogs, websites and emails.
Free Mind: Mind mapping is easy and free with this Java tool. You’ll be able to manage your notes, lay out a paper and more completely online.
WiseMapping: You can access your mind maps from anywhere with this online tool. You can lay out words, pictures, ideas and more easily with WiseMapping.
Mindomo: Premium versions of this mind mapping tool come at a cost, but you can get access to the basic version for free. It allows you to add links, pictures and text to mind maps and share them over the net.
DeepMehta: This mind mapping tool is built around the idea of knowledge management and cognitive psychology. The open source tool allows sharing, emailing and even contains an embedded calendar.
MindMeister: Collaborate with your classmates on mind maps with this great online tool. The basic version is free and comes complete with the ability to create, share, import and export maps.
Mind42: The name of this tool represents "for two", and is indicative of the collaborative nature of this mapping tool. It can make it easy to keep track of your ideas, share them with friends and teachers and take them with you no matter where you are.
RecallPlus: Students can organize their notes, create flashcards, make use of 3D tools and more in this great mind mapping tool.
Mapul: This mind mapping program has basic and premium levels and allows users to map not only text but images and hyperlinks as well.
DebateMapper: If you’re struggling to understand a debate for your classes try creating a visual representation with this great mapping tool.
CMapTools: CMapTools is free for students to use and allows them to create and share all kinds of knowledge maps.
Thinkature: This site allows real-time collaboration on flow charts, diagrams and mind maps with features that include color organization and freehand drawing.

Charting and Diagrams

Love to put information into charts and diagrams? These tools can help you do that.

Gliffy: Gliffy makes it easy to lay out ideas in flow charts and diagrams or to create floor plans and technical drawings to help you better visually understand information.
FlowChart: Create great flow charts for your classes using this online tool, which comes complete with drawing tools and objects as well as collaborative tools.
DrawAnywhere: This online program allows you to create diagrams and flow charts to represent all kinds of information. Best of all, you can log in from anywhere to get access to your diagrams.
AjaxSketch: This web-based drawing tool makes it easy to not only create flow charts and diagrams but to do freehand drawing as well and you can use it right from Firefox.
XML/SWF Charts: Those familiar with XML will be able to turn their data into colorful and useful charts with this downloadable tool.
yEd: Is a very powerful graph editor and creation tool that can be used to quickly and effectively generate drawings and to create easily read and laid out graphs and diagrams.
Graphviz: If you’ve got a lot of information about the structure of a website or anything else for that matter, this tool can help you to easy map it out into a graph or network.
Kivio: Kivio easy to use diagramming and flowcharting application that is part of the KOffice suite of programs. It comes with features to network diagrams, create organization charts, build flowcharts and more.
Project Draw: This program is a feature-rich web-based vector drawing application that will allow you to create diagrams and graphs of any kind of information as well as making a variety of other kinds of drawings.
Best 4C: This Web-based tool allows you to create and share charts from anywhere, making it easier than ever to diagram and draw your ideas.
LovelyCharts: Charts created through this tool really can be lovely with full color capabilities and loads of graphics.

Videos and Photos

Find everything you’ll need to learn through videos and pictures with these tools.

Google Video: Google Video is chock full of educational videos that can help explain everything from how to use Second Life to learn to explanations of psychological illnesses.
YouTube College: Sign up with your individual college and share videos with fellow students on this College-based version of YouTube. You can post your own visual notes and slides or look at those of others.
Picasa: Picasa is Google’s answer to photo sharing and you can upload images from an art history or anatomy class and study them from anywhere on the Web.
Flickr: This social networking and photo posting site can be a great way to share images from a class with your classmates or look for images to back up your notes.
Scooch: Scooch is a Web-based slide show program that will allow you to post photos and make slide shows that you can share with others over the Web.
Perseus Digital Library: In need of visual representations of manuscripts or sculptures from ancient Rome and Greece? You can find tens of thousands on this online library and database.
Teachertube: Teachertube is a great place to find instructional videos on just about everything. You can learn about the formation of mountains, world history and economics on this useful educational site.
Screencast-o-Matic: Create a video or photo of your screen with this helpful online tool. It can be a great way to remember how to do tasks on the computer or just to share images online.
Jing Project: This tool allows you to snap a photo of your desktop, make recordings of your activities and email or IM them to anyone.
Visuwords: Text dictionaries don’t always give visual learners the explanations they need. This dictionary is graphically based, making it easy to see what concepts or ideas are represented.
KartOO: Along those same lines, Kartoo is a visual search engine, giving you results laid out in a networked chart so it’s easy to see how topics relate.

Auditory Learners

Auditory learners do best in classes where listening is a main concern. These learners prefer verbal lectures and discussions. Auditory learners can get a leg up on their learning with these Web tools.

Podcasts

Get all kind of supplementary education materials through these great podcast tools.

ProfCasts: Turn a PowerPoint presentation into a useful and portable podcast using this tool. It can be a great way to put class materials into a format you can bring with you anywhere.
Moodle: Post and share podcasts with an interactive online community using Moodle. You can not only post your own podcasts but get access to those of others that could provide educational value to you.
First Class: This collaboration and communication software offers a podcast publishing feature that can be great for educational purposes.
Podomatic: Find, share and publish your podcasts through Podomatic. You can search for existing podcasts that may cover topics you’re researching or that are relevant to your classes.
Podcast.net: Podcast.net provides a huge listing of podcasts from all over the Web. You’ll be able to find just about anything you need in an easy, audio format.
Educational Podcast Network: Narrow your search for podcasts down to those dedicated to education. You can learn about everything from math to dance right on your iPod.
PoducateMe: Don’t know the first thing about podcasting or how you can use it to make education a little easier? This site has all the information you need.

Presentation Tools

Put your notes or classroom information into an audio format with these handy apps.

Zoho Show: This great online tool allows you to create, edit and share presentations online making it easy to create interactive homework assignments or to organize your notes in an audio-visual format.
Eyespot: Users can create video mixes online and share them with others on this site and can even add effects to their graphics and music.
Thumbstacks: Thumbstacks allows users to create a web-based presentation or slide show and then share it with others.
SlideShare: This site takes more of a networked approach to creating presentations allowing you to post your presentations and browse those of other users.
Empressr: You can access your organized class materials or projects from anywhere with this tool and share them with friends and other classmates easily.
ThinkFree Show: If you are using PowerPoint to organize your class notes into a more visual and audio conducive format then you can take advantage of this site which makes it easy to take them to the Web.
AuthorStream: Another PowerPoint centered program, AuthorStream makes it simple to upload and share your presentations.
Toufee: If Flash is more your style you can use this online tool which gives you the tools needed to publish and play flash presentations and movies.
PhotoStory 3: Make your slides for class a little more interesting with this free program from Microsoft. You can add special effects or your own voice narration.

Audio Tools

Listen and edit your sounds and music with these tools.

Jamglue: Mix and edit your audio clips with this online tool and when you’re done, share the finished product with other online visitors in a YouTube like format.
Audacity: One of the most popular free audio editors out there, audacity is multi-featured and allows users to record and edit in all kinds of formats.
Wave Surfer: Visualize and manipulate sounds with this free and customizable tool.
Looplab: Create and manipulate short loops and phrases with this great sound editing tool.
LAME: This open source tool makes it easy to encode and manipulate MP3s.

Text Readers

Understand material better when it’s read out loud? These Web tools can do that for you.

Adobe Acrobat Reader: You may not know this, but Adobe Reader has a feature that will allow the contents of the document to be read out loud. It can be a great way for the more auditorially inclined to get through readings.
Read Please: Cut and paste text or type it directly into the input form on this site and the program will read it to you. It can be a very useful tool for making sure essays and projects are written correctly.
Text Reader: Here you’ll find a tool that will give you audio for any text you feed into it.
Expressivo: This simple text reader will give you a variety of audio readings when you paste or type text into the entry form.
ItCanSay: This site has a great online text reader and can also give you some help pronouncing difficult words that aren’t said like they’re spelt.
Midomi: While not quite a text reader, this tool couldn’t be left out of this list. It’s a search engine that is based on sound rather than text. It can be a more intuitive way to find things if you respond better to sounds.

Audio Books

Those who have trouble retaining information from printed words can listen to their assigned reading instead with help from these sites.

LibriVox: This site provides free audiobooks for books in the public domain and has numerous titles. If you don’t find what you want, see if you can volunteer to create a recording of the book yourself.
History and Politics Out Loud: Here you’ll find speeches, historical information and more in an audio format, making it easier to take in and absorb for the auditory learner.
Audible: This subscription site allows visitors to download from thousands of audio books, both best sellers and classics making it easy to find what you need for class.
Project Gutenburg: Books that are no longer under copyright can be found here and there is a special section for audio books, both read by computers and by humans.
Free Books.org: If your class is reading an older text you may be able to find a free version of it to listen to on this site. It contains recordings of numerous out of copyright books.

Kinesthetic Learners

Kinesthetic learners do best when they interact and touch things. They prefer a hands-on approach to learning and enjoy interacting with classroom materials and those around them. These tools can help keep these inquisitive learners busy.

Note Taking Tools

No matter what you’re reading or watching you can make it more interactive by taking notes and these tools can help.

MyNoteIT: This great tool allows students to take and store their notes online, edit them with the help of classmates, look up words or terms you don’t understand and keep track of things you need to do.
Google Docs: With this program from Google you can take notes online, save them, and even send them to your peers for collaboration.
Notely: Keep your class notes, to-do lists and more organized and easy to access with this site.
NoteMesh: This site allows students from the same class to share notes by creating a wiki, making it easy and practical to work together.
Stu.dicio.us: Here, students are able to actively organize their class materials, take and store notes, share information and even link to online reference sites.
ShortText: This is a very simple tool for taking notes online. Simply enter your text, hit save, and you’ve got an online note you can revisit anytime you like.
YourDraft: Take notes with this rich text editor and share and save them online.
Stickkit: Get an intelligent sticky note with this great online program. It looks at the text on your notes and can recognize important dates, bookmarks, emails and more, organizing them for you and making it easy to stay on top of everything.
SyncNotes: If you use a PDA this can be a great way to keep your notes accessible on both your main computer and your portable device.
JotCloud: If you’re the type that loves to put sticky notes all over everything then you’ll enjoy this online note taking tool. It allows you to create clouds of stickies anywhere you need them.
NoteCentric: Store and share your classroom notes with this innovative site. It keeps your notes organized so you can reference them later and you can easily access it through a Facebook account.

Bookmarking

Mark references for later while you’re researching with these tools.

del.icio.us: This online tool makes it easy to mark sites you find interesting to use for later research or to send to friends and project partners.
Clipmarks: Don’t waste time searching through webpages you’ve already read to find the content you needed. Instead, clip it out this this tool. You can clip and email bits to yourself as you go making online research more active.
Wizlite: Don’t just save online material for later, highlight and tag it just like you would a real book with this great online tool.
i-Lighter: Help make online reading a little more hands on with this highlighting program. It allows you to mark parts of online text you found interesting or want to revisit later.
Web-Chops: Web-Chops allows you to clip out any part of a webpage then save and share these clips. It can be a great way to study for tests or prepare for papers in a more interactive fashion.
Furl: This social bookmarking site makes it easy to keep track of webpages you were interested in, share them with classmates and keep them organized for research.
Ma.gnolia: Search through sites others have bookmarked as interesting or use the site to highlight your own information from the Web and keep it in an easy to find place.
Blinklist: Make lists of sites that are relevant to whatever you’re working on with Blinklist. If you have a blog, you can even have the links appear automatically on it, making them super easy to access later.

Interaction

Get involved with the material with these online applications.

Flash Card Machine: This site allows you to create web-based flash cards to study the information you have for class using text and pictures.
Quia: With Quia, you’ll be able to create your own online quizzes and educational games to help you study your materials in a more interactive fashion.
Quizlet: Quizlet makes it easy to study things like vocabulary words with it’s online study tools. You can make quizzes, use your friend’s or browse existing flashcards on the site.
Pauker: This open source program will test your short and long term memory with a system that makes it easy to create and reuse flashcards and quizzes.
Learner.org Interactives: Need a more interactive explanation of a concept from class? You’ll find dozens of educational ones here that can help explain geology, chemistry, math and more.

Collaboration

These chatting and networking tools can make it easy to interact with classmates and friends.

Meebo: This website allows students to IM from anywhere, even computers without the software installations for major programs like AIM, Yahoo!, MSN and more.
Campfire: Here students can create password protected chat rooms to discuss their assignments, collaborate on projects or just chat. Best of all, you won’t need to install a thing.
CollegeRuled: Students can set up class message boards, create to-do lists and interact with classmates on this site.
Campusbug: This site provides a social learning network where students can interact and chat with each other while asking questions and getting answers about class materials.
Facebook: One of the most popular social network sites for students, Facebook provides a place where classmates can come together to chat about assignments, keep up with their lives and post links to sites, videos and photos.
Backpack: Backpack allows students to organize their notes, to-do lists and calendars while sharing information and working with classmates.
The Campus Center: Students can get together and network on this site and also have access to note taking and spreadsheet programs.
JotSpot: Working in a group just became easier with this online wiki tool that allows students to share notes, project ideas and information in an easily accessible format.
WebBrush: Collaborate in a fun and creative way with this tool that lets students send drawings and graphics to one another.
Grouptivity: This site allows students to use email to start a group discussion about class projects and assignments or just to complain about their professors.

Must Read Wordpress SEO

2008-06-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

I started writing my beginner's guide to WordPress SEO a while back, and have since done a load of posts on the subject, an article in the Search Marketing Standard, newsletters, and presentations. It's time to let all the info of all these different articles fall into one big piece: the final guide to WordPress SEO.

As search, SEO, and the Wordpress platform evolve I will keep this article up to date with best practices.

As I take quite a holistic view on SEO, this guide will cover quite a lot, here's the contents...

How Google Measures Search Quality

2008-06-16T14:04:00.000-07:00

This post continues my prior post Are Machine-Learned Models Prone to Catastrophic Errors. You can think of these as a two-post series based on my conversation with Peter Norvig. As that post describes, Google has not cut over to the machine-learned model for ranking search results, preferring a hand-tuned formula. Many of you wrote insightful comments on this topic; here I'll give my take, based on some other insights I gleaned during our conversation.

The heart of the matter is this: how do you measure the quality of search results? One of the essential requirements to train any machine learning model is a a set of observations (in this case, queries and results) that are tagged with "scores" that measure the goodness of the results. (Technically this requirement applies only to so-called "supervised learning" approaches, but those are the ones we are discussing here.) Where to get this data?

Given Google's massive usage, the simplest way to get this data is from real users. Try different ranking models on small percentages of searches, and collect data on how users interacted with the results. For example, how does a new ranking model affect the fraction of users who click on the first result? The second? How many users click to page 2 of results? Once a user clicks out to result page, how long before they click the back button to come back to the search results page?

Peter confirmed that Google does collect such data, and has scads of it stashed away on their clusters. However -- and here's the shocker -- these metrics are not very sensitive to new ranking models! When Google tries new ranking models, these metrics sometimes move, sometimes not, and never by much. In fact Google does not use such real usage data to tune their search ranking algorithm. What they really use is a blast from the past. They employ armies of "raters" who rate search results for randomly selected "panels" of queries using different ranking algorithms. These manual ratings form the gold-standard against which ranking algorithms are measured -- and eventually released into service.

It came as a great surprise to me that Google relies on a small panel of raters rather than harness their massive usage data. But in retrospect, perhaps it is not so surprising. Two forces appear to be at work. The first is that we have all been trained to trust Google and click on the first result no matter what. So ranking models that make slight changes in ranking may not produce significant swings in the measured usage data. The second, more interesting, factor is that users don't know what they're missing.

Let me try to explain the latter point. There are two broad classes of queries search engines deal with:

Navigational queries, where the user is looking for a specific uber-authoritative website. e.g., "stanford university". In such cases, the user can very quickly tell the best result from the others -- and it's usually the first result on major search engines.
Informational queries, where the user has a broader topic. e.g., "diabetes pregnancy". In this case, there is no single right answer. Suppose there's a really fantastic result on page 4, that provides better information any of the results on the first three pages. Most users will not even know this result exists! Therefore, their usage behavior does not actually provide the best feedback on the rankings.

Such queries are one reason why Google has to employ in-house raters, who have been instructed to look at a wider window than the first 10 results. But even such raters can only look at a restricted window of results. And using such raters also makes the training set much, much smaller than could be gathered from real usage data. This fact might explain Google's reluctance to fully trust a machine-learned model. Even tens of thousands of professionally rated queries might not be sufficient training data to capture the full range of queries that are thrown at a search engine in real usage. So there are probably outliers (i.e., black swans) that might throw a machine-learned model way off.

I'll close with an interesting vignette. A couple of years ago, Yahoo was making great strides in search relevance, while Google apparently was not improving as fast. Recall then that Yahoo trumpeted data showing their results were better than Google's. Well, the Google team was quite amazed, because their data showed just the opposite: their results were better than Yahoo's. They couldn't both be right -- or could they? It turns out that Yahoo's benchmark contained queries drawn from Yahoo search logs, and Google's benchmark likewise contained queries drawn from Google search logs. The Yahoo ranking algorithm performed better on the Yahoo benchmark and the Google algorithm performed better on the Google benchmark.

Two learnings from this story: one, the results depend quite strongly on the test set, which again speaks against machine-learned models. And two, Yahoo and Google users differ quite significantly in the kinds of searches they do. Of course, this was a couple of years ago, and both companies have evolved their ranking algorithms since then.

New Version of Google Trends Released

2008-06-16T09:38:00.000-07:00

Recently, changes to Google Trends have been noticed, and today Google is finally announced a new version of the tool on the Official Google blog. The latest version includes a numeric metric dubbed 'relative scaling' and the ability to export trends data.

With relative scaling, the numbers will not provide exact data, but will give you ballpark of how certain terms are trending. Here's how is Google Trends team explained relative scaling:

You'll notice a number at the top of the graph as well as on the y-axis of the graph itself. These numbers don't refer to exact search-volume figures. Instead, in the same way that a map might “scale” to a certain size, Google Trends scales the first term you've entered so that its average search volume is 1.00 in the chosen time period. So in the example above, 1.00 is the average search volume of vanilla ice cream from 2004 to present. We can then see a spike in mid-2006 which crosses the 3.00 line, indicating that search traffic is approximately 3 times the average for all years.

The export function offers two options: relative scaling or fixed scaling. Fixed scaling is data scaled to a specific timeline.

Previously, users noticed the removal of the ability to view trends hourly.

What do you think of the new Google Trends? Give us your thoughts in the comments.

SEO A Guide for Beginners

2008-06-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

What is SEO? Forget the hype, search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of getting a website to work optimally with search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.

You don’t pay anything to get into Google, Yahoo or MSN
To get into Google, for instance, you must consider and largely abide by search engine rules for inclusion.
It’s thought all search engines rank websites by the quality of incoming links to a site from other websites and hundreds of other metrics. Generally speaking, a link from a page to another page is viewed in Google “eyes” as a vote for that page the link points to.
If you have original quality content on a site, you have a chance of generating quality links. If your content is found on other websites, you will find it hard to get links. If you have decent content on your site, you can let authority websites know about it, and they might link to you.
- Search engines need to understand a link is a link. Links can be designed to be ignored by search engines (the attribute nofollow effectively cancels out the usefulness of a link, for instance)

A List of Social Bookmarking Services

2008-06-02T08:25:00.000-07:00

Social bookmarking is a great way to save pages you like and help others find articles, blog posts, lenses and sites you create. But what sites should you use? This list of bookmarking services can help you decide.

1. Slashdot - PR9 - 188,000 links
2. Digg - PR8 - 3,470,000 links
3. del.icio.us - PR8 - 1,540,000 links
4. Reddit - PR8 - 1,040,000 links
5. Technorati - PR8 - 760,000 links
6. Stumbleupon - PR8 - 725,000 links
7. Blinklist - PR7 - 1,620,000 links
8. Furl - PR7 - 1,210,000 links
9. Propeller - PR7 - 322,000 links
10. Rojo - PR7 - 6060 links
11. de.lirio.us - PR7 - 3770 links
12. Folkd - PR7 - 410 links
13. Netvouz - PR6 - 912,000
14. Mister-Wong - PR6 - 898,000 links
15. Simpy - PR6 - 867,000 links
16. Bibsonomy - PR6 - 469,000 links
17. Kinja - PR6 - 438,000 links
18. Backflip - PR6 - 227,000 links
19. Clipmarks - PR6 - 121,000 links
20. Rawsugar - PR6 - 50,300 links
21. Searchles - PR6 - 32,000 links
22. Searchallinone - PR6 - 18,800 links
23. Tailrank - PR6 - 10,900 links
24. Linkagogo - PR6 - 6790 links
25. Web2List - PR6 - 4780 links
26. Spurl - PR6 - 38 links
27. Faves - PR5 - 1,280,000 links
28. Megite - PR5 - 753,000 links
29. Clipclip - PR5 - 323,000 links
30. StartAid - PR5 - 637,000
31. Linkroll - PR5 - 147,000 links
32. Sk*rt - PR5 - 104,000 links
33. Listible - PR5 - 60,400 links
34. Feedmarker - PR5 - 58,800 links
35. Markaboo - PR5 - 48,400 links
36. Bringr - PR5 - 16,500 links
37. Gabbr - PR5 - 5000 links
38. Mybookmarks - PR5 - 916 links
39. Buddymarks - PR5 - 907 links
40. Tallstreet - PR5 - 408 links
41. Mylinkvault - PR5 - 71 links
42. Ma.gnolia - PR4 - 818,000 links
43. Web2Announcer - PR4 - 305,000 links
44. Diigo - PR4 - 276,000 links
45. Plugim - PR4 - 120,000 links
46. Lifelogger - PR4 - 86,700 links
47. Dropjack - PR4 - 65,000 links
48. Indiasphere.Net - PR4 - 45,900 links
49. Otavo - PR4 - 35,000 links
50. Butterflyproject.nl - PR4 - 34,500 links
51. Lookmarks - PR4 - 32,700 links
52. Myvmarks - PR4 - 28,200 links
53. Blurpalicious - PR4 - 25,300 links
54. Cloudytags - PR4 - 24,100 links
55. Mysitevote - PR4 - 20,000 links
56. A1-Webmarks - PR4 - 15,200 links
57. Philoi - PR4 - 12,400 links
58. Oyax - PR4 - 12,000 links
59. Gravee - PR4 - 9940 links
60. Votelists - PR4 - 6150 links
61. Gd-Sites - PR4 - 5840 links
62. Contentpop - PR4 - 5490 links
63. Gaddiposh - PR4 - 3130 links
64. Urlex.Info - PR4 - 654 links
65. Connectedy - PR4 - 636 links
66. Connectedy - PR4 - 568 links
67. Zurpy - PR4 - 198 links
68. Zurpy - PR4 - 189 links
69. Unalog - PR4 - 162 links
70. Bookmarktracker - PR4 - 107 links
71. Bookmarktracker - PR4 - 87 links
72. Marktd - PR3 - 130,000 links
73. Getboo - PR3 - 96,500 links
74. Listerlister - PR3 - 19,100 links
75. Bookmarkplace - PR3 - 15,100 links
76. Jigg.In - PR3 - 9220 links
77. Stirrdup - PR3 - 9220 links
78. Chaamp - PR3 - 7770 links
79. Ez4U - PR3 - 6520 links
80. Socialogs - PR3 - 5200 links
81. Business-Planet - PR3 - 4740 links
82. Articlesnetwork - PR3 - 3670 links
83. Wirefan - PR3 - 3030 links
84. Fritterware - PR3 - 2970 links
85. Sitesays - PR3 - 1560 links
86. Bookmark4You - PR3 - 948 links
87. Crowdfound - PR3 - 782 links
88. Authorcontent - PR3 - 513 links
89. Info4It - PR2 - 91,100 links
90. Palbe - PR2 - 9300 links
91. Dealoid - PR2 - 9270 links
92. Barksbookmarks - PR2 - 7370 links
93. Articlesarchieve - PR2 - 5350 links
94. Article-Publishers - PR2 - 4380 links
95. Latestramblings - PR2 - 3180 links
96. Xlmark - PR2 - 2120 links
97. Ebizgo.Info - PR2 - 1150 links
98. Actualtopics - PR2 - 749 links
99. Projecthear - PR1 - 19,600 links
100. Wordsjournal - PR1 - 14,100 links

Create website logo in photoshop

2008-04-24T22:59:00.000-07:00

Here is a quick way to design your own web page logos using Photoshop/Imageready:

1. Find a suitable image to use
2. Copy and paste it in Photoshop/Imageready.
3. Go to Image->Canvas size and resize the width to 600px.
4. Place the image on the left side of the canvas.
5. Select using single row selection the right part of the image.
6. Go to Edit->Define pattern.
7. Deselect, Create new layer and goto Edit->Fill->Use Pattern.
8. Erase/Smudge any part of the image layer until it blends correctly.
9. Use Gradient styling to the new layer to enhance the visual effect. Also if you want more clear initial image apply Filter->Artistic->Cutout to the photo at the beginning.

More security on adsense

2008-04-24T22:47:00.000-07:00

If you are using Google AdSense as a revenue advertising system, then you might want to implement these security measures in order to prevent someone from displaying your adverts with a wrong purpose in mind(i.e. click frauds or placing ads code on inappropriate website)

Here are the steps to ensure that your ads are displayed on purpose:
1. Login to AdSense
2. Click on AdSense Setup tab->Allowed Sites
3. Under List your allowed URLs, one per line:
type your trusted websites that you allow ads to be running on

That's it!

Analysis and monitoring SEO tools that work for free

2008-04-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

There are lots of good tools that can be used to monitor your SEO campaign, but almost all of them must be purchased. For the people who want truly powerfull and free SEO tools I'll present my favorites:

http://www.backlinkwatch.com

Just type an URL and you can investigate your competiton by their backlinks - ie. which pages have voted for them.

Free monitor for google

http://www.cleverstat.com

Enter the keywords that you wish to be optimised, the check positions for example: 150 (which will limit the search maximum up to the 15th results page) and begin monitoring your results.
Benefits:

Compare with your previous results and determine the exact website changes that you've made resulted in a SERPS position change!
Closely monitor the rivals above you, and if you build a better page, you'll be on top.

Conclusion:
One of the most important and the same time simple truth that I've learned through the years of websites optimization is that in order to be on first positions you must deserve them.
I.e you have to represent constanlty relevant and updated information on the subject that you've been presenting/writing for - so the webpage to be really beneficial to the users.

Even most sophisticated backlink schemes won't get you on top of SERPS, when offering content of poor quality. The first pages search results and visitors stay time are being constantly monitored by real people, so next time it's better to think what could you offer to the visitors!

3 ways to increase CPC and eCPM

2008-04-24T22:32:00.000-07:00

There are some things that anyone could do to increase his/her incomes when using Adsense.
Here is the list:

1. Changing ads
Check your Adsense statistics. If you're having low CPC(cost per click) then you should move your ad above the fold and/or change its color scheme. Experiment until there's a positive effect.

2. Try decreasing your ad units
The reasons:

- the second and third ad spot clicks are not so-profitable as the first ones. And if you have higher CPC on your middle ad then place it to appear first in your HTML code, then position with CSS to the place where it's getting maximum clicks.

- when having 25 ad links on a page and the user clicks on only 1 then your eCPM will start to get low, because this way the advert impressions are growing but the clicks are staying same.

3. Add more useful content to the webpage
You can use Google Analytics or other web statistics software to see the average stay time on your webpages. This way you might find the pages that need to be enriched or rewritten. And if you manage to increase visitors stay time then your eCPM will surely grow!

Cheers!

Article Submission As A Search Engine Optimization Option

2008-04-18T01:08:00.000-07:00

Article submission can be a great means of obtaining free advertising and gaining good one way links back into your web site. One way links are considered one of the most important search engine optimization goals for any webmaster.

To get the most mileage out of article submissions, you need to follow a fairly standard set of guidelines. Follow these guidelines and your search engine optimization program will get a boost, your reputation within genre is likely to rise and the amount of traffic may increase over time. Article submission guidelines include:

Niche Selection: use your web site as the basis for establishing the niche you are going to write in. If your web site is promoting car alarms, use a niche related such as motor vehicle security. You may find that being more specific and using motor vehicle alarms is even more appropriate.
Submission Site: many sites that offer article submission tips leave this to last, I find it can be important to look at first. Determine where you are going to submit the article, what categories they have and what they allow/forbid within the content. Follow their guidelines. When selecting a site check on whether or not you are going to get a link back from the site itself - search engine optimization relies on inbound links so start with submission sites that may offer link juice.
Select a Topic: select a topic that you have specific knowledge of, or are familiar with and that you know you can easily research. Selecting a topic makes research difficult as you often don’t know what to actually research. Stick to what your know.
Research Keywords: do a little research looking for appropriate keywords for your topic and niche. Remember one of the reasons you are undertaking this project is to aid in your search engine optimization program.
Write a Good Title: actually, make it a great title. You are looking to attract readers and, more importantly, other webmasters to your article. Sell the article using a great title.
Content: as with all articles, content is highly important. Your content needs to be relevant to the title and niche and must provide value to the reader. It must the kind of article that other webmasters would want to have on their sites.
Resource Box: create a resource box that has a short bio and that links back to your pages. This is the section that provides the link structure for your search engine optimization program. If you can optimize your links then all the better.
Submit: submit your article following the article submission sites guidelines.

This is a basic list of steps to follow. Other important areas to note are things like spelling and grammar and using a good paragraph structure. Sometimes it is a good idea to get a third party to review the article. Failing that, leave the article for a day or so then come back and read and edit where required. You are trying to get a near perfect article that other webmasters will want to grab and republish on their sites. This is where the real search engine optimization boost comes from.

Every time your article is used, your resource box should be published with it. This provides the inbound links that you are looking for. If the submission site allows you to customize the link in the resource box, consider rotating through a couple of different resource boxes, each with different link structures. Your search engine optimization program will get a bigger boost if you can use different links with each submission.

Article submission is a smart way to gain extra traffic, extra credibility and of course, a huge boost to your search engine optimization program.

Free Web Hosts

2008-04-18T00:22:00.000-07:00

Features and limitations

A few free web hosts offer basic package for free and enhanced packages (with more features) for a cost. This allows users to try the service for an initial trial (see how it performs compared to other hosts), and then upgrade when (and if) needed.

Here is a list of free webhosts to try.

bravenet.com
builtfree.org
friendcircles.com/
webspawner.com
freehomepages.com
wanadoo.co.uk/
freehomepage.com
teach-nology.com/
graffiti.net
lycos.co.uk/buildasite/
pcpages.com
100freemb.com/
zoomshare.com/
123freehost.co.uk/members/register.asp
expage.com/html/f_logon.htm
bluescities.net/webhosting.html
freewebsites.com (must use FTP)*
free.hostdepartment.com
freewebsitehosting.com/
souptown.com/ (1 day activation)
boxmail.biz
bestplacesonline.com
sites.centralpets.com/ (pet sites only)
orgsites.com/ (non-profit only)
ecomplanet.com/
kiddonet.com/
dreamstation.com/
link4u.com/builder/
techweenies.com/ (sign up)
familyplanit.com/
piczo.com/go/signup?cat=pz
cyberbree.com
amarillozoo.com
sample.usclargo.com/
coolfreepages.com/
websitewizard.com
dostweb.com/
100webspace.com/freeplan.html
flashbuilder.net
1sweethost.com/
free.bizhat.com/signup.php
hostbigger.com (1 day activation)
bigthicketdirectory.net
mrfreehost.com/
members.domaindlx.com/otmain.aspx
exactpages.com/
hostingisus.com/
net4free.org/free_web_hosting.php
cjb.net/ (upload files only)
mywebhut.com/signup.php
webpagethang.com/
cabanova.com (free tutorial)
hostinplace.com (free tutorial)
digitalzones.com/
freewebtools.com
freecyberzone.com
g2gm.com
megaone.com
myfoolmoon.com
angelcities.com
freeservers.com
portland.co.uk/
freewebs.com
haywired.com
1accesshost.com/
freewebspace.com
sitemonster.net/
x10hosting.com/
freesite.org/
pagerealm.com
luzzati.com/
50megs.com/
sitepalace.com/
free.prohosting.com/
50m.esmartstart.com/
20m.com
koolpages.com
greatnow.com/
free-websites.com
superbikeclub.com
sbn.bz/index_e.htm l
cyberturf.com
homemarker.com/
beplaced.com/
oddworldz.com
orgfree.com/
00freehost.com/
powow.com
homepagez.com
hostedforfree.com/
blinkz.com/
250free.com/
cybamall.com
joinme.net/
fbhosting.com/
eccentrix.com/
my.cybersoup.com/
talkspot.com/
275mb.com/ community architect
usclargo.com/
jamminweb.com/
stormloader.com
sphosting.com
sppages.com Free Online Web Store
freehostia.com
wtcsites.com
free-hoster.cc
1hwy.com/
goduck.net
primetap.com
741.com
0golf.com
fortunecity.com
coms.ph
g3z.com
wsmcafe.com
batcave.net
81x.com
topcities.com
angelfire.com
tripod.com
xaper.com
1afm.com
myeweb.net
0catch.com
150m.com/
20fr.com
envy.nu/
rantweb.com/
biz.ly
2itb.com
psend.com/
bappy.com
dzite.com
1colony.com/
getaportal.com
s4u.org/
bz.tc/
sitesled.com/
9k.com
1asphost.com
cybcity.com
t35.com/
doramail.com
atspace.com
xmail.net/
yabz.net
piczo.com
sitekreator.com/
tbns.net
geocities.com

Useful Links for Each Web Designer

2008-03-31T13:04:00.000-07:00

This list of links is a collection of useful tidbits, be they icons, fonts or online applications which make my life as a web site designer a whole lot easier. These are links which every web designer should be aware of.

FAMFAMFAM Silk Iconset - A wonderful set of over 700 icons to be used on your web sites. There’s literally an icon for every occasion here.

Pinvoke - Pinvoke also produce a lovely iconset containing over 400 icons. They also distribute some fantastic, free pixel fonts.

Tripoli - Tripoli is a stable, cross browser rendering foundation which forms a fantastic starting point for all web design projects. It creates a standard css and xhtml file which performs as consistently as possible across all modern browsers.

Colour Schemer Online - This colour schemer is a useful tool. Simply add a main parent colour to the swatch on the left and generate a palette of compatible colours. This can be especially useful if you’re struggling to find that perfect match of colours.

FontShop Free Fonts - This is a page featuring a freebie font offered by the FontShop. While there is only one font here, that font is changed and rotated fairly regularly and is generally a font of high quality, unlike a lot of free font offerings on the web. Well worth checking back regularly.

TypeTester - We all know about typetester, right? It’s an online app which allows you to preview different fonts rendered in css with all the different font style properties available. Useful for selecting font styles before designing a page.

CSS Type Test - Similar to TypeTester. My personal choice of type testing app.

AJAXRain - When used properly and intuitively, AJAX is pretty damn cool. AJAXRain is a directory of various different AJAX scripts, all located in one place and well organised.

Attackr - A good read, Attackrs articles are written by blogging designers all over the world who produce both interesting and informative articles.

CSS Play - Another one we all know about. A great resource of all kinds of different useful and experimental CSS techniques.

Google Analytics - Hugely popular, Google Analytics allows you to keep track of visitors to your site, and all kinds of information about them; where they come from, what browser they are using, which web site referred them etc etc etc. Very in-depth traffic analysis application.

GoPlan - GoPlan is a project tracking application which allows you to efficiently keep on top of all your current projects. It offers file hosting, chat rooms, calendars and all kinds of other useful features for you and your client. I prefer GoPlan to Basecamp as I get more for my bucks, and can pay with PayPal.

And there you have it. I hope you enjoyed my list of uber useful linkage!

2008-03-30T04:09:00.000-07:00

Article Directories are good source for getting few thousand extra hits for your website. They also provide few quality backlinks so they are very import for SEO Purpose . A List of HTML-Friendly Article Submission Sites.

Article Directory List

Directory
1. http://www.ezinearticles.com/
2. http://www.articlesyard.com
3. http://www.articledashboard.com
4. http://www.articles-hub.com
5. http://www.articlesfactory.com
6. http://www.goarticles.com
7. http://www.articletrader.com
8. http://www.articlealley.com
9. http://www.articlesphere.com
10. http://www.webpronews.com
11. http://www.searchguild.com
12. http://www.articlegarden.com
13. http://www.articledepot.co.uk
14. http://www.ideamarketers.com
15. http://www.articlesbase.com
16. http://www.easyarticles.com
17. http://www.allthewebsites.org
18. http://www.promotionworld.com
19. http://www.selfgrowth.com
20. http://www.free-articles-zone.com
21. http://sbinformation.about.com
22. http://www.articlepros.com
23. http://www.articlecube.com
24. http://www.linkgrinder.com
25. http://www.kokkada.com
26. http://www.articleteller.com
27. http://biz-whiz.com
28. http://www.businessknowhow.com
29. http://www.businessnation.com
30. http://neoarticle.com
31. http://www.amazines.com
32. http://www.postarticles.com
33. http://www.articlewheel.com
34. http://www.a1articles.com
35. http://www.selfseo.com
36. http://www.bigarticles.com
37. http://www.ezine-writer.com.au
38. http://www.advertisingknowhow.com
39. http://www.alumbo.com
40. http://www.powerhomebiz.com
41. http://www.articletogo.com
42. http://www.christiannotepad.com
43. http://www.linkgeneral.com
44. http://www.workoninternet.com
45. http://www.cyberindian.com
46. http://www.article-hangout.com
47. http://www.promotiondata.com
48. http://www.xpressideas.com
49. http://www.articlenexus.com
50. http://www.articlesbridge.com
51. http://www.homebiztools.com
52. http://www.activeauthors.com
53. http://www.rightbiz.com
54. http://www.click-partners.com
55. http://articles.simplysearch4it.com
56. http://www.womensarticles.com
57. http://www.bigarticle.com
58. http://www.articlesafari.com
59. http://www.article-warehouse.com
60. http://www.articlebar.com
61. http://www.tc-sales.biz
62. http://www.webmasterslibrary.com
63. http://www.media13.com
64. http://www.articlestash.com
65. http://www.content-corral.com
66. http://www.bigbusinessweb.com
67. http://www.look-4it.com
68. http://www.articlesfrenzy.com
69. http://www.articlewell.com
70. http://www.articles24.com
71. http://www.articles.com.my
72. http://www.organic-rankings.com
73. http://www.cumuli.com
74. http://www.uniterra.com
75. http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com
76. http://www.internetarticledirectory.com
77. http://www.articleuniversity.com
78. http://www.free-article-bank.com
79. http://www.articlebin.com
80. http://article-spot.com
81. http://www.getyourarticles.com

29 Free Ebooks on Adsense!

2008-03-30T04:01:00.000-07:00

Before you download these materials, please read this carefully.

1. These materials give you any advice on Adsense. Some, probably giving you bad ideas on getting rich with the Adsense. You should understand the difference between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO. Learn more about these two on Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
2. I get all these materials only by searching on the internet. Most of all are direct downloads of them. You will not facing any form asking you to fill in your name and email, or anykind of login and registering page. Just direct downloads.
3. The links to these materials can be changed or disappeared at any time with any reason. Download them as soon as you can.
4. Some of these materials may contain referral link, affiliate id, reseller link, or any kind of efforts to make money online from your clicks. Those all ARE NOT MINE. If you feel not willing to make somebody else getting richer, don’t screw with them. Just read the contents. Or, find another way that you think more appropriate to get to the materials.
5. If you think you have found any of these materials is breaking any laws or any kinds of legal rights, please let me know. Inform me at: cheques.gallery@gmail.com, and tell me just where the visitor should go. This is NOT VALID in the case that the referred address is just another affiliate or reseller page. Tell me only the exact address of the author, the owner, or the fully legitimate and authorized page, as the original source of the material.
6. Basically, I’m only giving my visitors links based on the internet search results. I DO NOT responsible for any other obligation than removing the links. In any circumstances, I may be force myself to remove this whole post at all.
7. Use your anti virus application before opening the materials. I don’t want you suffered from all of these. After all, this is all should be fun.

29 Free eBooks On Adsense

50 Social Bookmarking Websites

2008-03-30T03:52:00.000-07:00

Here is list of 50 Social Bookmarking Websites:

30daytags
BlinkBits
BlogHop
BlogLot
BlogMarks
BlogMemes
BlogPulse
BmAccess
browsr
Fark
CiteULike
clipclip
clipmarks
Complore
Connectedy
Connotea
de.lirio.us
del.icio.us
digg
diigo
fantacular
Feedmarker
Feed Me Links
Furl
Gibeo
GoKoDo
Google Notebook
IceRocket
Kaboodle
linkaGoGo
linkfilter.net
linkroll
Listible
Lookmarks
ma.gnolia
Netvouz
Newsvine
openBM
RawSugar
reddit
Rojo
Rollyo
Scuttle
Shadows
Simpy
Sitetagger
Smarking
Spurl
StumbleUpon
taghop

Internet Marketing!

2008-03-28T06:19:00.000-07:00

Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing or eMarketing (or e-Marketing), is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing including low costs in distributing information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of instant response and in eliciting response, are unique qualities of the medium.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the internet, including design, development, advertising and sales. Internet marketing methods include search engine marketing, display advertising, e-mail marketing, affiliate marketing, interactive advertising, online reputation management and also Social Media Marketing Methods such as blog marketing, and viral marketing.

Internet marketing is the process of growing and promoting an organization using online media. Internet marketing does not simply mean 'building a website' or 'promoting a website'. Somewhere behind that website is a real organization with real goals.

An Internet marketing strategy includes all aspects of online advertising online activity that promotes a company online, including websites, blog sites, article and press releases, online market research, email marketing, and advertising, as appropriate for the promotion of ones' business.

How to Create Google Adsense Pages

2008-03-19T05:15:00.000-07:00

First let me preface this article by stating that you should NOT create pages for the "gaming" of AdSense. Most companies who use AdWords are small to medium sized businesses trying to grow.

With rampant click fraud, those advertisers won't be able to advertise, and AdSense won't pay out as well.

That said, let's begin the process.

For our example, our topic is that of "widgets", so where do get started?

Create the page - Sounds simple enough, but there are some coding standards you should always use. They are:

* Name of the page - Use the name of the keyword you are targeting. So, in this example it would be widget.htm. You can use your web server's technology as well, but if in doubt, you can never go wrong with the .htm
* Title the page - Use the keyword again for the title.
* Meta Tags - Yes, they are still used. Make sure you include the keywords in your meta keyword list, and give a definition of the word in your meta description tag
* H1 - Put your keyword in stylized H1 tags. Use CSS to make the tag look consistent to the rest of your site

Content - This is often the biggest obstacle non-writers have. Don't worry, follow these steps and you'll soon be on your way to original content.

* Go to MSN, Yahoo and Google
* Enter your keyword into the search box
* Look at the top 5 sites listed from each search engine
* Educate yourself on the topic from the content found on these sites

Page Copy - Now that you've absorbed more information, compose your own page of ORIGINAL content. You can take bits and pieces from the other pages, but be sure to inject your personality into your writing. That will make it uniquely yours.

Links - Don't forget to link to authority sites about your subject. It's very natural for web pages to have links to other sites, don't forget about this key point.

Traffic - The most obvious is getting traffic to your site. Your site will have higher paying ads if your page gets more traffic.

Personally, I tried using the traffic generating sites, and quite frankly, they are a waste of time. Sure you'll build up your traffic numbers, but it's usually from an autosurfing program.

One last note. On September 1st, 2005 Google shut down my account because they suspected click fraud. I really don't have a problem with them shutting me down, because as an advertiser I want to know that they are watching my money. However, I believe they should show proof of the supposed fraudulent activity. I was even proactive in letting them know when I saw suspicious activity, but they never replied to my inquires.

On-page and Off-page Optimization Secrets

2008-03-19T00:49:00.000-07:00

If you want to rank on top for Google, Yahoo!, and other major search engines, you’ll need more than a basic knowledge of search engine optimization. Those who rank high on natural search results do so because they’ve been able to effectively manage their on-page and off-page optimization factors.

On-page Optimization
What you do on your web pages can have a positive or negative impact on your search results. However, as we’ll discuss later in this article, off-page optimization is even more powerful when it comes to increasing your natural search engine placement.

Some of the most important on-page optimization techniques begin with choosing a key word to optimize your page for. There are a number of free tools available on the Internet that can help you find a keyword that is popular but not overly competitive. Keywords that are highly competitive are often very difficult to place well for.

Once you’ve selected a keyword, you can take advantage of:

Secret #1: Don’t optimize for a single keyword, optimize for a keyword phrase.
When you optimize for a single keyword, more often than not, that word is highly competitive and your chances of coming out on top are minimal. Where you gain a significant advantage is by focusing on a keyword phrase. This actually increases your chances of ranking well and ultimately helps you towards ranking well for the single word you originally chose.

Secret #2: Place your keyword phrase within the first 25 words of text, and the last 25 words of the page. The h1 tag can be used for developing a headline on your page and emphasizing your keyword phrase within the beginning of your page text (search engines love h1 tags). Another suggestion is to use your keyword phrase just after your copyright notice on the bottom of your webpage. This ensures that it is present within the last 25 words of your page.

Secret #3: Place your keyword phrase in your page title and description. Additionally, place the keyword phrase throughout your page - being sure to bold the phrase once, italicize the phrase once, and underline the phrase once. Mention your keyword phrase every paragraph or so. Just make sure that it appears natural. If you stuff the page with your keywords, you’ll potentially turn off browsers who would otherwise find your page valuable.

Off-page Optimization
Now that you’ve learned about on-page optimization, it’s important that you focus your attention on off-page optimization. Of all the techniques that have been developed for SEO, it still comes down to the popularity of your site.

The ranking of your website in a natural search engine result list is directly correlated to the popularity of your website.

So what do I mean by popularity? Popularity is the number and quality of links to your website. Although I’ve simplified the explanation here, you should know that links essentially count as votes. If everyone is "voting" for a particular website then the website becomes popular.

Secret #4: Get other sites to link to you. There are a number of ways to improve link popularity. Although I won’t recommend a specific link building tool, I will say that there have been a number of good products developed that simplify the process. It still takes time and hard work, but over time, increasing the number of sites linking to your website can pay huge dividends.

Secret #5: Make sure that incoming links are of high quality (sites with a high Google page rank). It’s not only important to have other sites link to you, it’s also important to have quality sites link to you.

Secret #6: Anchor text must include your keyword phrase. When other sites link to you, make sure the link includes your keyword phrase. Sites that link to your domain can help with overall page rank and popularity, but websites who link to you using your keyword phrase (in the anchor text) are what get you to the top of search engine result lists.

Secret #7: Give people a reason to link to your website. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, white papers, free content or tools, etc., but ultimately it comes down to offering something of value. If you do, other websites will give you their "vote", increasing your link popularity and your search engine results.

Increasing your rank on major search engines isn’t complex. But it does take time and effort. If you want to increase your website ranking, begin by implementing what you’ve learned in this article and stay the course.

SEO Secrets

2008-03-19T00:45:00.000-07:00

Since Jigsaw Design moved from focusing strictly on Design to Search Engine Optimizing, we have been spending a lot of time researching this process and reading feedback from other SEO Companies via message boards, blogs and other sources. We eventually came to the conclusion that 90% of the people out there really don't have much of a clue what they are talking about. In the next few paragraphs, we will be discussing some methods and practices that will boost your position and still keep you in good favor with the search engines. We will also be looking at some practices that SEO's put a lot of stock into that may not necessarily be as important as they will lead you to believe.

IMPORTANT

Less code more content

When a web crawler visits your site, it is there to read your title, description and content. What it doesn't want to do is wade though pages of code in order to find a few lines of content. There are two reasons why this is bad:

It looks to the crawler that you are trying to hide something (spammers will use code to hide hidden text or redirects). If the crawler doesn't understand something, it will ignore it and, most likely, your site.
The web crawler may think you don't have enough content to put any importance into your site and, if it doesn't think your site is important, then it will not list you too high in the returned search results.

What you should be shooting for is at least a 2/1 ratio in favor of content on 75% of your pages. This will let the web crawler know your site has some sort of relevance and also gives the crawler more content to index, which it really likes.

Frames and Flash

I have addressed this subject before, but I want to go into it again because it is one of those things which a lot of SEO's just don't understand. The major search engines, i.e. Yahoo, Google and MSN, will all say the same thing on their web masters pages and that is "some web crawlers have difficulty reading the context of these pages". What it doesn't say is don't use flash or framed pages because this is a no-no. The reason why I want to make that clear is a lot of SEO's will try and tell you that this is a bad thing and that all your pages need to be flat static pages with lots of alt text behind your flat images. This is not the case. We have gotten many websites in the top ten and number one spots, some of which use both flash and framed pages. Some do not even have any indexable text or links on the home page. So how do we do it? Simple and its something you should be doing anyway. You should have an alternative version of your site which viewers with flash installed will be directed to. For a framed site, you should also have a non-framed version for people whose browsers don't support framed pages. Now that you know how simple it is, here is the temptation. Because your index page will most likely only be seen by maybe 10% of the people that come to your site, the temptation will be to flood that page with keywords and search text to get yourself bumped up the search and that will happen. However, when you get caught (which you will), you will be dumped. This page should only contain a stripped down version of your site and should only contain the same text content as your flash or framed site.

Keyword overindulgence

When writing the copy for your site, write it for your viewer and not for the web crawler. A lot of people get tempted to use the same word or phrase over and over to try and get themselves placed first on an web search. This is a total rookie move and can also get you bumped for what's called keyword flooding. Here are some examples:

Bad

Bay Area Search Engine Optimizing

Bay Area search engine optimizing company, located in the bay area. Our services include search engine optimizing, SEO and search engine placement. As part of our search engine optimizing service, we guarantee you top placement on all search engines within 30 days or your money back. When you chose our company for your search engine optimizing needs we will........ I think you get the point.
Good

Bay Area Search Engine optimizing

Jigsaw design is located in the Bay Area California. We are committed to serving all your design needs. Also, as part of our service, we also include search engine optimization, web hosting and online store solutions...... bla bla bla

I'm sure you notice the difference. Our web site does show up in the top ten for the search term "bay area web search engine optimizing". However, that was before we wrote this article. So how many times can you include the same search term? That only the Search engine companies know for sure. However, based our experience with sites we have successfully placed in the top ten, we would say no more than once every two paragraphs or once every 100 words.

Out of style sheets

Style sheets are one of those things that are easy to abuse and can get you in trouble. When use correctly, they can really help you when optimizing a site. To abuse the use of style sheets is simple. All you have to do is make your H1 tag the same as your normal text style to try and make the crawler think that all your text is important. The trouble is crawlers are not as dumb as the used to be. They figured out that nobody has a header that lasts 5 paragraphs. The proper use of the H1 tag is your main page header. For example, this page is "SEO Secrets". Sub headers like "out of style sheets" should use the H2 tag and your content should always be normal text. Never, no matter how tempting it is don't make any text hidden by use of style sheets or any other method because your site will be bumped. Also do not make the folder that your style sheet is in hidden or private because, if the web crawler can't read your style sheet, it's not going to trust that everything is legitimate.

Stale content

You may be able to get your site listed in the top ten within 30 - 60 days, but that's no guarantee it will stay there. If your site is not continually being updated with fresh content and growing, then the search engines will simply dump it in favor of newer fresher sites. You should be adding a new page to your site every time the crawler visits and updating your old content as much as you can. Daily is preferred, but weekly at the very least. This will mean that the crawler will have fresh content to index and new links to explore. Thus, it will never see your site as stale and drop it.

NOT AS IMPORTANT AS A LOT OF SEO'S WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE

Page Rank

If you have downloaded Google's toolbar, you will see a bar at the top of each page which gives you a rating from 1 to 10 of how Google ranks your site. This means absolutely nothing when it comes to search engine optimizing. Some search engine companies think that getting a high page rank means you are going to be listed higher in the search. This is not the case. In fact, it couldn't be further from the truth. What this little bar indicates is simply how important Google sees your site and it makes that judgment on the quality of sites that link to you. The single most important thing about your site is not page rank, it is not how many incoming links you have and it is not how long your site has been up. It is your content, plain and simple. If your content matches the search criteria, then you will be listed. The more relevant content you have, the higher your site will be listed. There are a lot of sites listed in the number one spot that don't have any page rank.

Incoming links

Don't believe a word you hear about incoming links, the quality of the link or anything to do with link exchange because the truth is; it doesn't really matter how many links you have to your site and what sites link to you. What does matter is the way the sites link to you and how often new links show up to your site. If you wake up tomorrow and, overnight, 1 million other sites decided to link to you, that would not affect your position in any way (what it may do is hurt your listing because it will look like spam). Here is how links work for you:

If you are a plastic surgeon and another plastic surgery site links to you, that will give you a boost because you are being linked to a site that has some relevance to yours.
If your site sells used network equipment and the link to your site is like this used network equipment that will give you a boost because the link is a search term.
If you acquire new links slowly over the course of time, that will give you a boost because it looks like your site is gaining popularity.
If people link to internal pages of your site, as well as your home page, that will give you a boost because it looks like you have lots of pages of relevant information.

Link Building

2008-03-18T23:25:00.000-07:00

Inbound links are one of the main factors for ranking well for competitive keywords. But only number of inbound links can't do the job for you. Inbound links are only helpful when it is a one-way link or a relevant link for your site. That's why there is always two opinions regarding link building.

Link Building and Its History

It started off long back when Google implemented the Pagerank concept in the Search Algorithm. Webmasters all over the world started misusing them for their own benefit. Concepts like Link Farms and bad neighborhood came into effect. Thanks to Google that took evasive measures to tackle this kind of spam through their numerous updates.

Link Building for Google

From my experience I can say that it is really tough to make your way to the top ten in Google for competitive keywords. Google considers Link as a vote of support from a site to another site on the web. And for that you have to pick quality links. Editorial links are the preferred ones but even links given out by other sites are appreciated. Link bought through any kind of network or Paid Links are the typical links that can harm you in the process and the effect may vary from poor performance to getting banned from Google.

Link Building for Yahoo and MSN

For Yahoo and MSN the case is different. If you have proper structure with great navigation, content, and few numbers of links, then you have good chance to rank for fairly competitive keywords.

Important Point to remember while Link Building

1. Do not link out to bad neighborhood site.
2. Always check the link provided to you.
3. Before giving a link out to any site think how it would help your visitors.
4. Getting a link from related site is much more appreciated.
5. Check the Anchor Text and the position of the link.
6. Check the Anchor Text of the link pointing out to the site linking to you.
7. Prefer directories for best one way links.
8. Editorial links are preferred ahead of other links.

Effect of Links in Search Engine Ranking

The followings are the metrics that Search Engines consider when weighting links. All these can affects rankings positively or negatively.

1. Anchor text (when it matches queries, it can have a significant positive impact)
2. Placement on the page
3. PageRank of the linking page
4. Trust in the linking domain
5. Link structure in HTML (inside an image, javascript, standard a href, etc.) - although Javascript links are sometimes followed, they appear to provide only a fraction of the link weight that normal links grant. Likewise, links from images (and anchor text in the form of alt text) appears to provide somewhat less weight than standard HTML links.
6. Nature of the link (when it appeared, how long it stays on the page for, etc.) - can affect how much weight the link is given and be used to identify patterns that may indicate manipulation
7. Use of nofollow
8. Relevance of page content to linked-to page
9. Relevance of site to linked-to page
10. Text surrounding the link
11. Number of outbound links present in the linking page
12. Previous link relationships between the domains (if the page/site has already linked to the page/site in the past, it may be given less weight and this may also be used to identify and discount reciprocal linking schemes)
13. Hosting relationships (if the domains are hosted on the same IP address, or same c-block of IP addresses, the link may lose some of its weight)
14. Registration relationships (if the domains share registration information, it may be interpreted as less editorial and given less weight)

Factors Affecting Link Building

1. The traditional mutual linking between sites. This process is termed as reciprocal linking. However, the SEO’s are of the opinion that this strategy of link building has been diminished by Google. There is also a belief that the better strategy of building links with sites of relevant content.

2. The three-way link (also known as triangular linking) is the method of linking the site A and site B for a link back from another site. It is a much developed and modern strategy of link building than the two-way method. The Two-way linking is not in practice since they seem to be similar to the one-way linking to Google. However there are Search Engine optimizers who are of the opinion that the Google identifies three-way linking and there is often the risk of penalties.

3. This is the three-way link method where linking is done from a different site instead of a link from the site A. The benefit of this type of link building is that there is no need of the outbound links in case of the site A. However the SEO’s are of the opinion that site A might be have to suffer penalties from Google.

4. The four-way linking is favored by few webmasters. They have the same advantages and disadvantages like the number two and number three methods as discussed above.

5. Article links: An informative article with links displayed in the middle or at the end of the article. These articles are provided to the webmasters free of cost as content for their sites in return of the link in the site of the client. There is a belief that the publication of the article on different sites might result into some problem since it has the duplicate content and the links of the articles are also similar. A number of these articles are submitted to “article farms”. It is advisable to offer unique articles on the webmaster but producing many of the unique articles is often expensive.

6. One-way link is also considered to be effective. Even though these one way links come from the sites having low page rank these are considered to be effective. However SEO’s are of the opinion that one-way link from FFA’s and the directories are considered to be spam by Google. It is essential to find out related sites in order to avoid being marked as spam by Google. However, this method seldom works.

7. Buying Links - This is the technique of buying text links along with keywords. It is stated in the guidelines for webmasters that Google does not support buying of links. There is also a method of reporting against the sites that buy links. Few of the SEO’s think that Google creates this fear among people so that people buy Adwords instead of advertising somewhere else. The SEO’s also believe that buying banner ads is better than text links since Google cannot consider them as Spam. If the text based ads are sponsored link then text based ads are not a better idea. Some SEO are of the view that if there is no keyword in the link anything can be done for reputation. It is also possible to detect reputation from site where the banner is.

8. We consider A as the site that we are trying to promote. The best strategy is to create various information sites with relevant content on the different IP C-blocks in order to “take the fall”. If you follow this strategy then site A will receive links from links from other sites like site B, C and D. The sites B, C and D participate in the different linking activities with the purpose of creating Page Rank. This might be considered spam.

9. You can also build a site naturally. The best way is to create excellent content. It is an easy way to promote a site that is informative but is not ideal for commercial site. However it is pretty time-taking affair.

10. It is a combination of all the above strategies. However, Google can punish a site for any of the strategy and may not be aware of the strategy.

Adsense optimization tips for more revenue

2008-03-18T01:10:00.000-07:00

If you earn more revenue from Google adsense, you have to optimize your adsense ads on your website. These tips will help you to earn more and more.
Google Adsense is no doubt the world’s best ad network in contextual advertising. You can generate more revenue than that you are currently earning with just few fine tunings. They gave out some great adsense optimization tips that they have gathered over the past few years. The original Webinar transcript is very lengthy, so here’s a quick summary:

* Ad Location - “the middle, above the fold location perform best.” Also “if you have an article page with a long body of text, the bottom of that article is actually pretty successful”
* Ad Formats - “the top three formats are the 336×280 that you see on the page; the 300×250 medium rectangle; and then the 160×600 wide skyscraper.” Additionally “the wider ad formats are doing better than the other ones and the reason is that they actually take up fewer lines. And so with every additional line, you have a chance of losing that interested user.”
* Ad Colors - Pick colors that blend well with the site. Matches the background color, and compliments the site. Make them feel like a part of the site. They give an example where a customer went from blended background to yellow, and clicks dropped 65%
* Ad Blindness - if the colors stick out too much, readers may immediatly identify them as ads and not even look at them. Also frequent readers may stop reading ads so you could alternate positioning and colors to get their attention. “The more you blend in with the site, the less chance that ad blindness will occur.”
* Experiment - this was a big theme in the webinar echoed by all experts. Use channels to test different colors, positioning, and formats to find out what works best. They show that you can more than double your revenue just by finding the right color, position, format combo.
* Image Ads - If you want to maximize revenue they recommend turning them on. I personally disable them in my account, because I find them too distracting/annoying to the user. Yes you may increase your CPC, but you will probably decrease impressions over time.
* Link Units - Don’t take up much space, and also “allows the user to refine what they’re interested in. So if they may not be interested in specific ads on your page, they might be interested in a particular topic, and by clicking on a link unit and a link in the link unit, they’ll be able to specify that they’re interested in that specific topic and get a lot more options and variety on the ads that might appear.” I also bet google remembers what they click on and then tries to generate better ads for the page… just my speculation.
* AdSense For Search - You can use this for your site search, and you get a percentage of ad clicks.
* Never click on your own ads - One of the callers asked the question “I was just noticing that someone asked about clicking on their own ads and it says you’re not supposed to. And I don’t remember reading that. And I occasionally do click on the ads… So is that detrimental in some way?” - I can’t believe they said that to google. Google’s response was: “Yes, that’s sort of chief among the terms and conditions”.
* Impression Counter - Google confirmed that Page Impressions are counted when a public service ad (or alternate ad url or color) is displayed.
* Your site is unique - all these things may not matter, the best location, format, and color is different for every site. So again, go experiment.

What is CPI?

2008-03-18T00:42:00.000-07:00

Cost Per Impression is a phrase often used in online advertising and marketing related to web traffic. It is used for measuring the worth and cost of a specific e-marketing campaign. This technique is applied with web banners, text links, e-mail spam, and opt-in e-mail advertising, although opt-in e-mail advertising is more commonly charged on a Cost Per Action (CPA) basis.

The Cost Per Impression is often abbreviated to CPI

This type of advertising arrangement closely resembles Television and Print Advertising Methods for speculating the cost of an Advertisement. Often, industry agreed approximates are used. With Television the Nielsen Ratings are used and Print is based on the circulation a publication has.

For Online Advertising, the numbers of views can be a lot more precise. When a user requests a Web Page, the originating server creates a log entry. Also, a third party tracker can be placed in the web page to verify how many accesses that page had.

There are other advertising pricing structures. CPC - Cost Per Click Through, CPL - Cost Per Lead (lead usually meaning a free registration), CPS - Cost Per Sale. These structures are collectively referred to as CPA - Cost per Action.

CPI and/or Flat rate advertising deals are sometimes preferred by the Publisher/Webmaster because they will receive a more consistent fee proportional to the amount of traffic.

Today, it is very common for large publishers to charge for most of their advertising inventory on a CPM or Cost Per Time (CPT) basis.

A related term, eCPM or effective Cost Per Mille, is used to measure the effectiveness of advertising inventory sold (by the publisher) via a CPC, CPA, or CPT basis

What is CPM?

2008-03-18T00:40:00.000-07:00

Cost per mille (CPM), also called cost ‰ and cost per thousand (CPT), is a commonly used measurement in advertising. In Latin mille means thousand, therefore, CPM means cost per thousand. Radio, television, newspaper, magazine, Out-of-home advertising and online advertising can be purchased on the basis of what it costs to show the ad to one thousand viewers (CPM). It is used in marketing as a benchmark to calculate the relative cost of an advertising campaign or an ad message in a given medium. Rather than an absolute cost, CPM estimates the cost per 1000 views of the ad.

An example of computing the CPM:

1. Total cost for running the ad is $15,000.
2. The total audience is 2,400,000 people.
3. CPM is calculated as CPM = $15,000/(2,400,000/1000) = $6.25

What is CTR?

2008-03-18T00:37:00.000-07:00

Click-through rate or CTR is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if your banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and one person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1 percent.

Banner ad click-through rates have fallen over time, often measuring significantly less than 1 percent. By selecting an appropriate advertising site with high affinity (e.g. a movie magazine for a movie advertisement), the same banner can achieve a substantially higher click-through rate. Personalized ads, unusual formats, and more obtrusive ads typically have higher click-through rates than standard banner ads.

CTR is most commonly defined as number of clicks divided by number of impressions and generally not in terms of number of persons who clicked. This is an important difference because if one person clicks 10 times on the same advertisement instead of once then the CTR would increase in the earlier definition but would stay the same in term of later definition.

How to increase website traffic

2008-03-18T00:30:00.000-07:00

Website traffic construes several different things. Website traffic could mean the number of hits the site has, the number of page views, the number of sessions or the number of unique visitors. All these are indicators of website traffic. In the context of increasing website traffic, the aim of some websites could be to increase the number of page views while some other websites may want an increase of website traffic with an increase in the number of unique and return visitors.

Owing to the large number of indicators of web site traffic, there is some confusion about what exactly construes site traffic. Often the number of hits on a website is taken as an indicator of traffic by the webmasters, but the truth is that the number of hits is not a correct indicator of site traffic.

SEO is the first most important step of increasing site traffic. SEO involves the development of unique and appropriate keywords phrases best describing your business. The keyword phrases could consist of two to three words. In the process of SEO for increasing web site traffic, it is best to avoid individual keywords as they are too competitive. The second and most important factor to consider is the placement and frequency of the key word phrases on the page of your website. They are critical to increasing your website traffic. It is essential while optimizing your pages that the keyword phrases appear in the page title and higher up in the text. Also, the keyword phrases should be located in the Meta description, Meta keywords. Alt tags, the headers and all link addresses for optimum optimization.

An increase in site traffic is defiantly advantageous for business. Every unique and re-visit must be treated as essential prospect. Methods to increase website traffic require knowledge of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Submission. SEO is the skillful placement of keywords and maintaining a specific density of those keywords within the website, link management can as well enhance positioning of your website in Search Engines and result in increase of web site traffic. Increasing the number of links to your website from associate or complementary websites increases your websites popularity.
In the case of Search Engine Submission, knowledge of the important search engines and the process of submission is required.

Care should be taken to avoid frames and image maps as some major search engines are not compatible with them and could reduce your chances of increasing website traffic.

Updating your pages is also conducive to an increase in website traffic as major search engines schedule re crawls based on the frequency of the updates. Updates in-turn also attract re visits on your site for more and more information that you provide to your visitors.

After the process of SEO comes the Search Engine Submissions. You should have a thorough knowledge of all the major search engines and submit your site manually in them. A regular submission does play a vital role to your SERP.

Alternatively if you have the resources you could go in for paid ranking on some of the search engines where you can pay your way in to a higher ranking.

Effective Keyword Research For Five Steps

2008-03-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

There's no getting around it. Keyword research is a vitally important aspect of your search engine optimization campaign. If your site is targeting the wrong keywords, the search engines and your customers may never find you, resulting in lost dollars and meaningless rankings. By targeting the wrong keywords, you not only put valuable advertising dollars at risk, you are also throwing away all the time and energy you put into getting your site to rank for those terms to begin with. If you want to stay competitive, you can't afford to do that.

The keyword research process can be broken down into the following phases:

Phase 0 - Demolishing Misconceptions
Phase 1 – Creating the list and checking it twice
Phase 2 – Befriending the keyword research tool
Phase 3 – Finalizing your list
Phase 4 – Plan your Attack
Phase 5 - Rinse, Wash Repeat

Phase 0 - Demolishing Misconceptions

Over the years, we've had the opportunity to work with a wide array of wonderful clients. And as different and diverse as their sites and the individuals running them may have been, many had one thing in common: they were self-proclaimed keyword research mavens right out of the gate.

Or so they thought.

One of the most common misconceptions about conducting keyword research for a search engine optimization campaign is the belief that you already know which terms a customer would use to find your site. You don't. Not without first doing some research anyway. You may know what your site is about and how you, the site owner, would find it, but it's difficult to predict how a paying customer would go about looking for it.

This is due to site owners evaluating their site through too narrow of a lens, causing them to come up with words that read like industry jargon, not viable keywords. Remember, your customer probably doesn't work in the same industry that you do. If they did, they wouldn't need you. When describing your site or product, break away from industry speak. Your customers aren't searching that way and if you center your site on these terms, they'll never find you.

Another misconception is that generic or "big dollar" terms are the most important for rankings, even if the term you're going after has nothing to do with your site. Imagine a women's clothing store trying to rank for the term "google". Sure, thousands of searchers probably type that word into their search bar daily, but they're not doing it looking for you. They're looking for Google. Being ranked number one for a term no one would associate with your site is a waste of time and money (and it may get you in trouble!). Your site may see a lot of traffic, but customers won't stick around.

Phase 1 – Creating the list and checking it twice

The initial idea of keyword research can be daunting. Trying to come up with the perfect combination of words to drive customers to your site, rev up your conversion rate and allow the engines to see you as an expert would easily give anyone a tension headache.

The trick is to start slowly.

The first step in this process is to create a list of potential keywords. Brainstorm all the words you think a customer would type into their search box when trying to find you. This includes thinking of phrases that are broad and targeted, buying and research-oriented, and single and multi-word. What is your site hoping to do or promote? Come up with enough words to cover all the services your site offers. Avoid overly generic terms like 'shoes' or 'clothes'. These words are incredibly difficult to rank for and won't drive qualified traffic to your site. Focus on words that are relevant, but not overly used.

If you need help brainstorming ideas, ask friends, colleagues or past customers for help. Sometimes they are able to see your site differently than the way you yourself see it. Also, don't be afraid to take a peek at your competitor's Meta Keyword tag. What words are they targeting? How can you expand on their keyword list to make yours better? It's okay to get a little sneaky here. All's fair in love and search engine rankings.

Phase 2 – Befriend the keyword research tool

Now that you have your list, your next step is to determine the activity for each of your proposed keywords. You want to narrow your list to only include highly attainable, sought-after phrases that will bring the most qualified traffic to your site.

In the early days of SEO, measuring the "popularity" of your search terms was done by performing a search for that phrase in one of the various engines and seeing how many results it turned up. As you can imagine, this was a tedious and ineffective method of keyword research. Luckily, times have changes and we now have tools to do the hard part for us.

By inputting your proposed keywords into a keyword research tool, you can quickly learn how many users are conducting searches for that term every day, how many of those searches actually converted, and other important analytical information. It may also tune you in to words you had previously forgotten or synonyms you weren't aware of.

There are lots of great tools out there to help you determine how much activity your keywords are receiving. Here's a few of our personal favorites:

Overture Keyword Selector Tool: Overture's Keyword Selector tools shows you how many searches have been conducted over the last month for a particular phrase and lists alternative search terms you may have forgotten about. Our only complaint with Overture is that they lump singular and plural word forms into one phrase. For example, "boots" and "boot" would appear under one category of "boot". This can sometimes cause problems.

Wordtracker: Wordtracker is a paid-use tool that lets you look up popular keyword phrases to determine their activity and popularity among competitors. Their top 1000 report lists the most frequently searched for terms, while their Competition Search option provides valuable information to determine the competitiveness of each phrase. This is very useful for figuring out how difficult it will be to rank for a given term. It may also highlight hidden gems that have low competition-rates, but high relevancy.

Trellian Keyword Discovery tool: This is a fee-based tool where users can ascertain the market share value for a given search term, see how many users search for it daily, identify common spellings and misspellings, and discover which terms are impacted by seasonal trends (mostly useful for PPC).

Google AdWords Keyword Tool: Google's keyword PPC tool doesn't provide actual search numbers for keywords. Instead, it displays a colored bar, giving users only an approximation. Still, it may be useful.

Google Suggest: Google Suggest is a great way to find synonyms and related word suggestions that may help you expand your original list.

Thesaurus.com: Again, another way to locate synonyms you may have forgotten.

If those don't tickle your fancy, we'd also suggest Bruce Clay's Check Traffic tool, which estimates the number of queries per day for that search term across the major search engines.

Keep in mind that you're not only checking to see if enough people are searching for a particular word, you're also trying to determine how competitive that phrase is in terms of rankings.

Understanding the competition tells you how much effort you will need to invest in order to rank well for that term. There are two things to pay attention to when making this decision: how many other sites are competing for the same word and how strong are those sites' rankings (i.e. how many other sites link to them, how many pages do they have indexed)? Basically, is that word or phrase even worth your time? If it's not, move on.

While you're testing your new terms, you may want to do a little housekeeping and test the activity for keywords your site is already targeting. Keep the ones that are converting and drop the losers.

Phase 3 – Finalizing your list

Now that you have your initial list of words and have tested their activity, it's time to narrow down the field and decide which terms will make it into your coveted final keyword list.

We recommend creating a spreadsheet or some other visual that will allow you to easily see each word's conversion rate, search volume and competition rate (as given to you by the tools mentioned above). These three figures will allow you to calculate how viable that term is for your site and will be a great aid as you try and narrow down your focus.

The first step in narrowing down your list is to go through and highlight the terms that most closely target the subject and theme of your web site. These are the terms you want to hold on to. Kill all words that are not relevant to your site or that you don't have sufficient content to support (unless you're willing to write some). You can't optimize for words that you don't have content for.

Create a mix of both broad and targeted keywords. You'll need both to rank well. Broad terms are important because they describe what your web site does; however, they won't increase the level of qualified traffic coming into your site.

For example, say you are a company that specializes in cowboy boots. It may be natural for your site to focus on the broad search terms "boots" and "cowboy boots". These words are important because they tell the search engines what you do and may increase your visitors, but the traffic you receive will be largely unqualified. Customers will arrive on your site still unsure of what kind of boots you sell. Do you offer traditional cowboy boots, stiletto cowboy boots, toddler cowboy boots, suede cowboy boots or women's cowboy boots? By only targeting broad terms, customers won't know what you offer until they land on your site.

Targeted terms are often easier to rank for and help bring qualified traffic. They also make you a subject matter expert to the search engines, since the targeted terms strengthen the theme created with the broader phrases. Sticking with our example, targeted terms for your cowboy boots site may be "men's cowboy boots", "blue suede cowboy boots", "extra-wide women's cowboy boots", etc. Broad search terms may bring you the higher levels of traffic, but it's targeted, buying-oriented terms like these that will maximize conversions.

Phase 4 – Plan your attack

So you made your list of about 10-20 highly focused keywords, now what do you do with them? You prepare them for launch!

Chances are, if you did your keyword research right, at least some of the words on your list already appear in your site content, but some of them may not. Start thinking about how many pages you'll need to create to support these new words, and how and where your keyword phrases will be used.

We typically recommend only going after three or four related keywords per page (five if you can balance them properly). Any more than that and you run the risk of diluting your page to the point where you rank for nothing. Make sure to naturally work the keywords into your content and avoid over-repetition that may be interpreted as spamming. Your content should never sound forced.

Your on-page content isn't the only place where you can insert keywords. Keywords should also be used in several other elements on your site:

Title Tag
Meta Description Tags
Meta Keywords Tag
Headings
Alt text
Anchor Text/ Navigational Links

You've spent a lot of time molding your keywords; make sure you use them in all the appropriate fields to get the maximum benefit.

Phase 5 - Rinse, Wash, Repeat.

Congratulations. Your initial keyword research process is behind you. You've created your list, checked it twice, made friends with the keyword research tools and are now off to go plan your attack. You're done, right?

Unfortunately, no. As your customer's and your site's needs change over time, so will your keywords. It's important to keep monitoring your keywords and make tweaks as necessary. Doing so will allow you to stay ahead of your competition and keep moving forward.

Good luck!

Learning SEO

2008-03-17T23:52:00.000-07:00

Search engine optimisation is the latest industry to hit the news, and is a rapidly growing sector. In depth knowledge in this area opens the door to you either sourcing out your skills to business in order to help them increase their online presence, or using them to promote your own website. Thankfully this sometimes complicated process has become a lot easier to master due to a variety of SEO Cources and information becoming available to the general public.

One such way to gain this information is through various e-books which are available all over the internet if you have the time to look for them. A quick search for seo e-books on Google will bring a large number of results, and many are distributed free of cost. The best bet is to download every one you can find and have a read through them all. Once you gain a general understanding of SEO and its various methods you can then make a more qualified decision as to whether you need to make purchases of e-books for more information or if you think you have the handle of it already. This is most definitely the place to start though as it is a low cost way of getting a feel for the industry.

Once you've read through the available literature you'll want to get started on actually promoting your website and moving up the rankings. The e-books will explain the various methods required to achieve better rankings, through link building and other methods. All these things can be done by hand although it will become very time consuming and tedious, if you wish to build enough links to rank well for profitable keyword terms. Therefore many internet marketers turn to SEO software to automate the process and give them more time to work on the content of their site rather than promotion. These software programs can automatically email link requests, check your backlinks, find out which keywords will work best for you and every other task connected to SEO. There are many different programs out there to help you optimize and promote your website and most of them offer a free trial. Therefore itâ€™s not hard to just look around downloading the different trial programs and testing them out until you find one you like. It must be said though that a good SEO program is a must if you want to streamline your online promotion as it will cut through the grunt work, leaving you more time to use your mind creatively to build better websites and plumb new markets.

Ok you have been shown the do it yourself alternatives to taking an SEO course, and the best ways to learn SEO at your own pace. If you still want to take an SEO course, and there are many reasons to do so, such as if it was required by your place of employment or you want to have a certificate to show potential employers, then there are some good courses out there. Your typical SEO course should be up to date with current algorithm theories and make sure you get a solid guarantee so if the course doesnâ€™t live up to expectations you won't be out of pocket. Most SEO Cources out there are far more expensive than just getting an e-book and some software and learning for yourself, which many consider to be the best option. So it might be an idea to do a smaller course first and see if you enjoy learning that way before shelling out for the major courses. It is hoped that you find something suitable to your situation as there is a wealth of choice out there.

This has been up until now a general outline of all the different ways you can become competent in search engine optimisation and be able to handle your internet marketing yourself. Now there will be a summary of what to do if you find it hard to get a handle on the techniques involved, or if you just find it plain boring and would rather spend your time doing something else.

Out Sourcing

Depending on the keyword you have decided to optimise for, it could be extremely easy or extremely difficult to achieve high rankings. For a non-competitive keyword, relatively few backlinks and optimisation factors will be needed and you will probably find it quite easy to manage a successful SEO campaign all by yourself. However for the more competitive keywords, which are often the most profitable ones, ranking high will be very difficult. For the more competitive keywords, one may need to consider outside help to build your pages search engine ranking and traffic. There are a few different options to consider here, such as purchasing the SEO services of an experience practitioner, or purchasing targeted traffic for your websites niche. Moreover there are many other forms of advertising on the internet available for you to try out, as long as youâ€™re willing to put in the effort to find them. We will go through the various options available to you to increase the traffic to your website.

SEO Companies

If you find that either SEO is too technical for you, or your efforts have not born any fruit then it may be time to consider handing it over to a professional search engine optimisation firm. There are many different companies out there working with a lot of websites to achieve better rankings for their customers and you can definitely benefit from their resources. They achieve better rankings for your website through the same techniques you could implement yourself, but at greater efficiency and with far less time invested on your part. There are many companies offering these services and some are farm more successful than others. It is an absolute necessity that any company you choose to purchase SEO services from offers a full money back guarantee, if they don't offer it then do not go near them. Sadly there are no free options in this category, as no one will do SEO work on your website for free as it is just too time consuming to do even to build up company image.

Targeted Traffic

Another option available to internet promoters who have not found success with search engine optimisation would be to purchase targeted traffic. This is when a company who owns a large amount of expired domains sends the traffic to your website for a fee. Depending on the quality of the traffic this can be very lucrative but this is one area which contains far more rip off merchants than honest ones. Often times you will buy a traffic package and the company will send your site X amount of bot hits which will mean your site will register a lot of visits but as none of them are actual people you will obviously receive no sales or revenue of any kind. The upside of this all is that targeted traffic is an instant solution to visitor numbers, and the relatively low cost ( $20-$60 for 5k to 10k visitors) it is not a huge outlay to experiment with a few companies and see which ones work for you. One traffic seller we most definitely do not recommend is one called BuyExpiredDomains.com. They have very attractive prices, and so we took a test run of 5000 visitors.

On one of our websites known to convert visitors to sales, not one of those 5000 visitors made a purchase. So it makes you wonder whether any real human visitors were delivered to our site. As stated earlier though, the cost to test a companyâ€™s traffic is so small that it won't hurt the bank if you do encounter a few duds. The thing about this kind of traffic is itâ€™s never going to be as targeted as regular search engine traffic so you won't be able to convert at 1/110 like you would normally. You might get one sale for every 500 or so visitors they send you, but that can still turn profitable depending on the items you sell.

Traffic Exchanges

As we all know, a budget is a very important thing when starting a business or trying to turn a profit. A free method of generating more traffic would obviously be a godsend to most websites out there. So itâ€™s quite a good thing that these kinds of programs exist and are proving quite successful. Traffic exchange networks work by either you viewing ads and in doing so earning your own ads some viewing time on their networks, or getting a visitor to your site for every one sent to another site in the network. Both methods can work very well if implemented correctly and are great sources of free traffic. Though it sounds too simple this method has been working for many people for a long time. Itâ€™s also a great way to test out new products as the audience is there waiting for you. Many traffic exchanges work free of charge so you have nothing to lose by testing them out.

Purchasing Ad Space

When considering purchasing ad space, so many people jump straight onto Google Adwords and start shelling out money. The fact of the matter is paying per click will always be a low margin game, meaning you have a great chance of making nothing at all or even losing money. Moreover Googleâ€™s cost per click does seem to be a little extreme at times, though that is probably because so many people advertise there that it drives the price into orbit. A better option is to purchase adverts which will be displayed for a set period of time regardless of the amount of people who click on them. As long as the price is right this can be a very profitable way of going about your internet promotion. Buying advertising space based on the length of time your ad will be displayed is by far the best method for a new business, and search engines such as ExactSeek supply exactly this. Just Google ExactSeek and check out their paid inclusion program, which is a far better option than most pay per click programs.

The above methods can all be invaluable when trying to increase your online presence and the profitability of your web business. When starting out it is often very hard to catch up to the rest of the pack with all the technical things SEO involves. Therefore outsourcing your internet marketing can be a great way of getting more revenue out of your website without having to put in the man hours learning the technical side of all the methods involved. Good luck in your internet promotion campaign.

John Samuels has been a web developer and internet marketer for 7 years. He now manages a number of successful websites and will soon be launching an SEO firm in his homeland Australia. Visit SEO Cources for more advice and articles on how to make your mark on the internet. This article may be used only if posted with the authors information link to website.

Search Engine Optimization

2008-03-17T15:18:00.000-07:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users. Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them from their indexes.

The initialism "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers", a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, URLs, and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

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