Search Engine Optimization: Reindexing

admin    Google Optimization     Engine, Optimization, Reindexing, Search

Search Engine Optimization: Reindexing

What can you do to get your website up to the top of the URL (Universal Resource Locator) lists, so that when people type a search term into a search engine, such as “cheap ghost writer,” they will get to see your business name somewhere on the first page results? Well, mainly it’s a problem related to the search engine “bots” (robots) and “spiders” or “crawlers” going over your site repeatedly, noticing changes in it, and reindexing your website.

To reindex your site means that the search engines are sending out their little machines to go over your site and notice any changes in it. They are generally looking for major changes, such as fresh content, major rearrangements to your site, and brand new pages.

If you add new pages to your website, Google Sitemaps may be a program which could provide you with some help when it comes to reindexing at least the sitemap for your site. Currently only a beta program being tested by Google, it could start a new trend in site reindexing. When you make a Google sitemap, you lay out several details about the content of your web pages, and you can get Google to download the changes as reflected by your sitemap on a regular basis; constantly, if the pages are continuously changing, daily, weekly, or even monthly. Please look into this potentially worthwhile program for all of the details on how to properly make a sitemap for your site.

If you submit your site to many search engines, preferably the greatest amount possible, you will get massive exposure for your site when it climbs up to the higher rankings as listed on each of these engines. It’s not enough to only submit your site to search engines, but it’s the only way to start when it comes to your site eventually climbing its way up each of the search engine’s rankings for your site. And if you submit your site to as many search engines as possible at least twice per month, you will get maximum results from this. It is only the first major step, but it is the only way you will be seen by visitors who use search engines to find your site. Then as you resubmit your site twice per month, it will most likely be reindexed, or recrawled by the search engines, and each change you make will be updated by the major search engines and probably also by many of the minor ones as well.

To really maximize exposure, blog about your site’s contents with links pointing to your site, then submit your blog or blogs to search engines twice monthly. Also submit your site to directories, which you often only need to do once. You can also submit your blogs to the hundreds of blog directories available on the Internet. This will increase the number of inbound links coming in to your site, which is still helpful when it comes to your site making it up to the first page level of SERPs (search engine results pages).

Increasing the amount of incoming links pointing to your site is always helpful. Use every method you can find to cause sites relevant to the services and products offered on your business site to place a link to your site on their sites. This can be through directly offering to trade reciprocal links with relevant sites, joining link exchange services and using them to help you find sites which are willing to trade links with your site, and starting your own links exchange program, which generally involves free exchange of links. You will want to only trade relevant links, because Google, the major search engine presently on the face of the planet, now punishes sites for trading links which are not relevant, i.e., “any old link” will not do. You must make sure the links are organic and relevant, which means they must relate to the topics of your own site. Make sure your keywords are arranged so that when you send out your links, the links contain your most important keywords in the title text and the description of the site as well. The title text is the one that links directly to your site, and the description immediately follows it.

Also, make sure that you have proper title tags, keyword tags and meta tags for your site. You can go to Submit Express for help with this and for help with submitting your site to multiple search engines, both through their free and paid programs. You will also want several other types of tags or codes in your website that will help you optimize your pages for search engines and get your site onto the first page of search engine results.

You will need to make your site HTML (hyper text markup language) compliant, that is, it will have to pass the various kinds of “checkers” on the Web today that make sure your site’s HTML coding is correct and compliant with modern standards. Some WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) and other site editors and programs do not run code that is compliant with some of the stricter standards for HTML compliance. Microsoft Front Page is especially non-compliant when it comes to a complicated, not text-only website, as it rewrites its own code and is often found to be not compliant with modern standards.

There are all of these steps, and many more that you will discover by looking around and by subscribing to free newsletters such as Web Pro News and Site Pro News. These will help you put together a website that will gradually climb to the top of the charts. You will find that by adding fresh, keyword-rich content to your site every day, by writing your own articles involving the keywords in each page of your site, by varying the keywords so that each page has content containing the keywords for that page, and by constantly updating your Google sitemap – not to mention many other such “tricks” and daily “trendy” activities – you will find yourself slowly but surely search engine optimizing your website. And your site will be reindexed on a regular basis by the search engines.

Don’t worry too much about fancy Google “algorhythms” and whether or not you can keep up with all of the Joneses, especially if you don’t have a lot of money to spend. Work, work, work on your website. Set aside an amount of time every day to thoroughly find and employ methods for optimization that will cause the indexing of your site on a regular basis. Resubmit twice a month, change your site’s content daily, make sure you have plenty of incoming links from sites relevant to yours pointing to your site, subscribe to Internet newsletters so that you can get the most recent information about how to optimize your site for search engines – do everything you can make the time to do.

And use the latest in xml code technologies, such as making pages for your site in rss, atom and ror rdf information code. It is easy to find the formats for these codes and information on how to employ them by researching this on the Web. Submit information about content relevant to your business and website to Wikipedia, the Web’s new major encyclopedia. Post to blogs, wikis and message boards, using your website’s URL as often as you can. This creates more incoming links pointing to your website, which you need. Submitting to thousands of FFA (free for all) pages may help increase your incoming link count, which does matter to search engines. However, Google is frowning lately on irrelevant links coming in to websites, and it may count FFA links as being “irrelevant,” so you will want to consider that. Also, one-way links count for more than links exchanges, apparently, so you will want to consider that carefully as well.

Remember: the most important things are fresh daily content and getting the search engines to reindex your site, as often as humanly possible, more often than daily if needed. Some search engines will only reindex your site on a weekly or monthly basis. Some will do it on a daily basis. But we are fast moving toward an era where the search engines will be continuously crawling your website, looking for any changes, for the bad or for the good, at all whatsoever. So the more often you make major changes, especially to the keyword-related content of your site, the more often your site will be reindexed.

Pay the price to list your site with Yahoo. It’s worthwhile. Pay the price to list with multiple directories, if need be. And set up with as many beta testing programs through Google, Yahoo and MSN as your site qualifies for. This will get your site reindexed and crawled repeatedly by these three major search engines. And look into programs being set up by the other major and minor search engines as well.

Whatever you do, don’t despair. On your way in the climb up the SERPs, you will probably find many other advertising methods, such as simply being listed for free with services related to your site, visitors coming in from your relevant links, and organizations such as WebRing, where you can list your site by joining webrings for free and advertise your site for a low amount of money. There are also PPC (pay per click) services where you can avoid the entire organic optimization process by simply getting listed above the general search engine results — by paying for it directly. The two major PPC services are Google’s AdWords program and Overture’s PPC program, which covers Yahoo and almost all of the other major search engines.

But remember: whatever methods you use, you will want to see your site get reindexed on a regular basis by the search engines. This is if you offer a business or service where you want to be included under you own niche keyword search terms on the first page of results under such keywords. And you will want to see your business name displayed in a forthright manner so that you can attract visitors who type your carefully chosen search terms into the major and minor search engines. So get ready, get started: optimize!

Google Instant – About that Search Marketing Apocalypse…

admin    Google Optimization     About, Apocalypse…, Google, Instant, Marketing, Search

Google Instant – About that Search Marketing Apocalypse…

Google Instant has been live for over a month now and I thought it was time for another look at the new tool to see how it has affected the search landscape.  When it was first launched, bloggers, journalists, and other online marketing experts lined up to express their opinions about the effect the service would have on search marketing.  Predictions ranged from it being no big deal at all, to creating a cataclysmic change for online search marketing.  Admittedly, after just a month it is still too early to make any definitive statements about the ultimate effect it will have on search marketing, but we have a lot more information than we did the day it launched.  So, let’s look at some of the bolder predictions and see how they are holding up so far.

Long tail keywords will go the way of the dinosaurs
There was some basic logic to suggest that the number of long tail keyword searches might go down among users of Google Instant.  If users saw results that delivered what they were looking for before completing a long tail keyword string, wouldn’t they just stop early and click on one of those results?  That certainly makes some sense.  But, a recent study from Luna Metrics looking at a very modest sampling of sites (just 24) ranging from smaller (under 1,000 visits per month) to large (over 2 million visits per month) showed little change in keyword searches since the launch of Google Instant.  In fact, the number of very long tail (5+ words) keyword searches actually went up very slightly.  So, at least over the course of the first month, Google Instant does not appear to have killed off the long tail keyword search – at least not for all sites.

SEO is doomed
With long tail keywords losing impact and searches growing shorter and shorter, all of the hard work put in on a site’s SEO efforts would be wasted – or so the argument went.  In reality, even if Google Instant does create a shift in search behavior, that doesn’t mean the end of SEO.  It just means that SEO will have to adapt to a different environment.  Really, how much different is this from what happens when Google updates its algorithms?  SEO shops don’t just close their doors when that happens.  They go into learning mode and start gaining an understanding of the ins and outs of the new algorithm, so they can begin optimizing sites for the new rules.  In some ways Google Instant may be easier to deal with, since new algorithms are total black boxes that must be figured out with no real insight into what may have changed.  With Google Instant, SEO professionals are aware of the change and can watch for changes in search behavior and adjust their strategies accordingly.

Impressions will skyrocket
The idea here is that because results will populate as you type, impression numbers will increase dramatically.  Since impressions only count if they appear on the screen for three seconds or if a user clicks on a displayed result, the numbers aren’t really skyrocketing, but may be going up for some keyword results.  A recent survey by Search Engine Roundtable found that Google Instant was having an effect on AdWords campaigns, but not the major disruption some predicted.  Of the 150 responses, 55% reported no significant change in their AdWords program (clicks or impressions), 21% reported higher impressions or clicks, and 21% reported fewer impressions or clicks.  It is difficult to pull much of anything from these numbers.  Digging in to the specific sites and AdWords programs might show trends in certain types of programs or types of content, but these initial figures certainly don’t show that impressions are going to go through the roof for most advertisers.

It is much ado about nothing
For all the alarmists shouting that the sky was falling, there were just as many people predicting that Google Instant would make fewer waves than a pebble thrown into the ocean (a few ripples, but no real changes).   To some extent, these people may be feeling like they had it right the whole time.  But, we should remember that the number of people using Google Instant is still fairly limited.  The only users are people who are signed in to a Google account and then run a search from www.Google.com.  This means that people running searches from their iGoogle page, people who don’t have Google accounts, and people who search from a Google toolbar are all missing out on the Google Instant experience.  While I haven’t seen specific numbers from Google on the number of Instant users, it is reasonable to estimate that it is currently only a fraction of total Google searches.  If it is made available to users not signed in to Google accounts, the numbers would almost certainly jump significantly.

Based on the general information after one month of Google Instant, the jury is still out on the ultimate affect that Google Instant will have on the long-term future of search.  But, it doesn’t seem to have had the major affect on different aspects of search behavior that many experts predicted.

Google China: Survival amidst Controversies

admin    Google Optimization     amidst, China, Controversies, Google, Survival

Google China: Survival amidst Controversies

Launch of Google China

The world’s largest internet search engine company, Google Inc., serves the Chinese mainland through its subsidiary, Google China. In 2005, Google China was founded with a Chinese language interface of the original Google.com to better serve its own country. The following year, Google launched the Google.cn search page and was programmed in such a way to give search results that would abide by censorship laws stated by the Chinese Government. Even though Google is known to be the internet search giant in other parts of the world, it ranks second in China to the home grown internet search site Baidu.

Journey since its inception

Google’s four year tenure in China hasn’t been that smooth. After announcing its intent to comply with internet censorship laws in the People’s Republic of China, Google China became a focus of controversy. In an effort to play a role in facilitating free speech, Google complied with censorship laws to participate in China’s IT industry. Had Google not complied, the Internet giant couldn’t have made it to the biggest internet market in the world.

The Controversy Series

Controversies started in March of 2009 when access to Google’s YouTube site was blocked in China. Since then other Google online services have been continuously blocked to users on an ad hoc basis.

This past January, Google announced its unpleasant experience of being hacked along with many other US tech companies in China prompting the Internet mogul to no longer censor searches in China as well as a potential pull out of the country.

What happened on March 23, 2010 was even more striking. Google began to redirect all search queries from Google.cn to Google.com.hk. (Google Hong Kong), which bypasses Chinese regulatory laws and allows uncensored Simplified Chinese search results. Hong Kong is vested with independent judicial power and is not subject to most Chinese laws, and they are also not required to follow the restriction of the free flow of information and censorship of internet materials.

David Drummond, senior vice president of Google, stated that the stringent censorship on internet information in China led Google to make such a decision. Hong Kong comparably enjoys a higher level of freedom of speech and expression, and google.com.hk does not need to censor search results. This creates a much more effective networking and information sharing experience for internet users in China.

He also mentioned that other internet services from Google such as Gmail are available to users in China. Google also planned to continue with the research and development offices in China along with the sales offices for other Google products such as Android smartphone software.

March 30, 2010, marked a significant day in the history of the company as searching with any Google search site – including Google Mobile – was banned in China. Google Mail and Google Maps remained unaffected. A statement from Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at UC Berkeley and founder of the China Digital Times, said it was noted that Chinese Government can block all access to Google sites and application if they thought the services were violating the regulatory and censorship laws. The ban was lifted after a day.

On June 30, Google finally tried to end the feud by stopping automatic redirects of Google China to Google Hong Kong. Instead, links to Google Hong Kong were applied to avoid getting their Internet Content Provider (ICP) license revoked.

Service by Google in China

After much controversy about Google’s license renewal in China, Google Inc. surprised people with its announcement that Chinese authorities renewed its license to operate a website with the understanding that Google would stop redirecting users of Google.cn to the Hong Kong site.

Google users in China do not enjoy a standard service as Google.com appears to be down around 10 percent of the time. Google’s current search business in China accounts to billion in annual revenue, with analysts putting its annual China revenue at 0-0 million. Long-term growth prospects are easily the most important.

Google intends to abide by the Chinese censorship laws since China is the world’s largest internet market with nearly 400 million users. Other firms like eBay and Yahoo! have tried to cash in on China’s immense potential only to rethink their ideas.

China is expected to play a major role in other Internet sectors like social-networking, e-commerce and online gaming. It was evident that smart business strategy like the one Google used would not keep itself away from the potential market along with making it the one that is expected to be the largest in the field.

Find More Google Search Articles

Google Showing More Results For Domains

admin    Google Optimization     Domains, Google, more, Results, Showing

Google Showing More Results For Domains

Google recently started showing more results for each domain that was searched. For example if you perform a search for google dot com for example, you will see www dot google dot com, google dot com/xhtml, www dot google dot com/analytics and so one. If you notice that each of the first three results Google is displaying for the search “google dot com” is showing pages / URL’s from Google.com and not google dot com, xyz dot com and abc dot com. Google has been changing this formula for quite some time and have recently decided to add even more results for the domain you are searching for. Reason being is that Google believes that they should give their users the most relevant feedback after conducting a search and they have the right idea. They have also added a “More results from google dot com » ” link under the domain / website you just did a Google search for. If you click More results from Google it will confirm to the search engine that this is what you are looking for, then you will be provided with another results page with even more of relevant links to what you were searching for. These kind of features are what makes Google the superior search engine over Yahoo, Bing and others.

If you would like to see another example of what I am talking about you can do a Google search for site:www dot google dot com in order to see the same results displayed by Google for a deep search on a particular domain. Also Google has other interesting search commands that can help an experieced search engine marketer or just a every day user. Other Google commands can be found at this link
“http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=136861″ additional search commands can be found here: “http://www.searchcommands.com/google/” I hope this was a informative enough article that will make you go and try some of these out for yourself in order to make your internet and Google using experience a better and more accurate search tool.

Please let me know if you have any questions and I will be more than happy to send you more information regarding Google commands and useful SEO tips.

Related Google Search Articles

A New Search Engine From Ex-googlers Challenges Google

admin    Google Optimization     Challenges, Engine, Exgooglers, From, Google, Search

A New Search Engine From Ex-googlers Challenges Google

Have you heard about Cuil? Cuil is a newly launched search engine that will work in rivalry with Google. It is now becoming popular all over the world as cool search engine that can display almost millions of related results in every search. Cuil is derived from an old Irish term that means knowledge. It is usually pronounced as “cool”. Some Googlers even believed that Cuil will outrage the popularity of Google in the future years.

Special Features of Cuil

Over the years, there had been plenty of search engines that tried to defeat Google. However, none of them become successful even though of the fact that the persons ore teams behind the operation of these search engines were once workers of Google and other search engines companies. Here are some known names of the said workers:

Russel Power & Anna Patterson – previously belongs to the team of Google’s search index

om Costello – previously belong to the WebFountain project of IBM

Louis Monier – creator of the Alta Vista search engine

With the combined excellence and intelligence of the above persons, Cuil is now becoming as popular as Google and other major and know search engines.

Cuil versus Google

There are four major features of Cuil that Google does not have. With these features, Cuil is easier distinguished from Google:

Cuil has the largest index compared to Google that is very useful with topics that do not have relevant or popular results.

Cuil believes that popularity is not that everything matters as what Google is claiming. It does not focus much on the page rankings and linking to be able to display search results. Cuil gives importance on very complex searches as it try to analyze contents of every web page. The process of analysis is resulted into greater context.

Cuil is using a new page format for its displayed results. Not like Google with long list of results, Cuil displays its results in three columns and with added images if available or possible. It also offers ideas and roll-over definitions for much finer search.

Cuil does not collect user data such as personally identifiable information, cookies, names, and IP addresses in contrast with other search engines. In this way, the possibility of turning over the data to other users will never happen.

Are the displayed results of Cuil far better than Google?

According to some users, the displayed results of Cuil are quite good. It cannot be concluded that it is better or much worse than the displayed results of Google. In fairness to Google, its displayed results always depend on the needs and queries of the searcher.

As mentioned above as one of the major features of Cuil, it analyzes every search whether simple or complex. Obviously, with this feature, Cuil can be able to understand different meaning of words. One great example of the search is for the word “tiger”, the return results of Cuil for this search will display the companies with that name, the golf player and any operating system or software.  Aside from the large index and analyzed results displayed by Cuil, it’s hard to conclude that it will be a Google killer.

As an initial reaction from Google, it implemented a blog post concerning to the newly released search engine of Cuil. With this move, Google had been alarmed, thus they paid attention on it.

Cuil is being supported by the top 10 optimizers of IBP. If you want to learn more on the deeper insights of how the ranking of web pages results works well, you can analyze your own website with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizers. Basically, the IBP’s Top 10 Optimizers works hand in hand with Google as it helps you how your web pages can be able to qualify for the ranking algorithm of Google.

Google’s New SERPs – Will Local Businesses Finally Get Off Their Butts and Get Google Places in Gear

admin    Google Optimization     Businesses., Butts, Finally, Gear, Google, Googles, Local, Places, Serps, their

Google’s New SERPs – Will Local Businesses Finally Get Off Their Butts and Get Google Places in Gear

When most people today assume of the Internet, they consider when it comes to the World Wide Web and all the content on all the pages from websites all over the globe that search engines crawl, index, rank and serve up in response to search queries from the millions and millions of people who carry out billions searches across the globe every single month.

But Internet search isn’t just for the benefit of persons seeking content from any source anyplace in the world. Quite a few individuals who use search engines essentially use them since they are seeking data about places close to where they live or work or strategy to go to.

The Significance of Local Net Search

Local Internet search has been alive and properly – and growing – for years now. Actually, based on data published on Google’s blog, about 20% of all Google searches have a local intent to them (that quantity rises to about 33% for Google searches by way of the mobile Net).

A Kelsey Group study kind May well 2010 observed that 97% of all consumers use the internet to find local company facts – of whom, 90% use a search engine.

Seekers of Local Details Take Action

Individuals who use search engines to uncover local enterprise info don’t search just for the sake of looking. They search for the sake of discovering. And when they come across, they take action, as a Nielsen Net Ratings-WebVisible study discovered:

70% will call the phone number on a web-site
60% have referred a business enterprise they found on the net to a friend
52% constantly or usually research on line very first, then follow up with an offline purchase from a local organization
14% will send a small business they found on-line an email
11% will fill out an on-line form
How do those conversions compare to your Yellow Pages listings, radio and TV advertisements, and direct mail campaigns?

Google’s New SERPs Display Integrated Search Results for Local Businesses

It really should be no surprise that search engine giant Google – ever obsessed with delivering a greater good quality search encounter for its end users – has been operating challenging on improving its local business search facility and outcomes for fairly some time now.

And this week, Google rolled a new version of its search engine outcomes pages (SERPs) that represent a important change within the way universal search results are displayed whenever the search engine detects implicit or explicit local intent to a search query.

The new SERPs have eliminated the Local Company 3-7-10 packs in favour of an integrated search result. The new search outcomes for local businesses now combine details traditionally displayed within the Net search outcomes listings (page title, page description, and URL) with facts previously displayed only within the Google Places Page listings (pushpin corresponding to locations on the map, buyer ratings, critiques, and link to the business’ Places Page).

The map that employed to appear to left of the Local Enterprise 3-7-10 pack listings has now moved to the right – directly above the vertical paid search outcomes. It has also been produced “sticky,” so it remains in view as you scroll down the page.

Consolidated Web/Local Ranking Algorithms Could have Implications

Importantly, according to a post on Search Engine Land, Google claims that the ranking algorithm for local/place search has been improved and refined. Moreover, the previously distinct local and Web search algorithms have now been merged or consolidated.

This could have important implications for businesses which have held, within the past, top rankings in Google’s local organization search outcomes and Google Maps.

Local Businesses Have Been Lagging Behind

Local businesses have been – to their detriment – slow to embrace Google Places (witness the fact that about 90% of the 50 million+ Google Places Pages that Google had designed in September 2009 had been unclaimed, according to the most recent obtainable information). As a result, businesses have forfeited top rankings – and Net and physical traffic that top rankings can drive – to competitors that have only had to create a modicum level of effort at Search engine optimization for their Places Pages.

Using the new SERP display, local company outcomes take on new prominence on the very first page of Google. No longer will they appear as some aberration at the top (or within the middle) of the search outcomes. Now they are the search results.

The Time is Correct to obtain Your Local Search Marketing Effort in Gear

If your business has enjoyed top rankings within the non-local organic search results – but has completed little or nothing with its cost-free Google Places Page – you could be in for a big surprise.

If, on the other hand, your business enterprise has been shut out of the top search outcomes – local or otherwise – the time is suitable for you to make some moves.

Maximize Your Return on Investment With Google Adwords

admin    Google Optimization     Adwords, Google, Investment, Maximize, Return

Maximize Your Return on Investment With Google Adwords

Most businesses want a cost-effective way to bring in more customers. The challenge is to find prospects who are thinking about your products at the exact time that you reach them.

With Google AdWords, it is possible to target prospects at the very moment they are thinking about buying your products or services. Most of you know how it works: If someone does a Google search on digital cameras, for example, she sees ads for digital cameras. If someone does a search on organically grown coffee beans, he sees ads for organically grown coffee. Google AdWords enables you to implement precisely targeted advertising.

Here’s how to maximize your success with Google AdWords. With proper preparation and execution, starting Google AdWords can be like planting a money tree that will provide your business with a steady stream of revenue.

What Is Google AdWords?

Open up a Web browser and go to the Google Web site. Type in the search term coffee and click search.

Essentially, two types of search results come up: on the left and below are the organic search results that no one has sponsored. On the right side of your browser window and sometimes above the organic results are the Sponsored Links. The Sponsored Links are paid advertisements—they are always identified as such by the heading Sponsored Links.

As participants in this automated auction, each of these advertisers is bidding for the keyword coffee. They pay only if someone is interested enough to click on the advertisement; if nobody clicks on the ad, the cost is zero. The higher the advertiser bids on a keyword, the higher in the rankings the ad appears and the more likely Web searchers will see it. Ranking means visibility, though you do not have to be at the top of the rankings or bid the highest amount for prospects to see your ad and click on it. Your goal is to get the lowest cost per click (CPC) and the highest quality clicks (sales and leads) for your budget.

Finding Your Niche

Sometimes with popular keywords (like coffee), there are many companies competing. On the other hand, popular keywords get millions of searches, so there might be enough clicks to go around.

The only way to find out if a particular keyword will work for you is to try it. The problem is that many other advertisers are bidding for the popular keywords, so your CPC is likely to be high. You are more likely to get a low CPC with more obscure, highly targeted keywords. It will take some thought to come up with the right keywords.

Our coffee roaster would probably want to try the keyword coffee, and watch it like a hawk as it could result in many low-quality clicks (not many conversions to leads or sales). If a keyword does not produce high-quality clicks after a reasonable trial period (a couple of weeks), then remove it; it may even be obvious sooner that a keyword is costing money but not producing results.

Perhaps our coffee roaster sells shade-grown coffee that protects Central American songbird habitat. While far fewer people are searching for shade-grown coffee than just coffee, it is likely to yield a lower CPC and higher quality clicks.

Do some brainstorming and write down an initial list of keywords that match your market niche. This process of finding targeted keywords will be a useful exercise to help you focus your campaigns and maximize your return on investment.

Getting Started

The first thing you need to get started with AdWords is a goal. Is your goal to make direct sales via e-commerce on your Web site? Is your goal to capture sales leads that you can follow-up with and make the sale? Alternatively, is your goal a combination of both? Once you have determined a goal, you need a Web site that helps you achieve that goal.

Your site should be eye-catching and well-organized and should include landing pages for your products or services. To see some examples of landing pages, do a search for your services, and look at what other companies in your market are doing.

The landing page can be your homepage if your site tightly focuses on one product or service you are advertising (e.g., this permission-based email marketing site). Otherwise, the landing page should be within your larger site and should focus on the specific product or service you are advertising.

If you are selling directly from your Web site, it should include a secure e-commerce system. Any good, technically competent Web design firm can set this up for you.

If you want sales leads, then your site should include a call to action to persuade people to request more information. The way they submit a lead is to click on a link to a lead-capture form. You need a form that at a minimum sends you—or the appropriate sales staff—an email, but ideally it should also create a lead for you in a customer relationship management (CRM) system such as SalesForce or SugarCRM.

Whether you are selling directly from your site or capturing leads, your site should always have obvious ways to contact you using whatever method the prospect feels most comfortable using: a contact form, email, or telephone. Some company sites make it hard to figure out how to contact them for more information.

It is important to have a number of people—both inside and outside of your company—test your Web site for usability and ease of use. Prospects should never have to wonder how to buy from you or how to contact you to ask a question about your products or services.

Signing up for Google AdWords

Once you have a goal, Web site, and landing page, you are ready to sign up for Google AdWords. Learn by doing. It is easier to write the advertisement and select keywords using the tools that Google provides during the sign up process.

If you plan to spend at least /day on AdWords, Google offers a JumpStart program to help you get started using AdWords. Google JumpStart specialists will help you create a campaign. The cost of the program is 9, but Google will apply that as a credit toward the cost of your initial clicks.

Campaigns and Ad Groups

The Campaign level is where you set your daily budget, language targeting, location targeting, ad distribution preferences, and the start and end dates for your campaigns (if applicable).

The Ad Group level is where enter your keywords and the advertisements themselves. Each Ad Group has one or more ads. Write at least two ads for each ad group so you can try different approaches and compare the results.

In my experience, it has been beneficial to create multiple campaigns so I can experiment with different parameters and compare the results.

Targeting

Choose the language you want to target, and then the countries or territories. This requires some thought. Can you offer your product or service globally, in just the United States, or in just your city or region? You can target your campaign to the world or to specific countries, regions, states, or cities.

For even more precise targeting, you can even target your campaign to a certain number of miles from your business or even an area bounded by coordinates.

Writing Your Advertisements

You have just a 25-character title to get surfers’ attention, and a 70-character ad to get people interested enough to want to click on your ad. It is not a lot of text, so make it pithy.

Write the Headline, the text of the ad, and enter the Display Link (always link to main page of your Web site), and then enter the Destination URL (your landing page). The Destination URL might be your main page or a page within your main site dedicated just to selling the product at hand.

Here’s a fictional ad example:

Headline: Shade Grown Coffee Beans

Description line 1: Shade grown coffee. Tastes

Description line 2: better & saves valuable rainforest.

Display URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.com

Destination URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.com?&utm_id=coff1

Another example:

Headline: Shade Grown Coffee Beans

Description line 1: Coffee that tastes better and

Description line 2: protects valuable rainforest.

Display URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.com/

Destination URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.com?&utm_id=coff2

Conversion Tracking

To track the conversion rate of your campaigns—i.e., how many sales or leads you get for your investment—requires a little preparation. You will need to have your webmaster embed snippets of code to the appropriate pages on your Web site. Google explains how to set up and implement your conversion tracking code here, including example code.

Google Analytics

In the fictional advertisement examples I gave, you may have noticed codes in the destination URLs: “coff1″ and “coff2″. These are tracking codes that facilitate the tracking of a wealth of information by Google Analytics.

Google Analytics, which Google has integrated with AdWords, is a very powerful service for tracking the success of both your organic and paid search results for your site. It will help you better understand your site visitors’ experience in detail. In addition, you can learn what keywords bring in the best prospects, and which of your campaigns are delivering the best return on investment. You can use Google Analytics to track marketing campaigns other than AdWords as well.

Google Analytics is too big a topic to cover much here, but I will devote a future article entirely to this powerful marketing tracking service.

Choosing Your Keywords

As I mentioned earlier, it is important to pick good keywords. Initially, choose both general keywords and narrowly targeted keywords, and carefully evaluate the results. Keep keywords that are getting you results, and remove keywords that are not working for you. You will probably need to run your campaigns for a while before you will have enough information to determine which keywords are succeeding for you.

In the keyword space provided in the setup process, list the keywords or keyword phrases you would like to use. Because people tend to type fast when they search the web, be sure to include common misspellings of your keywords. Here are some example keywords that our fictional coffee roaster might use:

* coffee
* coffe
* shade grown coffee
* shade grown coffe
* shade grown
* shade coffee
* coffee shade grown
* shade grown coffee migratory birds
* benefits of shade grown coffee
* gourmet coffee
* gourmet coffee beans
* gourmet coffees
* coffee beans
* gourmet coffee beans
* organic coffee
* organic coffee beans
* certified organic coffee
* coffee beans organic
* mail order organic coffee
* bulk coffee

To get more keywords, enter a keyword into the Keyword Tool Box and click on Get More Keywords. This will generate additional keywords, some of which will be relevant to you and some of which will not be relevant. Keep the relevant keywords and toss the rest.

Now, you have a good starting list. Later, you will want to add new keywords and remove non-performing keywords. A good keyword is one that yields conversions: customers or good leads.

Google Search vs. Google Content Network

Google AdWords can place your add in essentially two places: Google search and the content network. Google search are results from searches that prospective customers do directly using www.google.com. The content network consists of Google partner sites and sites that run advertisements through Google’s AdSense program.

In my experience, Google search has yielded much more quality clicks than the content network. The content network is worth trying, but I recommend putting it into a separate campaign so you can measure its results against your Google search campaign.

The content network is opt-out, and it is not possible to opt out during the setup process. However, to opt out of the content network for a specific campaign, you can go back to campaign settings and uncheck the checkbox for content network.

Then setup a separate campaign where you focus on the content network and opt out of the search network. Compare the results between the two campaigns. It is possible that you will find Google search is more productive than the content network, but of course your results may be different from mine.

If you want to keep it simple until you are more comfortable with AdWords, I recommend starting with just the search network. Then come back in a few weeks and set up a separate campaign to try the content network, then compare the results with what you are getting with the search network.

Your Daily Budget

Your daily budget for your campaign is the ceiling on your daily spending. You can set this number at whatever you want. It is a good idea to start out with a relatively low daily budget while you refine your AdWords effectiveness. As your ad campaigns succeed and bring you more business, you will likely want to increase your budget.

Start with a daily budget of about – per day and gradually increase that amount as you fine-tune your approach.

Your Bid

In addition to your daily budget, you will need to set a maximum bid that you are willing to pay as a cost per click (CPC). This requires some trial and error to get right. Being the highest bidder is not really what that you want. Instead, you want to get the most quality clicks you can for your budget. If you bid too high, your CPC will be too high and will eat up your budget too fast; if you bid to low you will not get enough clicks and hence enough sales.

You might try starting with a bid of .50, and see what happens for a day or two. Then gradually raise or lower the bid, depending on results. If clicks consume your daily budget in a couple of hours, then lower your bid. If the advertisements are not getting many clicks, then raise your bid. Continue this process until you find the optimal bid.

Leads and Sales

What if visitors are clicking on your ad but are not buying or contacting you? That likely means your ad is working but your site or landing page is not persuading prospective customers to take the next step. It can also mean that your product or service needs some work to become more competitive. Compare what you are offering to what your competitors are offering.

The simplest things can make a dramatic difference. When your landing page is not getting you conversions, change one thing and see what happens over the next day or two. That way, you can determine which changes work. Do not be afraid to try possible solutions, knowing that some changes will fail and some will work well.

Recently, one of our landing pages was not getting enough conversions, so I made some minor changes to the wording on the page and conversions started going up the next day. On another page, we replaced our very simple order form with a much more elaborate version. Our sales for that service immediately plummeted. We simply changed the order form back to the simpler version and sales picked up again immediately.

Harvesting From the Money Tree

The Google AdWords money tree is now planted, optimized, and working to bring you leads and sales. What do you do now? Harvest it, of course, by solid follow-through and providing the best possible service for your clients.

Go back from time to time and take a look at your results. Make adjustments to your budget and bids as needed. Write another advertisement that takes a slightly different tack. Remove an ad that is not producing high quality clicks for you. Make some improvements to your Web site to see whether you can increase your conversion rate.

Practice Kaizen—a Japanese word for continuous, incremental improvement. Even if your Google AdWords money tree is providing good yields, there are always ways to improve its performance.

So pour yourself a cup of good coffee, and get started using Google AdWords today!

Optimize Your Web Pages for One Search Engine

admin    Google Optimization     Engine, Optimize, Pages, Search

Optimize Your Web Pages for One Search Engine

Google is the leading search engine but not the only search engine. Search engines like Yahoo, MSN, and Ask and so on are also important. Although Google, followed by Yahoo!, is the global player on the search engine scene, MSN, owned by the giant Microsoft Corporation has a small role in the search engine market. for more detail go to:www.thesearchengineprimer.com.However, MSN could become serious competition. Microsoft is a power. MSN search is already built into the home version of Windows XP and many users search with it. Who knows what Microsoft will decide to do next to gain popularity? Professional SEOs will not ignore this fact and optimize websites for all search engines.

The good news is that optimizing your website for Google will definitely help with the other search engines. To index a website and position it high on its results, Google requires valuable content, good linking strategies, ethical SEO and so on. MSN wants the same. The differences are in the search algorithms. These algorithms could change overnight. There was a time when Netscape ruled the Web. The switch to Google took place almost in a flash. You never know what will happen next: that’s the beauty of SEO. SEO is always challenging, changing, stimulating. When you optimize your web pages for one search engine only you are doomed.

Google ranks a website mainly for its incoming links, especially when these have good link anchor texts. MSN places more importance on keywords and content, especially on page content, but doesn’t ignore incoming links either. To rank well in both search engines you should concentrate your efforts on both site optimization and linking.

SEO is a tool. Like any tool it has to be used and handled with care. For example Google and MSN value links, but if you have too many links and poor content, that will not help. You need to maintain equilibrium between content and links. Google paces importance on linking power while MSN is more concerned about the content of the links. As a matter of fact Google states the same: quality.
External links are important for both MSN and Google. For more detail go to: www.the20seotools.com.However, don’t ignore internal linking. Your web pages have to be properly interlinked. This is not only good for Google and MSN, but it will provide for your visitors as well.

Google doesn’t have the same keyword density tolerance as MSN. As a matter of fact it’s lower. So if you place too many keywords in your text to rank high in MSN you’ll probably not see the same results in Google, as Google might consider your keyword rich content as spam. So once again: handle SEO with care.

Both Google and MSN like fresh content. The best way to use this SEO tool is to host a blog on your domain.

How to Quickly and Easily Find Telecom Information Using Internet Search Engines

admin    Google Optimization     Easily, Engines, Find, Information, internet, Quickly, Search, Telecom, Using

How to Quickly and Easily Find Telecom Information Using Internet Search Engines

The development of the Internet has enabled almost anyone access to virtually every piece of information known to human civilization. A few key strokes and mouse clicks can uncover practically any compilation of information you desire – and have it delivered directly to your desktop computer or laptop.

Google and other search engines such as Yahoo and MSN are constantly updating search algorithms to provide relevant search results to billions of Internet users across the globe. But as good as these search engines have become, a vast number of Internet users still find searching the Internet to be a slightly frustrating and daunting task.

Having the extent of human knowledge at your fingertips does not always result in finding what you want. For example, a Google search for the term “telecommunications” brings up a whopping 109,000,000 results!

No one has the time or patience to sift through that much information. Fortunately, there are simple search tricks that you can use right now to quickly and easily find telecommunications (or any other) information.

How to Search Using Quotes, Parentheses, Positives and Negatives

Google, MSN and Yahoo have allowed for “shortcuts” within their search engine structure to help users narrow down the search results they provide. Making internet search a more friendly experience requires users to know just a few.

The most basic of these shortcuts are the use of quotations, positives and negatives. Used in conjunction with search phrases, these commands help zero in on relevant search results very quickly.

For example, say you want to search the Internet using the term: voip phone system. Entering those words into Google returns over 45,000,000 results. Placing quotations marks around these same words tells Google to search by “phrase”, not just the individual words themselves. Searching by phrase narrows this search to just over 1 million results.

Adding positives (+) and/or negatives (-) to a search term will help focus search results even more. For example, if you would like to find a VoIP phone system from Cisco and not Packet 8, you would type: “voip phone system” +cisco -packet 8

The minus (-) sign eliminates any search results that refer to Packet 8, and include all search results that contain Cisco.

If finding VoIP phone systems from EITHER Cisco OR Packet 8 is desired, it is best to use the either/or command (parentheses) in your search. Keep in mind that all of these commands are completely interchangeable and can be used in conjunction with each other depending on how specific you would like search results to be returned. A search for a VoIP phone system by either Cisco or Packet8, but NOT Ebay listings would require entering this into Google: “voip phone system” (cisco,packet -ebay

These simple tricks will save you hours of time and considerable frustration when searching for exactly what you want. The following are more ways to find specific file types and information from only ONE website – without even having to go that website to search.

How to Search for Specific File Types of Information

For the most part, Google returns search results in the form of web pages (html) or “sites” where the information resides. Although they are getting better at including file types other than html pages into their search results (e.g. PDF, mpg, mp3, .doc, .xls), they are still years away from being intuitive enough to know exactly the type of files you are searching for when you enter a search phrase. The best way to help Google return what you want is to tell it what file type you desire.

For example, there are literally thousands of white papers written on almost every telecom topic imaginable. Vendors shell out big bucks to develop informative and comprehensive white papers on a variety of telecom topics, primarily for marketing purposes. The majority of these documents are not thinly disguised sales pitches however. More often than not they are chalked full of highly informative content. White papers come in very handy when researching and/or learning about a specific telecom topic.

To find these available telecom white papers with ease, simply enter filetype:pdf after your search phrase. If you are searching for a white paper on the topic of “voip phone systems” your search phrase in Google would require this: “voip phone systems” filetype:PDF

Google returns 358 results as of this writing.

Not specific enough?

Try entering allintitle: before the search term. This will tell Google to only return PDF files that contain “voip phone systems” in the TITLE of the document. This search brings up only six results.

Use this trick to find other file types such as Word files (doc), mp3s (mp3) and even Excel files (xls). A search for VoIP phone systems in Word document format would require: “voip phone systems” filetype: doc An Excel spreadsheet file would require: “voip phone systems” filetype:xls

How to Search Only One Website

Many websites contain search features that allow visitors to search for topics within that website alone. But what if you want to search for a topic on one specific site and the site contains no search capabilities on it?

Use the site: command directly into Google search fields.

For example, say you want to quickly search mobiletracker.net (a popular and massive cell phone blog) for anything to do with Nextel in the title of the blog post – but you do not want anything to be returned with word “Motorola” in the title. This Google search would require entering the following search string:

allintitle:Nextel site:mobiletracker.net -Motorola for a total of 93 search results.

Let Google Come To You Using Google “Alerts”

It is now possible to let Google search come to you via email when information is added to the Internet that contains a topic or phrase that interests you. Introducing: Google Alerts. Google Alerts is a free service that allows you to inform Google of a topic or phrase that you desire to be continuously kept up to date. Google will then send you an e-mail when anything is added to the Internet that contains that topic or search phrase.

You will need a Google account (free) to set up these alerts, but once you do, information on your topic will be sent to you at the time intervals you desire – daily, “as it happens”, or weekly. You can also specify where you want this information to come from: the web, news, blogs, video, Google groups or a comprehensive search of any and all of them.

When setting up your Google alerts, be very specific using the methods covered in this newsletter. Use the commands allintitle, quotations, positives and negatives wherever possible. By doing so, you will not only cut down on the amount of emails you receive, but they will be tightly focused and on topic as well.

The Internet contains a vast array of telecommunications information just waiting to be found and used for your benefit. Spend just a few minutes a day honing your Internet search skills and the payoff will be well worth it.

More Google Search Articles

A Speedier Internet from Google

admin    Google Optimization     From, Google, internet, Speedier

A Speedier Internet from Google

Google is currently the top search engine company in the industry, both in terms of market share and technology. To reach the top spot in an Industry which analysts predict could balloon in to a multi-billion dollar one, it took a Google that has an abundant supply of innovation, great foresight and to a big extent, a stealthily-developed arsenal of one the best and most advanced Search Engine Technology the whole Industry has ever seen (or not seen, since Google is trying its best to keep competitors in the dark about the true extent and power of their biggest weapon – their clusters of datacenters). Although they’re at the front of the pack right now, Google and its army of engineers are in no way sitting on their laurels. Innovation is what brought them where they are now, and innovation is definitely what they’re continually using to bring the company forward. Google’s engineers are continually working on ways to improve their search engine’s performance and to give additional features that will enhance user experience.

Although it could be very easy to miss because of its sheer simplicity, speed is one of the key reasons why Google is number one. They understood early on that in order to provide a top-notch user experience, search results must be delivered to the user in the shortest time possible. Even when on a dial up connection, Google has designed its search engine in such a way that the web search results appear in a snap. One might say that Google has perfected the speed aspect of search engine results delivery, but displaying the list of results is just half of the story. What happens when a user clicks on the result is also an important component in the overall experience of the search engine user. Google therefore wants to improve on the Internet for the user searching for information. Improving the speed of the Internet for the users is also important to Google’s other mission: to bring software applications that a user uses from the desktop to the web. The idea of network computing is something that is not entirely new, but it is only lately that we are seeing a start (albeit still slow and not without its own share of challenges) towards the right direction. Products like Gmail, Google spreadsheets, Google Calendar and Writely are testament to this Company mission.

So now we know that Google wants to deliver a user experience in a much faster way than what the current Internet technology has to offer. Now we move on to the how question. Or, how Google intends to improve the speed at which information is retrieved and delivered to the user.

We’ll start with what Google is doing now to address the problem of speed, moving on later on the company’s future plans, clues of which can be found in the company’s patent applications.

Web page pre-fetching is one method that is generally used in increasing the speed at which a web page is accessed and Google is using it in now in its search engine. Users using Firefox browser to search Google may have already felt the effect of pre-fetching without them knowing it. Google currently pre-fetches the top items in the list of search results especially if the algorithm has determined that it is most likely to be clicked by the user. Pre-fetching a web page means that the browser will download a web page to the user’s computer even before the user has clicked on the link to it such that when the user actually clicks the link, the page is loaded quickly from user’s computer memory.

The Google web accelerator is another Google product that aims to speed up the Internet experience for the users. It speeds up the speed of Internet users on broadband using a desktop component and dedicated Google servers to cache content and compress certain data before it is sent to the user GWA also uses a more aggressive pre-fetching feature that works not only on Google search result pages but also on other pages that the user is using.

The Google web accelerator and the page pre-fetching feature of the Google search engine are two methods currently being used by Google in bringing a speedier Internet experience to the user, but there are a lot more that Google is doing in its labs to make the Internet even faster, or more specifically in some cases, the speed at which information is delivered to the user. Search being the second most popular activity done by users on the Internet, speed improvements on information retrieval and delivery is an important improvement on the user experience of many Internet users.

“Predictive information retrieval” and “anticipated query generation and processing in a search engine” -two patent applications by the search company, says a lot about how Google aims to improve the search experience by hinging on one thing: anticipating and predicting what the user is looking for. The focus of the patent application mentioned is returning search results faster and more personalized for the user.

The search engine that Google wants to develop will capture the keyboard characters as they are entered by the user, then sends partial queries to the Google servers that are actually predicted by an algorithm based on what it thinks that the user is actually looking for. This prediction is based on a list of words found on one or more dictionaries which can differ from one user to user. The search engine can therefore predict what you are looking for based both on what other people are looking for and a personalized profile that Google can make out of what it knows about the user. This can include the user’s search history or other factors. Google can then display the list of suggested keywords to the user and in some cases, actual search results. Predictive information retrieval when perfected will make searching experience speedier for the user, and will smartly optimized the work being done by the search engine.

Google has a lot to gain in a speedy Internet, that’s why it’s also investing a lot of money and engineer time towards this goal. Whatever Google delivers to the table to improve the way users use the Internet, it is a sure win for its users and customers. In the same way that we don’t know how we managed to live in a world of dial up connection now that we’re on broadband, we might be surprised in what the future will be offering in harnessing more the speed potential of the Internet.