How to Optimize Your WordPress Blog

admin    Google Optimization     Blog, Optimize, Wordpress

How to Optimize Your WordPress Blog

WordPress is the most popular platform of blogging on the internet. Almost all bloggers who are making money blogging are using it. So if you want to take first place and make more money by blogging, you should learn how to optimize your blog. In this article, I will talk about how to optimize your WordPress blog in 7 ways.

1. Optimize your WordPress permalinks.

This is the first step when you creating a WordPress blog. The default permalink is not very good for Google and you can edit it easily. Clicking on the Settings->Permalinks menu in the WordPress dashboard and then use a custom setting such asyourdomainname.com/category/postname. This will mean that your blog post category and title will appear in the URL rather than a number.

2. Install the All in One SEO Pack (or a another similar plugin)

The plugin is suitable for beginners who want to optimize their WordPress blogs. I think it is the best plugin for Seo. The plugin allows you to add a custom title, Meta description and keyword tags for your home page and blog posts.

3. Optimize each blog post for a low competition long tail keyword phrase.

Do a litte keyword research before you make a blog post. Find a low amount of competition by visiting the Google AdWords keyword tool. Ideally this phrase will have just a few hundred monthly searches rather than a few thousand monthly searches. Use a different keyword phrase for every blog post that you make and put the keyword phrase in the blog post title and 2-3 times throughout the post.

4. Book mark each post by using Social Bookmarking services.

Submit your blog url to a social bookmarking service like Digg or Delicious. It will take additional traffic to your blog and give a backlink to your blog post.

5. Optimize the home page of your blog.

Generally, your homepage get more traffic than other pages in your blog. Optimizing your homepage can increase the number of visitors. Pick 1-2 keyword phrases for your home page using a keyword research tool such as the Google AdWords keyword tool and choose one or two phrases that are related to your niche. Ideally these phrases should get a few thousand searches per month and the competition shouldn’t be too tough. Ensure that you include these keyword phrases are mentioned in the TITLE tag, Meta description and throughout the permanent content of your blog home page.

6. Install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.

Submitting sitemaps will help to ensure that Google or other search engines index all the posts and pages of your WordPress blog. You can use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin to create a sitemap for your blog.

7. Add more links to your blog.

It is the best way to improve your ranking in the search engines. There are so many ways you can do this. For example, you can add links from other blogs, directory submission, and forum and so on.

This is the primary way for WordPress blog optimization. Try it! It will take more traffic to your blog and make that you can make more money by blogging.

make money blogging.

http://www.bloggerearn.com/2009/10/how-to-optimize-your-wordpress-blog.html

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How To Write High Conversion Landing Pages For Google Adwords

admin    Google Optimization     Adwords, Conversion, Google, High, Landing, Pages, write

How To Write High Conversion Landing Pages For Google Adwords

Google Adwords can be a real puzzle when trying to match your keywords to your ads and your landing page. When it comes to my business, I prefer to keep things simple. The way to do that with Adwords is to simply deliver what your ad promises. Whether you are setting up your first campaign or working to take your campaign to the next level, optimizing your landing page is always worth your time.

Too many Google Adwords marketers spend their time on keywords and ads, and leave the landing page out of the equation. Doing so can leave marketers scratching their heads when their cost per click remains high and conversions remain low. Despite all of the complicated theories about how to succeed with Google Adwords, it comes to this one fact: Google rewards or punishes its advertisers based on how well they solve the problem that Google’s searcher has. If your ad says “Learn Guitar In 2 Days” then the content on your landing page better have them playing like Eddie Van Halen within 48 hours. Anything short of that will, sooner or later, result in a Google “slap” where your impressions from Google Adwords are severely reduced or cut off altogether.

The following are seven elements for landing pages that Google Adwords will love (and will convert like crazy!):

1) Deliver on the promise of your ad – As I said before, this is the biggest key to success. If you solve the searcher’s problem/issue, you win. If your searcher clicks off of your page and begins another search, Google tracks it and penalizes you. Google rewards sites that deliver with lower costs and increased impressions.

2) Make your page original – Unlike in the past, mass produced “replicated sites” no longer work. Google values giving their searchers unique and high quality information. Mass produced site, with their duplicate content, was watering down Google’s search results so they put an end to their use by penalizing advertisers that used them. Your landing page is your chance to “wow” your visitor. Make it count by making your landing page unique, novel and personal. Google will reward you for ending a search on your landing page by lowering your cost per click and increasing your number of impressions.

2) One page does not fit all – Your visitors decide in just a few seconds whether to stay on your site or click off. Be sure the top of your page matches the ad they clicked on. This is where, as good marketer, you can really excel. Maximize your conversions across all ads by creating a landing page for each ad. This mainly involves customizing the top portion of the page. The rest of the page can remain the same for all pages.

3) Get to the point – The perfect length of your landing page is exactly as long as it takes to succinctly and effectively convey your message. No more, no less. Grammar counts! Leave the misspellings and bad punctuation for the amateurs.

4) Have a goal in mind for your visitors – Are you trying to make a sale or get a lead? Have a goal in mind before creating your page and write your copy to lead them to that conclusion. Focus on one goal per page.

5) Increase conversions with a bonus – Everyone responds to “Free.” Adding a bonus to sweeten the deal will increase conversions. Information products work great and they don’t cost you anything.

6) Credibility counts – You are an experienced, successful business person. Your page should convey that. Graphics should augment your page copy, not compete with it. Leaving white space on your page is a good thing. Also, do not set any audio or video on your site to launch automatically. Your page should welcome your visitor without overwhelming them.

7) Be trustworthy – Trust is a huge issue online. Anything you can do to be transparent is a plus. For example, are you a member of the Better Business Bureau? Put your member logo on your page! Same for site security certifications. Also, let your visitors know a little bit about you. Nothing really personal but you want your readers to feel like you are a real person.

This can seem like a lot to remember until you understand that all of these tips boil down to being a real and genuine person online. With billions of pages of content to wade through, people crave quality and trustworthy professionals to do business with. When you think about it, Google Adwords requirements are very straight forward. Be a professional and deliver on your promise, the same as in any other kind of business. Just these two simple things will give you a huge advantage over the competition.

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Google SEO and PageRank – All Links Aren’t Created Equal

admin    Google Optimization     Aren't, Created, Equal, Google, links, PageRank

Google SEO and PageRank – All Links Aren’t Created Equal

With Google’s increased popularity and gain in Organic Search market share, it is increasingly more important for web site owners to become better familiarized with the way Google works and how they gauge certain elements to determine a website’s ranking. In the initial Google PageRank patent submission, there was a heavy emphasis on links; this has since changed drastically from the initial PageRank algorithm. Many expert Google SEO professionals have concluded that it no longer is useful to create links to a site, if that link doesn’t have a title related to the destination site. Let us explain further.

Initially, the web was a web of links tying everything together. With this quickly came Black Hat SEO practices that took advantage of certain sites and their easily fooled submission pages to create mass link campaigns that created duplicate links on different web sites. Initially a web site gauged by the original Google PageRank algorithm, would have ranked a page very highly.

It is estimated that Google now calculates the following about every link back to a site:

1. Originating website topic – refers to a link that for example, links to your site about computers, but originates on a completely unrelated website whose topic is about cooking.

2. Originating website link title content – refers to the general topic of the originating site in relationship to the site where the link is pointing. Again, keeping links to your site, in similar topic sites is very important.

3. Originating website ranking – the originating PageRank must be higher that the receiving website in order to maximize the value of the link.

4. Originating website status – refers to whether or not the site were the link originates has been tagged as black-hat or otherwise penalized for pursuing non-standard methods by Google.

If you create lots of links from bad sites to your web site, it will actually cause a devaluation of your website rankings. Do NOT be fooled by companies who claim to provide high PR links for pennies, the truth is, that by everyone’s estimation in the SEO arena, Google has already or is building a provision in their PageRank to account for this type of practices.

Keep your links clean, from clean sources, and you will get great results.

This guide should give you a good starting point to help with your Google SEO efforts. Keep an eye of the next guide, which will help expand on the topic of Search Engine Optimization.

Take a look at our site which contains detailed information on Google SEO topics to help you get your site’s ranking in the top 10 Google Search Engine Results.

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What is Google Instant and Will it Affect You?

admin    Google Optimization     Affect, Google, Instant

What is Google Instant and Will it Affect You?

On the 8th September Google launched “Google Instant” an evolution of its search engine that gives users search results as soon as they begin to type. This major ‘revolution’ was not a change to its search algorithm and shouldn’t fundamentally change the rankings or search results for a particular query, but a change to the way users see search results and will ultimately change the way users search.

What is Google Instant?

Google Instant is simply “Search as you type”. Previously a user needed to type a search query into Google and hit enter (or click the search button).Then along came Google Suggest, which guesses what your search query might be and then presents you with a range of options of what you might be looking for (which you could scroll down and click on if you wanted to).

Google Instant takes this a step further by predicting, as you type, what you might be thinking and, as well as offering suggestions, actually shows you what it believes are the most appropriate results as you go along.

Fundamentally, this reduces the need for you to type and/or think. You can either follow Google’s thinking or select from the Google Suggest list or carry on typing until you get the query you want. This can either be viewed as a distraction (if you’re a serious searcher) or an assistance if you’re not really sure what you’re looking for.

Google reckons that this will improve the search process and save you time. They also say it shouldn’t slow your search, although I have found, certainly in the first week or so of Google Instant, that it seems to have slowed down the Google search engine results page (SERP), at times quite considerably.

Google Instant is currently only available when you sign in to Google, so if you aren’t or don’t have a Google account you won’t see it. You can also turn it off, if you want. At present it’s only available in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia and on Google Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8, so if you have an older browser, tough…. It’s also not available for an iPhone or iPad yet.

Why did Google launch Google Instant?

The official Google line is that they believe Instant offers:-

* A Faster Search Experience, by predicting what your search might be about and showing you the results before you’ve finish typing. They believe Google Instant can save you 2-5 seconds per search.

* Better Predictions, i.e. when you don’t know what you’re looking for these predictions can guide your search.

* Instant Results – the results appear right before your eyes as you type, guiding you every step of the way.

Considerably more importantly for Google, however, is the fact that Instant will guide/drive searches to the most popular search queries (which due to competition will tend to be Google AdWords higher priced clicks) and away from the more obscure, less competitive searches, which tend to have fewer (or even no) Pay Per Click advertisers bidding for them and so command considerably lower (or no) click costs, i.e., Google revenue.

Google Instant provides instant search results as you type. Whilst Instant itself hasn’t changed the way Google ranks pages, it has changed the way search results are displayed and will ultimately change the way people search.

Despite some negatives, in the long term it will increase the amount of searches on Google that people make, which tied in with the increasing yield Google will make on its paid search clicks, will significantly increase Google’s income and make it ever more powerful. Instant will drive more people to the bigger volume, short tail keywords which will either be more expensive from a PPC perspective or harder to get traffic from through SEO, however the rewards from achieving that traffic should ultimately balance the costs.

To read the complete article and know about how will Google Instant affect you, please visit The Zelst Blog.

Selecting The Optimal Keywords To Steer Visitors To Your Web Site

admin    Google Optimization     Keywords, Optimal, Selecting, Site, Steer, Visitors

Selecting The Optimal Keywords To Steer Visitors To Your Web Site

If you are like your neighbor who owns a website, you want your site to emerge in the top 10 of Google search results.  Unfortunately, most people don’t have the skills to truly achieve it. There are many steps to take in order to be found for words and phrases related to your web site. Moreover, taking your time to explore the best possible phrases for your site is an important step on the ladder.

Many webmasters make the mistake of assuming that a ranking for one generic term associated with their website will turn their site into a money-making success. Although that one generic term may supply a good flow of traffic and brand appreciation, this does not mean the traffic will be targeted traffic that will convert into sales or become opt in subscribers. Plus the expenses of targeting that generic keyword may well tower over your return on investment. It is best for you to target several keywords related to the benefits of your product or the problems your product solves. This will not only drive traffic, but also produce that all important conversion.

First of all you need to consider who your prospects are and the reasons why they will visit your web site. Do you advertise products online? Do you suggest services? Is your site more information focused? What would visitors see as their benefit for coming to your site? By understanding your potential visitors and the reasons they will visit you will better focus your efforts on important keywords.

With this in mind, you can now think about the benefit or problem related terms that you think people will use to try and find your website. You should not be satisfied with simply one term. This is a trap that lots of webmasters fall into when they believe that one term will provide sufficient visitors to maintain their business. And they are shocked that their business doesn’t increase if they do attain that ranking. Reflect on all of the potential keywords and themes of your website, even draw on a thesaurus to locate related words and phrases. You can also check rival websites for ideas. It can be surprising just what terms your potential visitors will use!

Once you have assembled the list of keywords, you need to use some resources to determine how widely used and competitive those terms are. Also, you’ll begin to sharpen up those keywords to be highly targeted to your site’s purpose.

To start out you’ll find out how widely used your keywords are.  This job can be performed using a number of keyword suggestion tools.

Keyword suggestion tools tell you which keywords were used in searches, and the number of searches that were conducted on those keywords. Entering a phrase in the tool will result in a selection of other keywords that contain your keyword, alternative phrases with a similar theme and also an estimation of the magnitude of traffic each phrase produces per month. These tools can be flawed as they query different search engines and the traffic estimations can be imprecise, but they are still useful for getting a ball park estimation of the number of searches conducted, and for suggesting various keywords you might never have thought of targeting.

Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, located at http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal, is free to use and gives you a list of suggested terms as well as the quantity of searches performed on Google.

A similar tool is located at http://www.wordtracker.com. Wordtracker queries the metacrawlers Dogpile and Metacrawler. So the statistics possibly will not be representative of what’s being searched on the Internet as a whole. But Wordtracker is still beneficial for offering alternative phrases and associated keywords. Wordtracker has a subscription service. Wordtracker offers monthly or annual subscriptions.

Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery at http://www.keyworddiscovery.com is a relative newcomer to the keyword suggestion marketplace. KeywordDiscovery can query multiple search engines worldwide and provides comparable results to Wordtracker as well as other resources, but with subscriptions starting at .95 per month. You can try this service at no charge but you’ll receive only a subset of the results you would receive as a paid member.

Once you’ve got a list of terms, you’ll need to see how competitive they are. What you;re hoping to find here are keywords that have high volume traffic but not many websites competing to rank for that term. You can use various tricks to estimate this. Any page that is optimized for a term will certainly have that keyword in the title tag and in anchor text of links pointing to the site. So by doing a search in Google and entering the queries intitle:“phrase here” and inanchor:“phrase here”, you can find the number of other pages that have been optimized for your selected keyword. The smaller the results for these searches, the less competition there is for the term. For more information about what these Google advanced search operators do, go to http://google.about.com/od/googlepowersearches/Google_Power_Searches.htm.

Using these tools should have now provided you with a list of words and phrases that are significantly more targeted than your first keywords. These phrases can include breaking your term down by regional location, or a specific product. You should now be able to optimize your web site for several keywords – remember that search engines index web pages and not just websites. The good news is that all of your pages in your web site can be found in search engines, and this means that all of those pages can be optimized for different keywords!

Many people are also optimizing pages for “long tail” keyword phrases. These are obscure multi word phrases that are use infrequently in searches, but are so precise they can end up being the most targeted terms and thus produce higher conversion rates. In order to include long tails phrases you must have a content rich site – the more information you have the more opportunities you have to include very specific terms that can be found somewhere on your site.

So you should now finally have a list of the most effective targeted phrases for your site! As you can see, the method of selecting your terms in not something that can be taken lightly. There is considerable preparation to carry out if you desire to optimize the capability of your web site to attract organic search traffic. With your final list you are now ready to rework your pages to be found for those keywords, but that is an additional subject.

How to Rank Higher in Google Local Business Listings

admin    Google Optimization     business, Google, Higher, Listings, Local, Rank

How to Rank Higher in Google Local Business Listings

Google offers a free business listing to small businesses at the top of most local search results pages. Local Google Advertising is what we’re after when we talk about Google’s local business listing center. Anatomy of a Google search result page:

• Listings on the right side bar are paid advertisements, often called “sponsored links”
• The main body of a search result page are called the “organic” or “natural” search listings
• At the very top in a colored text box are also paid advertisements, sponsored links
• Above the organic listings are “Google Local Business Listings”

This wiki deals with only with the Local Business Listings

You will notice a map associated with each listing, this is because Google used the existing infrastructure of Google Maps to implement the free business listings. It’s generally thought that Google offered this free service, and gave its location on a search result page prominence above the organic listings because of the popularity of Google’s AdWords program.

AdWords is a PPC (pay per click) advertising system where keywords and keyword phrases are bid on in an auction like system. The immense popularity of AdWords priced smaller Mom n Pop stores out of the market due to the ever escalating costs of certain keywords. Google became fearful that it’s search platform would be return search results of the “rich and famous” thus reflecting only what the rich and powerful wanted seen on Google search results.

How does Google determine which website should rank higher than another?

Google uses a computer program algorithm based on hundreds of factors as the vast size of the internet precludes any human capability of keeping the listings accurate or current. That algorithm is a closely guarded trade secret within Google. Search Engine Optimization Consultants learn what Google apparently likes and doesn’t like from the observable behavior of search results.

Local Business Listings IS Googlemaps

Google Maps algorithm is different from the algorithm that anoints one site over another. It’s also slower to update. If your customers leave glowing reviews of your product or service on the link provided your site will climb in rank. You are permitted up to 10 photos of your product or service, use as many of those slots as possible. Fill out as much information about your business as space allotted provides, being verbose is better than being succinct when it comes to Google Local Business Listings

Many small businesses get leads and interested inquiries from a local business listing even if they don’t have a website URL. Still other small businesses find it unnecessary to have their company listed anywhere other than the top local business listings. If your listing falls in ranking or is bumped out of it’s spot by a newcomer and you find your company losing sales because of it, you may want to outsource your rankings management to a local search engine optimization firm.

The fees involved for a local business listing may be less than the fees for improving your company website’s organic listing.

What Determines Rank?

Ever wonder why your companies listing in Google does OK in the main body of Google’s search results page but is not in the top 10 of those pesky Google Local Business Listings?

Ultimately what you want is to be found in BOTH sets of listings, the net effect of which would be to drive home in your prospective customers Mind’s Eye that Google apparently thinks pretty highly of your company if Google is displaying YOUR company listing in the Local Business Listings and in the Organic Search Rankings.

Well, people’s perception and Google’s reality are far, far apart.

Google didn’t *pick* you to be #1 and your competitor to be #11

A computer program picked you over the hapless fella you compete with. A person did not visit your site, take notes, compare notes, make a decision, hear the belly aching and whining of the poor fool who got bumped off of his front page listed by a website that ranked better than his…

nope, an algorithm picked you over them.

Think about it… there are what? a Gazillion webpages already indexed in Google? And how many tens of thousands of new webpages being created as we speak? Some of those tens of thousands are being “generated” by a “bot”.

There is no way on God’s Green Earth a staff of humans could possibly keep up with that kind of volume. An algorithm did it. The robot that scours the Internet (in the SEO industry we call that “spidering”) is titled GoogleBot GoogleBot Can’t Really *Read*

GoogleBot can NOT read… but it CAN count

Googlebot counts the words on your webpage, it counts the keywords and keyword phrases you use in your copy. Is y0ur company website a little light on copy? Too bad for you.

It matters little to Googlebot if the fancy flash graphic and dramatic digital photos depicting your most important product are… well the damn thing can’t decipher a photo! but it CAN read text.

What ever makes your photos good, better or best and likewise your competitors photos crappy is subjective. Art is subjective, math is not.

Either the keywords are on your webpage (Prominently placed at the top of the page I hope) or the keyw0rds are not.

He who has the most keywords (elegantly, tactfully and deftly constructed with proper enough grammar for the spell checking programmed Googlebot to index). Wins that coveted top spot!

But… the Google Local Business Listings are a different story. The algorithm that runs it is different.

What Google is looking for and rewards when it sees it for the organic search results page (the body of the page) is one thing. What Googlebot is looking to see in the Free Local Google Advertising Listings is quite another.

I’m not about to reveal the entire loophole in a “Google Secrets Revealed” post, not even for a hefty 00 fee for an ebook (I’d do it for that price if it were ticket sales to a seminar and I got a couple dozen of you to buy 00 tickets to eagerly learn how I do what it is I do) (that’s in the works by the way)

No, I’m not telling, not the whole thing but I will give you a hint, and I’m giving said hint in the form of my own Maryland search engine optimization results. This is not theory, This is not alleged, What follows is battle tested.

I’m competing against the best of the best, the top guys and gals in Maryland: other SEO professionals. Link building technicians like me:)

If your customers leave glowing reviews… and they leave them USING a gmail account, and that Gmail account is associated with a Google Profile, and the person leaving the review has a picture or avatar uploaded to that Google Profile… Your Google local business listing will climb in ranking.

There are things you can do to improve your ranking

Many of you know you have to do something, you’re reading this to research if there’s anything you can do to “make the phone ring” in this challenging economy. More than a few of you will learn that you know you want to do something about SEO (search engine optimization) but simply don’t have the time… and you’ll hire me to get YOUR company website dominating the local Google search results!

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Google Adsense Expert Secrets

admin    Google Optimization     Adsense, Expert, Google, Secrets

Google Adsense Expert Secrets

Google AdSense program is easy way to earn money. At least for someone.

There are many people making thousands of dollars with Google Adsense. Students, Housewives, Retiree’s, etc… You don’t have to be tech freak to do something like that by yourself simply by placing Adsense on your blog.

But what I would like to write about here are those Adsense Experts. Maybe you heard of them somewhere, maybe you know some of them, people able to make half a million of dollars a year only with Google Adsense.

But don’t mix them with those from first group that got like picking the right niche or writing one good ad. They have systems that create web sites for them and people who do that for them, they have outsourced and automated all that work such as blog posting, keywords searching, etc…

Are you ready to get those techniques and be one of those Google Adsense Experts ???

Here are 7 Steps you can implement today to achieve what they did.

1) Starting today… treat your AdSense business like it is a REAL business and track what you do.

TRACK EVERYTHING!!! Track things that work and track things that don’t work. Working that way you won’t make same mistakes forever and you can use stuff that work while eliminating obstacles to your success. Yes, I know. This sounds too simple. And it is. But do you do it always??? So many people don’t. Start now and take advantage over them in Google Adsense Expert Program.

2) Get the latest tools and software available.

The Google AdSense Experts are not any smarter than some average person. They are just regular non techie people willing to do things easy way.

Maybe I could say they are smarter in one respect though… they use the latest tools available to them to automate most of the tasks involved with researching and creating sites. They use the latest keyword, site creation and search engine optimization tools available. They consider those tools as their secret weapons.

3) Don’t go after the Big Dollar keywords.

You must be aware that you can’t compete with many search engine experts who have rich clients with big budgets behind. Yes, you might say now that you managed to beat them, OK, I do that too from time to time but in the long run you should build sites for low to medium range payout keywords. The competition is not so big and your chance is much bigger in the long run.

4) Pick broad niches and break them down.

What we learned from Google Adsense Experts is that while starting they choose a broad subject as their main theme (like computers for an example). From there they break that niche down into as many sub niches as possible.

Using Computers as the example… you can build sub niches/sites like laptop computers, computer hard drives, computer keyboards, etc, etc. You could literally build hundreds of sites around one major theme and stay totally focused. Once you have exhausted every possible sub niche of that major theme… choose another main theme and repeat the process.

Your web sites must be easy to navigate and without unnecessary graphics that distract visitors. Purpose of your site must be having people to click on your ads so you should have your layout simple without banners, scroll bars or “stupid” stuff. Take a look at this blog and think a little about Google Adsense ads here. Do you notice them easily? Would you click on them when you see them? Why would Adsense Expert do something like this?

6) You must have the purpose of your web site?

Your web site cannot be everything to everybody. If you have a full fledged ecommerce site, with products for sale… links to other products, it is not a good site for AdSense. If the primary focus of the site is to sell products… let it do that.

Do not distract or confuse your visitor with to many options or choices. The best Google AdSense sites are AdSense only content sites that sell nothing. They are sites that “Tell”… not “Sell.”

7) Try to be consistent.

You must continuously build in order to be successful, do, correct, optimize, learn and improve over and over again.

To sum it all up… try using tools to automate processes as much as possible. That should and will help you being organized. You should treat your Google Adsense campaigns like the real business which they are you rewards will come faster that you believed in the beginning.

5) Stay simple and focused

The 3 Components of a Google Local Search Results Page

admin    Google Optimization     Components, Google, Local, Page, Results, Search

The 3 Components of a Google Local Search Results Page

This article covers the 3 areas of a Google local search results page.

PayPerClick Advertising – A Double Edged Sword

It’s easy to do, but VERY difficult to profit with.

Any business owner can sign up with the Google AdWords program and be advertising on the first page of Google in just an hour or so. There is no easier way to have a business seen on the first page of Google. HOWEVER, it’s EXTREMELY difficult to achieve an acceptable return on investment with PayPerClick advertising.

It’s all but impossible for a novice to put together a winning combination of bid price, ad copy, and landing page. In most cases, a PayPerClick consultant is required. At the very least, tremendous time and work are required by the business owner to test and learn how to profit with

PayPerClick advertising does have its place and should be considered by every business owner at some point. But it’s not wise to implement PayPerClick before taking advantage of all the free options Google offers. Let’s get free local business and organic listings set up and working before spending money on PayPerClick!

Local Business Listings – Google’s Prime Real Estate

Nothing beats free advertising! Notice the Free listings above. The plumbers who have their sites and contact information listed next to the map pay nothing for that advertising!

Simply put, the plumbers who understand how to place their business on that search page are stealing customers from the other plumbers in Augusta every day.

Most searches for goods and services with the name of a city produce a Google map with adjacent business listings (see the above graphic). This is the most eye-catching and preferred listing location in the search results. If I’m a local plumber in Augusta, I want my business by that map! Best of all, it doesn’t cost a dime to be listed there.

First, I’ll address two very common misconceptions about the free spots in Google Local Business listings.

• Unlike the Yellow Pages, these great placements cannot be purchased for any amount of money. It’s not about how large a business’ marketing budget is.

• If a business does not show up on the first page, owners do not have to simply settle for poor placements. There are specific steps that can be taken to move any business up in the listing order to enjoy the profits of a first page listing!

Local Business Listings are the listings just to the right of the Google map. (Yahoo and Bing have their own version of Local Business Listings. But since Google is the most popular search engine, I’ll refer to Google first in this paper.) Again, these are free listings and the most clicked ads on a local search listings page.

Most local businesses are already listed in the business listings. These are seen by clicking the link “more results near…” which is found below the main listings. Although most businesses are listed in those pages, few are ever seen by potential customers. Most searchers never go past the first or second pages when looking for a local service or product.

How do businesses get Google to list them on the first page? There are 20+ criteria Google uses to filter the business listings.

Listed below are a few of the 20+ criteria Google uses to rank businesses in the local listings:

Proper keyword optimization of the business title. (Warning: Be aware that improper use of keywords in the title can lead to a keyword spamming penalty by Google!) If you have a listing now, do not modify it without this understanding.

Verification of the listing – This is vital for several reasons. During verification, Google telephones each business to supply a pin number which the business owner inputs into their business listing account. Verification gives Google more confidence in the listing and will quite often result in the business moving higher in the rankings.

Proper category selections. Setting up the listing is made easy by Google. However, there are a limited number of categories Google allows the owner to select. Understanding how to properly select the categories can make or break the listing’s success.

Customers are allowed to review their experience and provide testimonials within the listing. These reviews play an important part in the rankings. Google does not penalize for negative rankings; however, business owners can greatly improve their listings’ effectiveness by understanding how reviews fit into Google’s ranking algorithm.

Google places much importance on “validation” of the business. In other words, when Google sees a business listing with the SAME exact address, phone number and other specifics in other free online directories, the listing gains relevance\. Presenting the same business information in proper locations across the web provides that necessary validation.

It’s important for the business owner to understand the connection between their local business listing and their business website. Google often ranks business listings better if the web site associated with the listing also ranks well in the organic listings. Using SEO techniques on business web sites can positively influence the business listing.

I won’t spend more time going into all 20 criteria Google uses to rank business. My point is simply to demonstrate there is nothing mysterious or difficult about the process. Once a business owner understands what Google wants, it’s easy to make the necessary tweaks and adjustments to compete for those coveted first page listings.

Organic Listings – More Free Advertising!

Organic listings are another great method for attracting online attention…Plus, they are also free!

Organic listings are simply web sites Google found which they feel are relevant for a given search. Since many people understand the PayPerClick ads are advertisements, the organic listings are more trusted by most searchers. Web site owners who optimize their web sites in order to rank well in these listings enjoy plenty of free and targeted traffic from potential buyers.

As with the local business listings, the organic positions cannot be purchased. Google reviews and lists the web pages in the order they judge as most relevant. For example, when someone searches the term “Augusta plumbers”, Google will show the web pages they think will help the searcher most. Business owners must understand how to use SEO to create and/or modify their web sites in order to gain first page rankings.

There are two misconceptions website owners have about how first page organic listings are determined by Google.

Google does not care if the site is “pretty”! The best looking web site in the world could end up on page 20 of a Google search. Likewise, a “korny” looking web site could easily rank #1 on Google. (Of course the ideal situation is to have an attractive web site on the first page!)

Money cannot buy placement in the organic listings. The placement order for the organic listings has nothing to do with the size of the business or its marketing budget! Talk about an equal playing field!

As with the business listings, there are specific criteria used by Google for ranking web sites in the organic listings. Applying the criteria to web pages with the intent of ranking well is the definition of SEO (search engine optimization).

The following are a few aspects of applying SEO to web pages (Don’t worry if this sounds confusing. Even those brand new to Internet marketing can rapidly and easily learn and apply the process to their sites.):

The title tag used by the site owner is extremely important. Proper use of title tags can result in first or second page rankings vs. third, fourth, or worse rankings. For local search, it’s important to properly use the city and service keyword in the title tag.

Content is king with respect to ranking niche pages. (Local searches that use specific cities or locations are considered “niche searches”). Although the amount of content is important, proper keyword optimization must be performed.

Backlinks are vital when there is competition. If a number of sites for a given search have well optimized sites, Google will look at the number and quality of backlinks for a site. A backlinking strategy need not be complicated or time consuming. There are many free an

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How To Win At The Search Engine Optimization Game In 2010

admin    Google Optimization     2010, Engine, Game, Optimization, Search

How To Win At The Search Engine Optimization Game In 2010

If you are lookng for a better way to beat the SEO game check this out ==>http://bit.ly/arz2cq
Websites which are listed on top of search engine results are considered to be very trustworthy and also generates more leads, sales, and conversions. SEO expert team in our company will help your website to attain guaranteed top position in search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing. Website visibility converts to customers: 82% of local organic searches resulted in contact with a local vendor. As much as 75% of all clicks are made on organic, non-paid listings vs. Web 2.0 has ushered in a new era in the still nascent world of internet marketing. Studies show that the advent of blogs, social media platforms, social bookmarking sites and other web 2.0 initiatives has resulted in over 44% of internet users becoming content creators.
Keyword enriched, salable content. Developing content for your website is one of the best investments you can make. Keyword stuffing is considered an unethical practice because what you actually do is use the keyword in question throughout the text suspiciously often. Having in mind that the recommended keyword density is from 3 to 7%, anything above this, say 10% density starts to look very much like keyword stuffing and it is likely that will not get unnoticed by search engines.
Articles should focus on one or two keyword or phrases at most. Stuffing an article with every possible keyword phrase related to the topic will only bring the search engine ratings down. Article marketing is an excellent way to increase your search engine ranking. Write articles with good content for the reader about your industry and product or service expertise.
Web positioning techniques will deliver visitors but the usability of your site is what will keep them there. Websites can have a high ranking today, but may slip as more sites get listed in this site category. It is therefore necessary to monitor your Web site’s search rank and traffic stats frequently and implement periodic positioning maintenance. Web masters and business owners alike realize that getting noticed on Google now requires a well thought out strategy and regular evaluation and updates.
Meta tags are not meant to be used for keyword stuffing. Don’t use them for that purpose because it isn’t going to help you. Meta tags is one of the better methods in increasing the reputation of the website, now in order to make your website SEO friendly, you have to pursue some basic straightforward rules. You can either try the algorithmic SEO or the organic SEO.
Search engines will always look at some portion of your blog starting at the top. Do not stack keywords in the beginning but be keenly aware of the difference you can make with well chosen and placed words. Search Engines tend to be strict when enforcing these rules in order to provide better quality in their SERPs and retain & grow their own user base. SEO Choice is a white hat search engine optimization company which practices ethical, organic SEO through and through. Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process, requiring addition of new fresh content, constant modification of site content, changes to site architecture and link building (this is a subset of search engine marketing). All of these together build traffic to a site, and are necessary to generate leads from a site.
Keywords play an important role in the way search engines index and rank websites. We work closely with our clients to ensure that their website content contains relevant keywords that target the natural queries of potential customers. Keyword density can be tricky but, as a general rule, Big Oak shoots for 3% to 12% of all text on a page to be our targeted keywords. Keyword-rich content is provided by our copywriting services. We do provide creation and management of internet advertising pay-per-click campaings in Google Adwords, Yahoo-Overture and similar.
Linking is the mechanism that connects all the pages on the Internet. You’ve got links throughout your web site to let people navigate their way around. Linking to a penalized website can really hurt your own website. This is why it’s very important to know who you’re linking to when not using the ‘nofollow attribute’ on your external links and internal links. Links build a bridge of trust between your website and the search engines, so it is a necessity to truly succeed online. Without high quality inbound links, your website simply won’t rank in the search engines.Internet users more than ever trust that search results will provide a useful and honest answer to their inquiries. Internet users conduct millions of searches every day on search engines such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo. As a result, most high-traffic websites receive a majority of their visitors from the search engines.Google, Yahoo and Bing January 2010 market share was just announced by Comscore.com this week. According to them, ”Americans conducted 15.2 billion core searches, with Google Sites accounting for 65.4 percent search market share. Google recommends headlines between 2 and 22 words for optimum visibility and search results. And Google results display only the first 63 characters of each headline.
Google ranks all the pages of your site, but how to be sure that everything works correctly? How to increase rank of the pages on your site? Google’s Let’s make the web faster web page asks the question “What would be possible if browsing the web was as fast as turning the pages of a magazine?”. This clues us in to their goal – instant response. Google returns more than 240 Million search results in the US every day. If you are trying to connect with your audience, optimizing your ranking in search results is an important component of your marketing and promotion plan.
The question is always being asked on many of the blogs and forums on the internet “How do I ensure my sites are properly Search Engine Optimization”.

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Seo Tip For Wedding And Portrait Photographers

admin    Google Optimization     Photographers, Portrait, Wedding

Seo Tip For Wedding And Portrait Photographers

If you’re new to the wedding photography or a seasoned pro, you are surely aware of the plethora of wedding photographers out there. Each wedding photographer in your area represents someone who, friendly or not, is a competitor. That means that you are vying for the same client that he or she is. And with so many photographers willing to shoot for next to nothing, how can you not only get the clients you want but get them to pay you top dollar for your services.

Since I founded photographik in early 2005, I have observed the wedding photography industry explode with photographers. New wedding photographers are joining the ranks of photographik and other wedding directories on a daily basis. And while this is good news for us, it is not always such good news for you.

How Do You Set Yourself Apart from the Hordes of Wedding Photographers?

SEO!

It’s a “webified” world now. More and more, people are using the Internet for everything from shopping and banking to YouTube surfing and, of course, research and discovery. And it in the area of research and discovery that I’d like to focus this article.

Let’s face it; if you’re not findable on Google, then you’re missing out on a huge market of potential clients who begin and end their research and discovery using Google and, lesser so, the other search engines.

Here are some SEO tips that should help you in regards to your search engine and online marketing tactics.

Page Titles! Appropriately naming and identifying your website using page titles is still considered the number one most effective thing to do. But be smart with how you title your homepage and other pages. For example, if your business is called Joe Blow Photography and you’re based in Sacramento, California, it is better to title your page:

Sacramento wedding photographer, Joe Blow Photography

Or even better:

Sacramento wedding photographer, Sacramento wedding photography, Joe Blow Photography

Why do this? Because adding a geo-centric element to your page title helps the search bots identify and categorize your website in their SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Additionally, people in Sacramento are going to search for photographers using keywords like “Sacramento wedding photographers” or “Sacramento wedding photography.” If you only name your website after your business name, you’re not going to get the traffic you’re looking for.

A good page title is only the beginning. Be sure to add the meta tag elements of “keywords” and “description” to your homepage (and interior pages if you have an HTML site).

Make good use of your homepage. Your homepage is the front door to your website. Optimizing your homepage’s content is of paramount importance.

HTML splash pages are still a great thing. While it is certainly possible to get a pure Flash site to rank in the top 10, a well-structured HTML homepage (splash page) is quite effective because the textual content is easily read and indexed by Google’s bots. Further, you can do some great internal linking to other pages of your site or other sites you operate.

Links! Links! Links!

But not just any links. Your site will need many quality, inbound links to rank in the top 10 for competitive search phrases. Finding quality sites that will link to your site is an art in itself. Anybody can do it but it does require skill, patience and an overall excellent understanding of what constitutes a “good” link and what doesn’t.

Also, you never want links from “bad neighborhoods”. And you don’t want to many links to pop up too quickly. This can be a red flag to Google. Everything needs to at least look natural, organic and above board. Incurring a Google penalty on your website is very bad for business.

Where can I find good, quality, inbound links? Well, photographik.org is a great place to start. With photographik, not only do you benefit from the traffic that we generate to your website, you also receive a great inbound link to your site from our page ranked, highly indexed and trusted website. Many of our pages have Page Rank (Google’s system of ranking a web page from 0 to 10). An inbound link from photographik can help you in your SEO efforts. Additionally, photographik’s unique, link building application, Blurbits, is great for not only sharing your lastest photo shoot with the users of photographik but creating inbound links from our site to yours.

The tips above are a brief overview of some of the key elements involved in ranking well on Google for your wedding photography business. Each one can be expounded upon further but the guidelines above should help you better understand the nuts and bolts of search engine optimization for your wedding photography business.