Matt Cutts from Google Video Search Engine Lessons and Tips

Matt Cutts from Google answers a fictional reader's question: - What tips and tricks do you recommend for Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose

My tips for SES Matt Cutts 6 min Google Webmaster Tools Matt Cutts 7 min Reinclusion requests Matt Cutts 3 min Lightning Round! Matt Cutts 5 min Supplemental Results Matt Cutts 4 min Google Datacenters Matt Cutts 5 min Google Terminology Matt Cutts 5 min How to structure a site? Matt Cutts 5 min Qualities of a good site Matt Cutts 6 min Static vs. Dynamic urls Matt Cutts 5 min Optimize for Search Engines or Users? Matt Cutts 4 min

	My tips for SES Matt Cutts 6 min
	Some SEO myths Matt Cutts 4 min
	Matt Cutts' Disclaimer Matt Cutts 27 sec
	Ozzie Jumps! Supercat Productions 2 sec
	Does Webspam use Google Ana... 5 min

Search Engine Strategies San Jose Exhibit Hall Photos

Google Booth












Yahoo Booth












Microsoft adCenter Booth












Ask.com Booth












SEMPO Booth












Mick Jolly and David McInnis of PRWeb












Super SEO Bloggers Aaron Wall and Loren Baker












Ask Gal Offering Matches and RedHots

You can find more SES San Jose on Flickr using the tag, sessanjose06

Seven reasons why your website might not be a success

With so many new websites going up, it is hard sometimes to tell if your site will be a big success or an unexpected flop? if you are unsure of whether or not your site will fly with visitors or crash and burn, this article is definitely for you. now we all know the importance of great service, but if your website doesn't communicate this, then you could be headed for failure.

Seven Reasons Why Your Website May Be a unsuccessful.

Long Load Times
If your websites takes more then 30 seconds to load, especially on DSL/Cable then visitors will leave your website, it is as simple as that. You must remember that people want information and they want it yesterday (I know, I know). Since it is so easy to get information from many other sites online, you must make sure that they can get it from your site first and that they can get it quickly. This will keep them coming back to your website everyday, since it is so easy to get what they want.

Bad Navigation
Your Navigation should be located in a easy to access area that the visitor can easily get to as soon as they reach your site. Areas include the top of the page, just below the header and to the left of the page. Navigation that is hard to find will leave a visitor feeling frustrated every time they come to the site. Even though they may get use to its unusual placement, they may not come back to get use to it!

Un-finished Pages
There is nothing worse then coming to a website that has just had a new design done on it(even if it looks great) and finding out that even though the links are active, there is nothing on those sub pages. Of course a nice "coming soon" text can work to let them know the page is coming soon, it does serve us both best if the page and its content are actually there. So make sure all the pages are ready to go before you upload the new site.

Bad Color Combination
All I have to say about this is live green, blue, brown and red may work in some way on a site design but I can't imagine it looking good. Make sure to use colors that jive well with each other, that compliment each other and that doesn't hurt or strain the eyes. One thing to make sure is that if you use a light color on the background then make sure to use a dark text and vice-versa. This will make it easier on all of us to read what is on your website.

No Contact Information
We must all be in touch in one way or another. Well sort of! You Must have contact information on your site, it doesn't have to be on the front page, but it should be at least on its own page. This will give visitors a way to get in touch with you if they need to ask you a question about your site or product.

Old Dates/Updated Often
Make sure you update your site often. People come to your site for updated information, if what was on your site last week, is still there today, they probably won't be coming back. Make sure old dates are taking off as well as new dates are entered correctly. This is extremely important if your site has to do with events going on in the community.

Script Errors
Finally, make sure you test every part of your website, especially when it comes to scripts. Also have it set up so that if a script error happens you catch it before too many of your visitors do. This can be done by either checking the site each day(or a few times a day) or by having an automated email sent to you when someone experiences a error on the site.

I hope these tips help you build a Successful Website!

Search Engine Optimization - Get Indexed Fast

You can't place in the search engines until they index your site. Get listed fast with these easy tips.

Direct Submission

Most search engines offer a form to submit your site to. This has led to mixed results and a lot of speculation as to whether this helps or hurts your site. The search engines do seem to prefer discovering your site through links as opposed to having it submitted. The reason is popularity. The more you show up online, the more of a priority your site becomes for getting indexed.

• http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
• http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
• http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2

Use an RSS Feed

The RSS feed should have your site navigation in it. It should include a link to each page in your site with a brief description. The descriptive text should be of value to a human reader for the best results.

Then set up personal accounts with Google, Yahoo! and MSN and submit your feed to those accounts. This makes the SE's aware of you, but doesn't quite guarantee instant results.

• http://www.google.com/ig
• http://my.yahoo.com/
• http://login.passport.net/

You can also submit your feed directly to Yahoo! at http://publisher.yahoo.com/submit.php.

Site Maps

Create a site map and then submit that map to Google and Yahoo! Google preferes XML maps but the .txt works just as well in my experience and then you can use the same map at Yahoo!

• https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
• http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

Press Release

Write a quick press release and submit it at www.PRWeb.com for free. If you have industry trade publications you should submit it to them as well. This can also get you relevant backlinks from the beginning. Age is playing a big role in Google, including the age of links. Getting some good ones from the start will definitely help you long-term.

You can also add this release to your RSS feed.

Set up a free blog at www.blogger.com and announce your site in it. Why Blogger? Google owns it. 'Nuff said.

Get Backlinks

Finally, start getting backlinks. Submit your site wherever you can.

Track Progress

Watch your server logs for the search engine robots in your User Agents. It will say "Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/" or "msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)" or "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)". Once you've seen these appear check the search engines by entering your domain in the search field.

In Yahoo! you can click the "More from this site" link to see all the pages indexed. In Google, look for "Find web pages from the site domain.com". MSN automatically lists all the cached pages.

Top 150 Firefox Extensions

I found this list of the top 150 Firefox Extensions while surfing John's My Place ... Technology / Family / Life Blog (whew that was a long name!). The list, made by Rijk van Geijtenbeek, was composed from initial research from user Dodd in the my.opera.com forums from extensions that were accessed on/before 7/6/06.

I had no idea that there were so many extensions (there are over a thousand of them) and new ones are posted everyday. These extensions make Firefox the digital analogue of a Swiss army knife, allowing the user to do much more than just surf pages. Not only is there a plethora of extensions, the quality is pretty good. I stumble across a new Firefox extension every few days. A script I came across today in fact is a blogging tool from Performancing that integrates with all of the major platforms and allows you to write and save posts before publishing to your blog.

Some Firefox Extensions that I couldn't live without:

* AdBlock
* RankQuest SEO Toolbar
* SeoQuake
* Gmail Notifier
* Greasemonkey
* X-ray

The Firefox team has also compiled a list of extensions they use and think are noteworthy. If you find Rijk's page too noisy to read, you can always use Mozilla's Firefox Extension Database which has an excellent interface for finding the extension you need. Here is the link to the Firefox Addons website.

Using Images for SEO

Human visitors and search engine robots that visit websites and index information about them look for different things in a page. People like to see an attractive layout with nice pictures and graphics, animation, easy-to-locate navigation, and friendly greetings like "Welcome to Annie's Online Shop" at the top of a page. Search engines, on the other hand, like sites that have lots of textual content, good site structure (sitemaps, consistent linking style), and a meaningful phrase such as "Chicago Area Florist" as the heading of a page. While search engines can read the "alt image" tags of graphics, they cannot "look at" pictures the way a human visitor can, and far prefer text.

Replacing Text with Images

One way to work around this paradox is to shift some of the text that search engines have no interest in over to graphics. For example friendly greetings like "Welcome to Our Site" or "Annie's Online Shop" work best as header graphics.

Creating a header graphic in a graphic editing program like Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks has the advantage of letting you know exactly what that part of your site will look like to visitors. If you create a header or navigation bar with text, you are limited to a common set of fonts. If you use a fancy font that is installed on your computer, your page will look great to you, but when a visitor who does not have that font on their computer visits your site, their browser's default font will be used and that nice aspect of your site will disappear. By making your header or navigation button images, you are free to use any of the fonts on your computer, and can be sure they will display the same way to your visitors.

Another advantage of using a header graphic is that you can remove words irrelevant to your target keywords from your textual content. When search engine robots visit a site, they read pages from left to right, top to bottom. The first 20-25 words and last 20-25 words of your text content are especially important, and you want to make sure to include your target keywords within these sections. If at all possible, your primary target keyword phrase should be the very first text in your page. That is, if you are able to make a natural-sounding sentence beginning with it. If your page begins with "Welcome to our site!", then you are pushing your keyword further away from the starting point of your text.

The first line of the main text on your page should be in heading format, with H1 tags (In html code it will look like this:

London Hotels

), and should contain your target keyword. However, you may want to add a greeting above the heading ("Welcome to Our Site!" for example). Since this is a very general phrase, with no relevance to any target keyword, it is best to make this a graphic.

If your site already has a greeting such as "Welcome to Our Site" in text at the top of your main page, it is relatively easy to convert this to a graphic, as follows.

* Open your page in an internet browser.

* Push the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard.

* Open a photo editing program, such as Photoshop.

* Create a new document and select Edit>Paste or Ctrl+V on your keyboard. The screenshot will be pasted on the blank document.

* Crop the image down to just the word or phrase you would like to replace, with only a little blank space around the edges.

* Choose "Save as" or "Save for Web", saving the file in the "Images" folder of your site.

* In your site editor, such as Dreamweaver, simply open your page, delete that text, and drag and drop in the image you created. Save and upload your page.

Replacing Images with Text

Of course, the opposite might also be true of your current site. Your keywords might be displayed as graphics rather than text. In this case, you should either repeat those keywords in text in a way that looks natural, or get rid of the graphics altogether and replace them with text. The important thing is that your target keyword appears as text, as close to the beginning of the page as possible, and within H1 tags.

Alt Image Tags

"Alt image" tags are short pieces of text that are associated with a graphic. If the graphic cannot be displayed for some reason, or if someone has set up their browser to block images, the text is shown instead. (The "alt" is short for "alternative".) Also, browsers designed for the sight impaired read out the text content of pages, and read the alt image tags as a way of describing a page.

Here is what an image tag looks like in html code:

<img src="http://www.YourDomain.com/images/logo.gif" alt="Your

Keyword image" width="728" height="123">

The alt image tag is this part:

alt="Your Keyword image"

You can type the alt image tags directly into the html code. However, most html editors, such as Dreamweaver, give you an easier way to add an alt tag, and you should chëck in your software's "Help" section.

Search engine robots do read and index alt image tags. However, since this text is normally hidden from human visitors, it is especially susceptible to keyword spamming (i.e. entering a massive string of keywords that "hide" behind the picture). For this reason, search engines are giving less importance to alt image tags. They still are important though, and having the tags on your pages can give you a slight edge over competitor sites that don't have the tags. When adding alt image tags to your pages, keep the following points in mind:

* Don't go overboard. 4 or 5 words are plenty. Resist the temptation to pack in a long list of keywords because this could potentially get your site penalized by search engines or blacklisted from their directories.

* The alt image tag should include the primary target keyword of your site.

* The tag text should make sense if someone actually read it, and actually describe what is shown in the graphic.

* Include "image," "photo," or "graphic" at the end of your short phrase. This prevents the search engines from flagging the tag as späm.

Using these techniques to organize the graphics on your site will give you a slight edge over the competition in the search engines.

24 Tips and Strategies on How Everyone Can Blog Right and Get Everybody to Read

24 Tips and Strategies on How Everyone Can Blog Right and Get Everybody to Read


By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. "Blog readership shoots up 58% in 2004 6 million Americans get news and information fed to them through RSS aggregators But 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is." - Pew Internet & American Life Project

Tip #1 - How and Where Should I Start?
You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), or other similar free services such as JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com or Blog-City.com. The learning curve for using such free services allow you to spend more on developing your content rather than worrying about the advanced areas of scripting, hosting, or programming.

Tip #2 - The Things You Should Decide to Write About
Although not a required prerequisite for you in order to write a blog, it is highly recommended to try to find a topic to write about based on your level of interest and knowledge. The higher your level of interest, the easier it is for you to get your quality content posted on your blog. Always try to choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis.Try to pay attention to a niche which suites you well. A niche is basically a targeted product, service, or topic.

Tip #3 - Always stay on topic.
Opinions are generally accepted but the content of the items in the blog should all relate to a general theme. The majority of your readers will be interested in the content that relates to a specific defined theme or loosely defined area of interest. Define a topic and try not to run too far away from it. This will ensure that you create a loyal following of interested readers.

Tip #4 - Information is king, be informative.
If you are attempting to create the impression that you are knowledgeable about a specific industry or sector, be sure that you stay current on news. Checking your facts before you're giving out an opinion or a product review is always a good idea, your reputation is at stake. If by any chance you're utilizing other people's articles for you blog content, ensure that you follow the terms of usage defined by the author.

Tip #5 - Old news is not news, but old information can be recycled and made new.
While blogging everyday can be strenuous and time consuming, it is important that the information presented is current and accurate. Information, articles or any other archived resources can be recycled / modified to add more substance to your content. As long as they're relevant and informative, there's no reason why it's not a good approach.

Tip #6 - Be disciplined and stick to a fixed posting schedule.
Realizing that blogging requires time and effort, don't create unrealistic expectations and be unable to deliver. If you have worked hard to develop an audience and a community you don't want to lose them due to lack of communication. If time is not on your side, take advantage of tonnes of automatically updating contents which are available for your blog. Looking at the constantly updating nature of RSS feeds, other RSS feeds from similar topic can be inserted within your blogging post.

Tip #7 - Posting Frequency.
If your blog content is updated frequently, search engines will tend to spider the pages at regular intervals. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You should try to update your blog everyday with at least 2 - 3 or more daily entries, depending on your daily schedule.

Tip #8 - Quantity matters.
In order to attract the attention of search engines, you will need to produce a relevant amount of content and information. A headline or simple sentence is not going to generate the interest of readers or help with search engine ranking. Be sure to archive old blog posts to develop a large portal of similarly-themed content.

Tip #9 - Clarity & simplicity / Short & Concise.
Keep your posts and blog entries clear and easy to understand. Simplicity always produce better results at the end of the day.

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Should you insist on partaking on the lengthy road, try to maintain a clean paragraphing style, proper spacing, use different size, color and bold for your titles as well as the subtitles. Use bullet points, go straight to the point and never run out of topic. Insert images to spice up things if you're an avid fan of long posts.

Tip #10 - Utilize the "blockquote" and "code" tags.
Being one of the few most underutilized blogging formatting tags, these 2 items can help you on emphasizing certain points, in the most efficient and striking way. Formatting is simple and straightforward. Just get your message into a blockquote tag, and your message will apear distinctively different from the rest of your text, thus gets more attention which it deserves. Take note that the formatting for these 2 tags differ from blog to blog depending on how the owner defines the tag in the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).Click the below link if you want to read more about CSS.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

Tip #11 - Keyword-rich.
If the goal of your blog is to increase your visibility, include related keywords in the title of the blog. Use the title as a headline to attract interest. Each item post should have a title that will attract attention but still be relevant to the post. The title should be no longer than 10-12 words. Experiment with the titles if you must, possibly try to avoid general and ordinary titles. Try to include extraordinary and innovative titles to grab the readers' attention.

Tip #12 - Spell checking and proof-reading.
It only takes a few extra moments and can save you from having to make embarrassing explanations. The hazards of Internet is that if you're too late to correct your mistake, most likely it's already been crawled by the search engines and read by many. It is extremely essential to think / proof read carefully twice or even thrice, about what you post before doing so. Take note of your language and grammar.

Tip #13 - RSS Feeds
RSS to a blog is like fuel to cars. Mostly every single free blogs or bloggin software out there will have an automatic RSS feed generating feature. Although it's most unlikely that you'll find one without a RSS feature, simply leave it and find a new one, if you happen to come across one without it.

Tip #14 - The essence of the Internet - Traffic.
It's no secret. You must have traffic to realize the definition of a blog.. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid and free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, word-of-mouth, submitting to numerous blog and RSS directories, etc. RSSBlogsubmit ( http://www.rssblogsubmit.com) provides a submission service for your Blog & RSS feeds. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. Never forget to share your blog to your friends, colleagues, and any other invidious that you know of.

Tip #15 - Track Your Blog
Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com, ActiveMeter.com, Extremetracking.com or Sitemeter.com will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

Tip #16 - Make use of your Blog's statistical and tracking information.
Believe it or not, your visitors' information from your tracking scripts will provide you priceless information on how you can attract more readers. Keep note on the keyword terms used from search engines which bring you traffic. You can identify relevant closely related topics which you can venture into and add more variety into your blog, yet staying very much in topic. Simply put, more topic coverage and more variety = more traffic. You may analyze your tracking information further on how you can strategize your blog's content. You can also apply some keyword optimization strategies here.

Tip #17 - The essence of your Blog is your Audience, listen to them.
Always interact with your readers who post comments on your blog. Reply with a brief thank you note or just simply attend to their questions if they have any. It's a proven fact when there's a direct human interaction and knowing the fact that there's a "real human" at the other end of the blog makes most of them coming back. If your audience provide suggestions, comments or feedbacks, take them constructively and inform them if you have any desires of implementing such ideas on your next update. And of course, don't forget to thank them for their ideas. If it's a great idea, why not throw in a free gift? Mention their website in your blog?

Tip #18 - Create and increase the "Why Must I Return" Value to Your Blog.
Everyone knows the fact that Blogs get a huge level of returning visitors because of its constantly updated content. Why don't you add more interesting items to that return value by having fixed periodical posts / offers, e.g. Monday Top 10 Tips, Picture of the Week, Free Bonus of the Month, Free Daily Wallpapers, etc. to give them the absolute excuse to return to your blog. As long as you can efficiently and appropriately increase that Return Value constantly, it is mostly guaranteed that you'll be getting tonnes of repeated visitors, period.

An advance notice, prelaunch announcement or anything similar to that also can act as a short term return value strategy. Encourage readers to comment on your such notices / posts. Experiment and play around with this idea.

Tip #19 - Multiple blogs.
It never hurts to use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. You can even have multiple blogs within Blogger.com itself, but you may also want to try different free blogging services such as JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, etc. Should you have the urge to have multiple similar duplicates of your blog just to gain more traffic, it is wise to avoid it as search engines / feed directories might translate that as excessive redundant information which simply brings you trouble, and you're tend to get penalized, banned or even accused of spamming.

Tip #20 - Digital Art, Creative Graphics.
Another proven fact - Monotonous and continous display of text will make your readers run away! Try to include non- advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries, but try to keep them at a limit. Too many graphics also mean slower loading time and messy text and graphical combination. You don't want your blog to look messy. Most of the time, graphics can bring your blog to life. Pictures can make boring texts interesting no matter how long it is. Graphical elements are by far the fastest message delivering element available on the net today. It may deliver various messages by a split second of a look.

Tip #21 - Maintain a Personal Blog.
A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first- person narratives. Share product reviews and personal endeavors, instead of trying to make it sounds like you're selling.

Tip #22 - Credibility & Popularity.
As thing progresses, things need to change in order to cope with the flow and nature of development. If your number of readers are reasonably huge, and still using a free blogging service to get your messages out, you may want to consider getting your own domain name and hosting plan to have a more personalized Blog.

Domain names and hosting plans are pretty much straightforward. Research is all what it takes to get the best of all the available options. For the most highly recommended comprehensive listing of Free Blogging software out there, drop by at http://www.opensourcecms.com. This is by far the best place to drop by if you want to get your research done about which blogging software to choose. Reviews, ratings, public votes, demos, etc are provided. And the best thing is, all of them are Open Source, which means they are totally free. Try going through the server requirements for each software before purchasing your web hosting.

Tip 23# - Customize the look of your Blog If you happen to be using one of the Free blogging services out there, you might notice that most of us are using the same template again and again for our blogs. It is well understood that not everybody has the technical knowledge to change the layout as how they want it to be, but if you have the knowledge, by all means try to customize it and make it look DIFFERENT. You can grab that extra attention, if you're different in certain ways. Create that image for yourself.

Tip #24 - Blog and Make Money
Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking if you want to turn your traffic into profit. Some of the recommended income generating sources are as follow :-

Google Adsense, Amazon Associate program (www.amazon.com), Blogads.com, Crispads.com, Tagword.com, Affiliate Programs and any advertising related text links can be your place to start off.

Final #Tip - Conclusion.
Following these blogging tips should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. Blogging is generally done out of interest and enthusiasm and sometimes for income generating purposes. The flexibility of blogging will never cease to expand. Through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

How to Get the Highest Search Engine Rankings

Search Engine Rankings. Everyone wants to be number one, and there are millions of web sites out there. So how do you become number one and stay there consistently? Consistently is the key word here. Sure, you may apply the newest, best trick in the book today, but when someone else comes out with a better one tomorrow, you will be scrambling to get to the top again.

I think one of the keys is to be well-rounded. There are many books and philosophies about web rankings that are floating around. Some people say article marketing is the way to go, others link building, others say you have to maximize your web pages for the search engines. You have to get all your keywords right and your titles and description. But what happens when another web site does you one better in that area? Now you drop in rank. Therefore, I think it is more important that you do a good job in all the areas than to be the very best in one area. And I think it is OK to be number 8 or number 3 in rank, also. If you are in the very top spot and you are clicked simply because the top spot gets more clicks, are you really going to get more sales just because you are number one? Your product and site have to be relevant to the consumer, not just the search engine.

Another key is to focus on very specific keywords. You can do an awesome job in every area of search engine optimization, but if you go too thin here, you will not make it to number one in any of your keywords. Focus on one, or at the most, two keywords. Build your site around those keywords. Be everything you can be to someone who keys in those keywords. Or better yet, one keyword. Would you rather have one keyword that has a number one placement, or 8 keywords with a number 40 placement each? To me, number 40 is like number 1 million-you don't get enough clicks to pay the bills. I would far rather have one keyword for which my site is on the first page of results than twenty that are all over the place. Build yourself a web site that has a strong keyword density-for one or two keywords. Put those keywords in your title and description and keyword lists.

You must have incoming links.
You must have quality incoming links.
You must build incoming links one link at a time.

Links are very important, but you cannot cheat in this area. You must build them one by one. My two favorite methods of link building is to write articles, like this one, and submit them to article directories, and to be included in link directories. Stay away from link farms, large link exchanges, or anything of the sort. The major search engines want to see you build a steady supply of links over time. What do you think a search engine will do for you when you go from 0 links to 3000 in one day? That won't get you to number one, and certainly won't keep you there, when you are put in the sandbox for six months.

These keys to search engine optimization are just a beginning. You need traffic, you need click-thrus in the search engine results. You need visitors to stay at your site for more than a few seconds when they click in. How do you get that? Build real content. Build it for people, not machines--while following the first three keys. Do that, and I believe that in three to six months you will have each web site you set up with this strategy, in the top ten for your keyword

Writing Articles as an Affordable Internet Marketing Method

From Overture, a keyword suggestion tool, you will see the millions of searches done to a certain keyword. When these keywords are typed on search boxes of search engines, indexed websites containing articles with those keywords will be displayed. And this is what leads traffic to websites with keyword-rich articles. Yes, the magic word is articles.

Content is king. You can say that again. That is why writing articles is one of the most utilized Internet marketing media today. Internet surfers just can't get enough of information on various fields. Providing information through these articles is a surefire way to drive hot traffic to your web site.

Why is this so? Here are the benefits that writing articles can give your Internet business.

1. It's absolutely free.

Too good to be true? Not. Okay, you have to pay for your Internet Service Provider. That's it. All you need is your thoughts, your computer, and your hands. If you have those, nothing will stop you from typing words that will make you complete that article for your website. On which aspect of that process did you really shell out any cent? Maybe later when your electric bills come.

2. Your website will be noticed in a short period of time.

Submit that article of yours to article directories that get the most web traffic and in no time your web site will be crawled. That is if you don't forget including your resource box or byline.

3. Obtain back links automatically.

When you submit your articles to directories, surely, other websites will make use of your article too. With the copyright terms of your articles, the URL of your website will still be intact and will subsequently direct more traffic to your website.

4. Improve your reputation.

As an Internet marketer, if you plainly display your products on your website, you will not gain much conversion rate. Conversion is when your traffic converts to sales. You have to show that you are knowledgeable on your field. And what better way to show that than by writing articles that will allow you some bragging rights, right?

Just make your creative juices flow and jot down or key in those ideas quickly to jumpstart your article writing momentum. With those benefits listed above, a writer's block is the last problem you will ever be able to surmount. But that's another story...

5 Steps To Improve Your Google AdWords CPC

If you are using Google AdWords to increase site traffic and sales, you are probably looking for way to improve your AdWords CPC, or cost-per-click. Luckily, Google gives us tight control over our AdWords campaigns, which allows us to control the amount of money that we are spending. But if the clicks are not generating sales, then you are losing money. Here are some tips that will show you how to improve your AdWords CPC.

1. Pay less. This one is pretty obvious. The best way to reduce CPC, is to choose to pay less. You don't have to be in the number one spot. It is important to remember that not everyone can be in that number one spot. But everyone is trying to do just that. Settle for less here, just making sure that you bid high enough to show up on the first page of the results. This will allow you to improve your AdWords CPC by paying less for each click.

2. Target your ads. Don't offer freebies, as that will only attract freebie seekers. Instead, target your ads to those who are ready and willing to make a purchase. Don't be shy about this. It is better not to get a click at all than it is to pay for a click that will never result in a sale.

3. Do not broad match. AdWords gives you the ability to choose keywords and phrases as broad matches, meaning that they are somewhat related to your keywords and phrases, or exact keyword and phrase matches. Choose to use exact phrases if your keywords and ads are highly targeted to those who are ready and willing to buy. Google uses the example of "tennis shoes" to explain broad matching. With broad matching enabled, your term "tennis shoes" would deliver your ad in searches for "tennis" and searches for "shoes." If you're just selling sandals, your ad won't get many clicks from those looking for tennis information. You will significantly improve your CPC by not enabling the broad match feature.

4. Identify bad keywords that may bring your ad up in search results or make it appear on a site related to that keyword that do not pertain to what you are selling. This will reduce the number of unproductive clicks, which will improve your AdWords CPC.

5. Use the conversion tracking tools provided by Google. You need this information to ensure that you are getting the best results for your advertising dollars. These tools will tell you how many ad clicks you are getting for each ad, and you can easily see how many are converting to sales or sign ups. There is no cost to use these tools, so take full advantage of them to improve your AdWords CPC. You can also use your own tracking software if you prefer.

When starting out with Google AdWords, you should expect to have a trial and error period. Think carefully, and use good judgment when choosing your keywords and writing your ads. Keep in mind that you will pay for each and every click that you receive, and you need those clicks to convert to sales! Don't be afraid to make changes when you see that something isn't working.

So You Want Big Profits From Your AdWords PPC Advertising?

So You Want Big Profits From Your AdWords PPC Advertising?

Everyone wants to make $300 a day or more with their AdWords campaigns. You've started a few campaigns, spent a few dollars, and now you're wondering - "where's the payoff!"

There's no secret to AdWords success. Like anything, joining the big leagues of AdWords profits means you must put in the hours. In this case, it's hours of keyword work.

Extensive Keyword Research

There are literally thousands of keywords for every industry. By advertising a thousand or more keywords you will greatly increase your chance of getting clicks at a cheaper rate.

Consider this:

Campaign A: Your AdWords campaign has only 4 keywords. These keywords are the most popular keywords for your industry. The average CPC is $1. These keywords get 6000 searches a day. Your campaign is getting a 2% CTR which means your getting $120 clicks at a total cost of $120.

Campaign B: You research and bid on 2000 keywords. The average CPC is .10 These 2000 keywords also receive 6000 search queries a day. Again using a 2% CTR, your campaign is delivering 120 visitors. But instead of paying $120 as in Campaign A, you are only paying $12.

Obviously, Campaign B is the better performing campaign. Campaign B is saving $108 a day, $3,600 a month and $43,200 per year. The difference in ROI is staggering.

Remember, the difference between the two campaigns was in the keywords. Campaign A had a few popular keywords. Campaign B contained 2000 keywords. The keywords in Campaign B are less popular, translating to a cheap CPC for you.

How To Find Keywords for PPC / AdWords

Now you know the importance of doing extensive keyword research before beginning an AdWords campaign. But how do you come up with a long list of targetted keywords. Here's how:

The simplest and easiest method to come up with good keywords is to think long and hard. "Yeah, that'll get me 50 words" you say." Still need more keywords? Try these tools;

1.

Google Keyword Generator

2.

WordTracker

3.

Overture Search Suggestion Tool

4.

eSpotting Keyword Generator

5.

Keyword Wrapper

6.

MyTrashMail Keyword Generator

Happy keyword hunting. You can never have too many keywords. Just remember with each keyword you are increasing your ROI. And istn't that what it's all about?

Getting Content for Your Site Free and Easy

Any avid website owner knows how critical it is to have a website that contains large amounts of genuine 'content'. These days a website pretty much lives or dies by the amount of content it has on it. A simple and brutal truth of today's Internet is that a site without increasing amounts of frequently updated content is not deemed important enough to merit frequent spidering by the Search Engines.

Successful search engine optimization experts tout that in today's online environment a website is successful because of several sequential steps occurring naturally online. That is...

- increased website content creates more search engine indexing opportunities, which results in more opportunities for organic search engine traffic;
- more search engine traffic leads to more online popularity and subsequently, increased viral online linking;
- this increased linking to a website results in more perceived relevancy by the search engines and, again, higher organic search engine listings; and,
- finally, these higher listings lead to more traffic, and the cycle continues.

So how does a website owner deal with this fact of doing business online? Simple. By providing an ever-increasing amount of content on their website.

But if you own several websites you understand how great a challenge it can be to be able to provide constantly updated, valid and useful content, usually in substantially large quantities via hundreds or thousands of webpages, for your website's visitors and information seekers.

So the way to solve this dilemma for most webmasters is to use content written by others. But the most common route to getting this type of information is to have to pay for a ghostwriter to write the content. This can get expensive so, again, one's website's content volume suffers.

Some webmasters use RSS feeds to scrape content from other websites, but to build static webpages from the scraped content can get into legal issues so this tactic can be rather risky.

And for those webmasters brave enough to write the needed content themselves usually face a difficult mountain to climb. That is, these days it's very tough to actually find the time or have the knowledge to do this. One can only write so many pages on the same topic before experiencing writer's 'burnout'.

So what would be the answer to this apparent dilemma of needing lots of website content but not having lasting viable routes to obtaining the needed content? Simple.

Grab content from free article directories. An article directory is specially designed for website owners and publishers to legally and freely take copyrighted articles, written by online authors willing to share their writings, and post on their website as content.

And one can find hundreds of article directories available on the Internet today and most have only one condition of use: there are terms of usage that website owners agree to follow before using the articles from the article directory. But outside of that there are no other restrictions, and no 'memberships' required.

So, in view of the issues surrounding creating content for one's website, as described above, and the absolutely necessity for a website to have voluminous and fresh content to stay ranked highly in the Search Engines, one can easily see how the free articles found at an article directory can be just the answer a website owner needs to give their websites a needed boost with the Search Engines.

No more having to pay for content. And no more struggling with writing the content yourself. Use whatever information you find at the article directory that you deem relevant and post it on your website, or blog, or forum.

Article directories. Free on-topic content for YOUR website. YOUR blog. YOUR ezine. YOUR forum. Cool

AdSense Tips For Bloggers

If you have joined the blogging revolution that is sweeping the net, and you think you might want to make a little revenue – or a lot of revenue – from your blogging efforts, you need AdSense tips for bloggers. Blogging has opened up an entirely new way of how non-technical people interact with the Internet, and now, anyone can publish anything about any topic – without having a website – and anyone can profit without even having a product!

Adsense for blogs make perfect sense. Google’s advertising programs are designed to work with sites related to the keywords for the ads that are being presented. Each time you add content to your blog, the Google spiders gobble it up. The more you update, the more the Google spider visits your page. Ultimately, you move up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for the topics that you write about. You see where this is going. The higher your search ranking, the more traffic you receive, which ultimately leads to higher revenue from AdSense ads.

The beauty of blogs is their potential for rapid growth. If you become known as an expert in your area of expertise, word of mouth spreads quickly and your blog can become very popular. So it is vital that you always teach something with every blog entry. You want your readers to come back frequently and they will if they know they will learn something. Not only will your readers bookmark your blog and return often, but they will link to your blog enthusiastically as well. People in forums will refer to your blogs and discuss what they learned. Websites will link to you as a valuable resource. In short, an informative blog can grow very quickly if the information it provides is valuable.

It is important to write about specific topics, and sprinkle your blog entries with specific keywords to get the best results – and the highest revenue – with your Google AdSense ads. There is a method to the madness. Start your revenue generating blog by testing the waters.

Decide what area you would like to write about and then do some keyword research. Research is easy if you use Google’s keyword tools found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox . The keyword tools are located in your Google AdWords account. Yes, you need a free AdWords account to be successful but you don’t have to fund it to use the keyword tools. Look for keywords related to your subject that are high paying. These are keywords where the bid amounts are high. Make a list of the top paying keywords, and use that list to determine what topics you will write about.

Remember, you want people to visit your blog time and time again, and build up a readership, make sure that your blog is well written and informative. Don’t just target keywords for the sake of targeting keywords – the writing needs to make sense! Writing valuable content is the first step to generating traffic to your blog, and traffic is needed to profit from AdSense ads!

You are allowed to use the AdSense ad units in two different places on each page. You can accomplish this in a couple of different ways. First, you can add the AdSense ad code to the template for your blog. This is done through the control panel for your blog, and some knowledge of HTML is needed. The other option is to paste the AdSense code directly in your blog post each time you submit a new post. You can use it once at the top and once at the bottom, or once after a few paragraphs of the post, and again after a few more paragraphs.

Get that code in there however you see fit – but then pay close attention to the results so you can see what is working and what isn’t. Tracking is everything if you want to make real money!

Of course, you need to advertise your blog as much as possible as well. Make sure that you provide Trackbacks to other people’s blogs as often as possible, and that you visit blogs, leave comments – and leave a link for your blog as well!