Why Ping is necessary

The last six months has seen a massive rise in content theft blogs and spam blogs, and there’s one thing these blogs usually have in common, and that’s the whole “Blog and Ping” thing, but if you don’t know what Blog and Ping is, don’t feel bad, because most people don’t.
But before I start a word of advice: don’t do it. Knowing and understanding your enemy is important in formulating ways of overcoming and defeating them. People who create these blogs are leeches who deserve nothing less than being banned from the search engines they so desperately seek to be included in.

So what is Blog and Ping?
I’ll give a short answer and a long answer because Blog and Ping comes in a few different flavours.
The Short Answer: Blog and Ping is a online marketing term applied to a system that utilizes blogs and pings to deliver content and/ or sites for indexing in search engines with the ultimate aim of profit.
But that doesn’t really explain a lot, because basically that’s what blogs already do.
Background
For those of you too young or who never got into writing more traditional web pages, basically getting your webpage into Google, Yahoo or other search engines has always been somewhat difficult. The time it takes for your static web site to be indexed by Yahoo for example after you submit it to them without taking up the paying option is around 6 weeks, and sometimes longer. Blogs changed the rules of indexing because where as you use to have to wait for the search engines to index you, all of a sudden bloggers could wave a big red flag with the words “I’m over here” written on it and the search engines would come. Pinging a central server such as Weblogs.com meant that a central list was available of blogs that were posting at a given point in time, and the search engine spiders then followed the links on these lists and bingo: your blog gets indexed.
The vultures circle
When your on a good thing, people notice, and the vultures started to notice blogs getting a really good run in search engines, and they pretty quickly worked out why….introducing Blog and Ping.
Flavours of Blog and Ping
Blog and Ping comes in different flavours and variations to the theme. Each Blog and Ping promoter has a different sales pitch that also states that their flavour is the best. The commonality to all of them is that they involve pinging sites such as Weblogs.com as a means to deliver the search engine spiders to a blog. But this is where things get different.
Real blogs, stolen content
One strain of blog and ping promotes blogs as being a great way to make money from Adsense and affiliate programs with scripts that steal content from other blogs and repost it in an attempt to create a legitimate looking site that gets traffic from search engines.
Michelle Timothy’s RSStoBlog.com is a leading pusher of this flavour of Blog and Ping. To quote Ms Timothy:

” Imagine for a minute that you had a tireless assistant that worked hard night and day finding fresh, relevant content for you to post to your blog. Now also imagine that this tireless assistant not only finds this relevant, keyword specific content for you but also posts it to your blog at exactly the times you want it posted … and they do this day in and day out, until you beg them to stop!”

I’ve not provided a link to the site, but by all means cut and paste the URL into your browser, because the people using it are stupid enough to give testimonials as well. Their example WordPress blog also includes a stolen story to the Blog Herald as well.
Spam blogs
I’ve split spam blogs into a separate category because the stolen content blogs can in reality function and look like real blogs if they are done properly, and many people would be unable to tell the difference. Spam blogs on the other hand stand out like a sore thumb, and these are another flavour of Blog and Ping. The theory with these sites is essentially a new form of link farms, in that they are never really created for viewing by the general public, but as a way for the search engines to discover other sites, and to reward those sites for multiple links. A three step process: the search engines spider finds your spam blog ping at Weblogs.com, follows it back to the blog, then discovered links to static web pages and then goes through to index them. The difficult thing of course is without content the search engine spiders won’t visit, so these sites create all sorts of rubbish as content, often with keywords scattered throughout posts, to assist the spider going onto index the money making static web site.
There are a number of sites promoting this, and each one usually has a slight variation on this theme. BloggingEqualizer.com states the following on their method:

The technique consists of 4 steps:
1. Build a search engine “spider trap” by creating a free blog on Blogger.com (they can’t resist freshly updated content).
2. Grab a free account at MyYahoo.com.
3. Post links to the Web pages you want spidered inside your blog.
4. Then, just call the search engine spiders to dinner by sending (or “pinging”), with the click of a button, the blog to your MyYahoo account.

Sites like Instantblogandping.com promotes a version which involves automatically reposting your own static webpages to Blogger with links back to their source.
Is there money to be made in Blog and Ping?
Yes. The same way as there is money to be made in Amway, because Blog and Ping is really just another variation on the old multi level marketing theme without as many circles on a whiteboard; the only people who make money are the promoters and the people at the very top of the pyramid.
First and foremost the promoters are most likely raking it in. Most of these programs/ scripts are on the market for between $100 and $500 USD, and guess what: they wouldn’t be offering them if there weren’t thousands of suckers out there who’d fall for the slick marketing spiel and promises of automated riches and happily put their hands into their pockets to buy them. They say there is a market for everything, and with the internet being so large and with so many people using it this also holds true for Blog and Ping programs.
Some of the earlier users would have made some money out of Blog and Ping as well, in around the middle of last year when spam blogs were still relatively unknown and those using Blog and Ping techniques would have been few and far between. Today, with literally millions of spam and content theft blogs out there it would be nearly impossible for anyone to even earn enough money back to cover the cost of Blog and Ping package they’ve bought if they are looking to make money off their blog.
In terms of SEO strategies the honest to god truth today is that if you’re looking only to get your static site indexed into one of the big search engines Blog and Ping actually does work, but only in the same way that a few text links from a few decent blogs would deliver the same thing, and you’ll pay a lot less for a proper text link from say here at the Blog Herald then you’ll pay for most of these programs.
The end is nigh
Already some in the SEO industry are saying that Blog and Ping is dead due to the massive increase in users, content theft sites and spam blogs. If you’re getting any benefit out of Blog and Ping now, you won’t be for much longer because already some search engines are talking about excluding your sites.
Is there any good in Blog and Ping
Yes, but in the same way that there is good in porn, because the pursuit of money often drives technological change. Services such as reblog have potential to be used for real meta-blogging in the same way you can set up a link blog at Bloglines today. The challenges presented by people using Blog and Ping strategies will force search engines and others to find new ways of filtering the rubbish out and that will be a good thing for the blogosphere.
Note to Google and the Blogger team: sooner rather than later please.

How to recover virus infected site which is banned by Google

The number of sites affected by malware/badware grew from a handful a week to thousands per week.You can do from Webmaster Tools which provides malware reviews.

If you find that your site is affected by malware, either through malware-labeled search results or in the summary for your site in Webmaster Tools just do following step.

1. View a sample of the dangerous URLs on your site in Webmaster Tools.
2. Make any necessary changes to your site according to StopBadware.org's Security tips.
3. New: Request a malware review from Google For evaluate your site.
4. New: Check the status of your review.
• If Google feel the site is still harmful, then Google will provide an updated list of remaining dangerous URLs
• If Google determined the site to be clean, you can expect removal of malware messages in the near future (usually within 24 hours).

We encourage all webmasters to become familiar with Stopbadware's malware prevention tips. If you have additional questions, please review this documentation or post to the discussion group. We hope you find this new feature in Webmaster Tools useful in discovering and fixing any malware-related problems, and thanks for your diligence for awareness and prevention of malware.

What is the Google Dance?

Approximately once a month, Google update their index by recalculating the Pageranks of each of the web pages that they have crawled. The period during the update is known as the Google dance.
Because of the nature of Page Rank, the calculations need to be performed about 40 times and, because the index is so large, the calculations take several days to complete. During this period, the search results fluctuate; sometimes minute-by minute. It is because of these fluctuations that the term, Google Dance, was coined. The dance usually takes place sometime during the last third of each month.
Google has two other servers that can be used for searching. The search results on them also change during the monthly update and they are part of the Google dance.
For the rest of the month, fluctuations sometimes occur in the search results, but they should not be confused with the actual dance. They are due to Google's fresh crawl and to what is known "Everflux".

Google has two other searchable servers apart from www.google.com. They are www2.google.com and www3.google.com. Most of the time, the results on all 3 servers are the same, but during the dance, they are different.
For most of the dance, the rankings that can be seen on www2 and www3 are the new rankings that will transfer to www when the dance is over. Even though the calculations are done about 40 times, the final rankings can be seen from very early on. This is because, during the first few iterations, the calculated figures merge to being close to their final figures. You can see this with the Pagerank Calculator by checking the Data box (top left) and performing some calculations. After the first few iterations the search results on www2 and www3 may still change, but only slightly.
During the dance, the results from www2 and www3 will sometimes show on the www server, but only briefly. Also, new results on www2 and www3 can disappear for short periods. At the end of the dance, the results on www will match those on www2 and www3.
This Google Dance Tool allows you to check your rankings on www, www2 and www3 and on all of data centers simultaneously.

Google currently has 12 data centers, any one of which can provide the Toolbar PageRank of any page. As the dance progresses, these data centers are updated one by one. Before the dance begins, they all return the same, current PageRank value for a given page, but during the dance they are updated, one by one, to the new PageRank value. Checking each of the centers during the dance reveals the new PageRank values as they gradually spread through the centers. If the PageRank isn't going to change, the centers show the same values throughout, of course.
Querying the data centers
For this, it is necessary to have the Google Toolbar installed and the PageRank indicator on. Every time a page is received by the browser, the Toolbar requests its PageRank from one of Google's data centers. The information is returned as a one-line text file and stored in the Temporary Internet Files folder.
The Toolbar's request URL includes the URL of the page that it wants the PageRank for (the target page), and a checksum that matches that URL. Of course, the checksum must match the target page's URL.
A fat URL for a typical Toolbar request (all in one line):-
http://216.239.33.102/search
?client=navclient-auto
&ch=5150615727
&features=Rank:FVN
&q=info:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eexampledomain%2Ecom%2F
If you copy and paste that fat URL into your browser, you will get Google's "forbidden" page back. That's because the target page and checksum don't match - it's just an example of the request URL.
Notice that the target page is in escaped format - some of the characters are represented by hexadecimal codes (e.g. %2F).
To get the new PageRank for a particular page, you need to make the same request that the Toolbar makes for it. I.e. you need the fat URL that the Toolbar uses. And you need to request the PageRank from all of Google's data centers. The method is a bit long-winded but it works. Here's how to do it:-

Use your browser to browse to the page. This makes sure that the page and the Toolbar's PageRank request are in your Temporary Internet Files folder. You only need to do this once - not every time.

Open the index.dat file from the Temporary Internet Files folder into a text editor, and perform a search in it for the target page. You'll find the entire fat URL, similar to the one above, for the Toolbar's PageRank request. NOTE: Because the target page is escaped in the fat URL, search only for an unescaped part; e.g. "exampledomain".

When you've found the fat URL, copy and paste it into your browser's address box and press Return or click Go. If the page is in Google's directory, the returned line includes the directory path. The last element in the first part of the line is the Toolbar PageRank value for the target page. To see the page's new PageRank spread across the centers during the dance, use the same fat URL, but replace the IP address with each of the data centers. This is also a good way to see the progress of the dance in general.
Data centers

216.239.33.100	:: www-ex.google.com
216.239.35.100	:: www-sj.google.com :: currently offline
216.239.37.100	:: www-va.google.com
216.239.39.100	:: www-dc.google.com
216.239.41.100	:: www-fi.google.com
216.239.51.100	:: www-ab.google.com
216.239.53.100	:: www-in.google.com
216.239.55.100	:: www-zu.google.com
216.239.57.100	:: www-cw.google.com
216.239.59.100	:: www-gv.google.com
66.102.11.100	:: www-kr.google.com
66.102.7.100	:: www-mc.google.com

TIP: If you want to check the same pages during future dances, save the fat URLs into a text document so that you don't need to go through the process of finding them in the Temporary Internet Files folder each time.

Google Dance - The Index Update of the Google Search Engine

The name "Google Dance" has often been used to describe the index update of the Google search engine. Google's index update occurred on average once per month. During an index update there was significant movement in search results and Google showed new backward links for pages. However, in mid-2003 Google started to update it's index continuously. It appears that, still, there has to be an update of the complete index once in a while and during this time new backward links are shown. But, because of the continuous update, the effects on search results seem to be rather insignificant.
We will keep this site up running because it provides some information beyond the Google Dance. But there will no longer be a monitoring of updated data centers during a "Dance".
The Technical Background of the Google Dance
The Google search engine pulls its results from more than 10,000 servers which are simple Linux PCs that are used by Google for reasons of cost. Naturally, an index update cannot be proceeded on all those servers at the same time. One server after the other has to be updated with the new index.
Many webmasters think that, during the Google Dance, Google is in some way able to control if a server with the new index or a server with an old index responds to a search query. But, since Google's index is inverse, this would be very complicated. As we will show below, there is no such control within the system. In fact, the reason for the Google Dance is Google's way of using the Domain Name System (DNS).
Google Dance and DNS
Not only Google's index is spread over more than 10,000 servers, but also these servers are, as of now, placed in 13 different data centers. These data centers are mainly located in the US (i.e. Santa Clara, California and Herndon, Virginia) and in Dublin, Ireland.
In order to direct traffic to all these data centers, Google could thoeretically record all queries centrally and then send them to the data centers. But this would obviously be inefficient. In fact, each data center has its own IP address (numerical address on the internet) and the way these IP addresses are accessed is managed by the Domain Name System.
Basically, the DNS works like this: On the Internet, data transfers always take place in-between IP addresses. The information about which domain resolves to which IP address is provided by the name servers of the DNS. When a user enters a domain into his browser, a locally configured name server gets him the IP address for that domain by contacting the name server which is responsible for that domain. (The DNS is structured hierarchically. Illustrating the whole process would go beyond the scope of this paper.) The IP address is then cached by the name server, so that it is not necessary to contact the responsible name server each time a connection is built up to a domain.
The records for a domain at the responsible name server constitute for how long the record may be cached by a caching name server. This is the Time To Live (TTL) of a domain. As soon as the TTL expires, the caching name server has to fetch the record for a domain again from the responsible name server. Quite often, the TTL is set to one or more days. In contrast, the Time To Live of the domain www.google.com is only five minutes. So, a name server may only cache Google's IP address for five minutes and has then to look up the IP address again.
Each time, Google's name server is contacted, it sends back the IP address of only one data center. In this way, Google queries are always directed to different data centers by changing DNS records. On the one hand, the DNS records may be based on the load of the single data centers. In this way, Google would conduct a simple form of load balancing by its use of the DNS. On the other hand, the geographical location of a caching name server may influence how often it receives the single data centers' IP addresses. So, the distance for data transmissions can be reduced.
How data centers, DNS and Google Dance are related, is easily answered. During the Google Dance, the data centers do not receive the new index at the same time. In fact, the new index is transferred to one data center after the other. When a user queries Google during the Google Dance, he may get the results from a data center which still has the old index at one point im time and from a data center which has the new index a few minutes later. From the users perspective, the index update took place within some minutes. But of course, this procedure may reverse, so that Google switches seemingly between the old and the new index.
Finally, it shall be noted that Google did the DNS load balancing by themselves until September 2003. Since then, they use the services and, hence, the name servers of Akamai Technologies, Inc.
IP Addresses and Domains of Google's Data Centers
The progression of a Google Dance could basically be watched by querying the IP addresses of Google's data centers. But queries on the IP addresses are normally redirected to www.google.com. However, Google has domains which resolve to the single data centers' IP addresses. These domains as well as their IP addresses are shown in the following list.
Domain IP-Adresse
www-ex.google.com 216.239.33.100
www-sj.google.com 216.239.35.100
www-va.google.com 216.239.37.100
www-dc.google.com 216.239.39.100
www-ab.google.com 216.239.51.100
www-in.google.com 216.239.53.100
www-zu.google.com 216.239.55.100
www-cw.google.com 216.239.57.100
www-fi.google.com 216.239.41.100
www-gv.google.com 216.239.59.100
www-kr.google.com 66.102.11.100
www-mc.google.com 66.102.7.100
www-lm.google.com 66.102.9.100
Those that keep an eye on Google's index updates often think that the Google Dance is over, when they see the new index at www.google.com or when they don't see the old index at www.google.com for some time. In fact, the update is not finished until all the domains listed above provide results from the new index.
The index updates at the single data centers seem to happen at one point in time. As soon as one data center shows results from the new index, it won't switch back to the old index. This happens most likely because the index is redundant at each data center and at first, only one part of the servers (eventually half of them) is updated. During this period, only the other half of the servers is active and provides search results. As soon as the update of the first half of servers is finished, they become active and provide search results while the other half receives the new index. Thus, from the user's perspective, the update of one data centers happens at one point in time.
Finally, it shall be noted that the access to the single data centers is generally controlled by the DNS only, but sometimes queries are redirected. However, this is easy to detect: When for a query at one of the domains listed above, the links to Google's cache do not comply with the IP address that belongs to the domain, then the query is redirected. If this happens, Google inhibits - for whatever reason - the access to one data center.
The Google Dance Test Domains www2 and www3
The beginning of a Google Dance can always be watched at the test domains www2.google.com and www3.google.com. Those domains normally have stable DNS records which make the domains resolve to only one (often the same) IP address. Before the Google Dance begins, at least one of the test domains is assigned the IP address of the data center that receives the new index first.
Building up a completely new index once per month can cause quite some trouble. After all, Google has to spider some billion documents an then to process many TeraBytes of data. Therefore, testing the new index is inevitable. Of course, the folks at Google don't need the test domains themselves. Most certainly, they have many options to check a new index internally, but they do not have a lot of time to conduct the tests.
So, the reason for having www2 and www3 is rather to show the new index to webmasters which are interested in their upcoming rankings. Many of these webmasters discuss the new index at the Google forums out on the web. These discussions can be observed by Google employees. At that time, the general public cannot see the new index yet, because the DNS records for www.google.com normally do not point to the IP address of the data center that is updated first when the update begins.
As soon as Google's test community of forums members does not find any severe malfunctions caused by the new index, Google's DNS records are ready to make www.google.com resolve the the data center that is updated first. This is the time when the Google Dance begins. But if severe malfunctions become obvious during this test phase, there is still the possibility to cancel the update at the other data centers. The domain www.google.com would not resolve to the data center which has the flawed index and the general public could not take any notice about it. In this case, the index could be rebuilt or the web could be spidered again.
So, the search results which are to be seen on www2.google.com and www3.google.com will always appear on www.google.com later on, as long as there is a regular index update. However, there may be minor fluctuations. On the one hand, the index at one data center never absolutely equals the index at another data center. We can easily check this by watching the number of results for the same query at the data center domains listed above, which often differ from each other. On the other hand, it is often assumed that the iterative PageRank calculation is not finished yet, when the Google Dance begins so that preliminary values exert influence on rankings at that point in time.
The New PageRank Values during the Google Dance
Most webmasters are interested in ranking changes for their website during the Google Dance. But, besides that, many also want to know about their new PageRank values. Normally, the Google Toolbar fetches the PageRank values from the data center that is specified by its IP address in the actual DNS record for www.google.com. Hence, when the Google Dance begins, the Toolbar usually displays the old PageRank values.
Google submits PageRank values in simple text files to the Toolbar. In former times, this happened via XML. The switch to text files occured in August 2002. The PageRank files can be requested directly from the domain www.google.com. Basically, the URLs for those files look like follows (without line breaks):
http://www.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&
ch=0123456789&features=Rank&q=info:http://www.domain.com/
There is only one line of text in the PageRank files. The last cipher in this line is PageRank.
The parameters incorporated in the above shown URL are inevitable for the display of the PageRank files in a browser. The value "navclient-auto" for the parameter "client" identifies the Toolbar. Via the parameter "q" the URL is submitted. The value "Rank" for the parameter "features" determines that the PageRank files are requested. If it is omitted, Google's servers still transmit XML files. The parameter "ch" transfers a checksum for the URL to Google, whereby this checksum can only change when the Toolbar version is updated by Google.
The PageRank files that are requested by the Google Toolbar are cached by the Internet Explorer. So, their URLs and the checksums can simply been found out by having a look at the folder Temporary Internet Files. Knowing the checksums of your URLs, you can view the PageRank files in your browser. Since the PageRank files are kept in the browser cache and, thus, are clearly visible, and as long as requests are not automated, watching the PageRank files in a browser should not be a violation of Google's Terms of Service. However, you should be cautious. The Toolbar submits its own User-Agent to Google. It is:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; GoogleToolbar 1.1.60-deleon; OS SE 4.10)
1.1.60-deleon is a Toolbar version which may of course change. OS is the operating system that you have installed. So, Google is able to identify requests by browsers, if they do not go out via a proxy and if the User-Agent is not modified accordingly.
Now, let's see how we can get the new PageRank values. Taking a look at IE's cache, you will notice that the PageRank files are not requested from the domain www.google.com but from IP addresses like 216.239.33.102. Additionally, the PageRank files' URLs often contain a parameter "failedip" that is set to values like "216.239.35.102;1111" (Its function is not absolutely clear). However, it is pretty easy to get the new PageRank values. Simply modify the IP addresses in the URL so that the request goes to one of the data centers that already has the new index. The necessary information is given above.

Measuring Results

Is your site generating more leads, higher quality leads, or more sales? What keywords are working? You can look at your server logs and an analytics program to track traffic trends and what keywords lead to conversion.

Outside of traffic another good sign that you are on the right track is if you see more websites asking questions or talking about you. If you start picking up high quality unrequested links you might be near a Tipping Point to where your marketing starts to build on itself.

Search engines follow people, but lag actual market conditions. It may take search engines a while to find all the links poiting at your site and analyze how well your site should rank. Depending on how competitive your marketplace is it may take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple years to establish a strong market position. Rankings can be a moving target as at any point in time


* you are marketing your business
* competitors are marketing their businesses and reinvesting profits into building out their SEO strategy
* search engines may change their relevancy algorithms

Google Analytics Tutorial

why web analytics is important?
Google Analytics is a free tool that you can start using it in just minutes to gain LASER like focus on what is making you money, and who your REAL customers are!While many people use some type of web analytics package to track site traffic...Most are watching page visits and not much more.

The truth is page visits is a nearly useless piece of data.Think of it this way... RIGHT NOW AS I TYPE THIS - I can visit every page of my site from three different computers and generate a boat load of visits that would show up on the server logs.What you really WANT to be tracking is "UNIQUE VISITORS" not "PAGE VISITS".One person could generate multiple "visits" - but that doesn't help you actually gauge your efforts to create traffic.Additionally you want to be able to see where people are coming from, what they are looking at, where they go after they leave... and if they didn't convert (purchase, or download, or sign up, etc) you'd like to be able to gain some insight as to why!A good web analytics package can also tell you which of your marketing efforts are performing the best.

Do ads with a certain headline result in more sales than another?
Do banner ads placed on site A perform better than site B?

Google gives you all of this... with ease... for free... and that's just the beginning.

What you'll see in Google Analytics' Basic Reports
Some of the standard Google Analytics metrics you'll use everyday...
Absolute Unique Visitors:
The number of unique individuals who've come to your site in a given time period. So, if your cousin comeas to your site 20 times in a month, they still only count as a single unique visitor.

Visits:
The number of times people open your site in their browser.
If your cousin comes to your site 20 times in a month, they count as 20 visits.

Page Views:
This tells you how many pages of your site are viewed in a given period.
If your cousin come to your site 20 times in a month, viewing 3 pages each time, they count as 60 page views.

Referring Source:
This tells you where your visitors are coming from.
Setting up goals in Google Analytics.
What do you want your site to accomplish?
One of the important features available in Google Analytics is the ability to determine the ROI (return on investment) that your marketing efforts are generating.


To do that you set up GOALS in Google Analytics.
The concept of "goals" often scares people. It's really very simple.

Goals are just things you want your site visitors to do.
Maybe you want them to purchase something.
Or download a white paper.
Or sign up for a site membership.

These things that you want people to do are often times called "conversions".
When a visitor does one they "convert" from a visitor to a customer (or member).

To start tracking goals in Google Analytics all you have to do is tell Google which of your site pages indicate that a goal (or conversion) has been met.

If your goal is for a visitor to buy something this may be the "order confirmation page"

If your goal is a download or sign up form it may be the "Thank you page."

Once you clue Google Analytics into these important events it will automatically start tracking them for you!

Nice huh?
Monetizing your goals Google Analytics.
Determine your ROI
To figure out how much money your site is making, and thus how effective your marketing efforts are... you can assign monetary values to your goals.

If you are selling something ... it's easy.
Each conversion is worth the price of that item.

But what if you're not selling something directly.
what if your goal is just generating leads...people who may one day buy.
How can you assign a value to that goal?

Well lets assume that an average successful sale is worth $800 to you, and you know that about 1 in 10 leads eventually become a paying customer. All you have to do is divide the average sale by the total number of leads, and you get the goal value: $80.$800 / 10 = $80,So each time that goal is met it's worth about $80 to you.

Simple!
Conversion Funnels in Google Analytics.
Now that you have goals in place you can ALSO set up what is called "conversion funnels".

These are really neat. Here's how they work.
You tell Google Analytics of a couple of pages that a visitor must hit in order to reach the goal page.

For instance before anyone can get to the "order confirmation" page they must go through the "billing information" page, and "shipping information" page.

Now that Google Analytics is aware of that it will track this too.
And you can see all sorts of great things like where in that process people drop out.

If 500 people start the check out process but only 3 get past the shipping page... you may want to revisit your shipping page and/or policies to make it easier for your visitors.

Manage PPC from Google adward

If you're looking for a low-cost, yet highly effective means of advertising your products and services, then Google AdWords may be your answer.

Google AdWords provides a simple way to purchase highly targeted advertising, regardless of your budget. Unlike other sites selling banner ad space and pay-per-ranking, AdWords provides advertisers with highly effective text ads that are displayed with the search results. Studies have shown that highly targeted keyword advertising produces an average of four times the industry standard clickthrough rate.

Google, one of the premier Search Engines, receives over 29 million searches each day. Their popularity most likely stems from the speed and accuracy of their search results. Needless to say, placing your text ad with Google Adwords will be a highly effective way to advertise your products and services.

It is a well-known fact that text ads perform much better than banner ads. What better way to target your audience than through a popular Search Engine? Your potential customer is there for a reason -- they're looking for something. When a Google visitor types in their keywords, they are almost instantly presented with their search results. On the right side of the results are colored text boxes containing targeted advertisements that match their search terms.

When you place your ad with AdWords, you will have the ability to select a list of tightly targeted keywords including all of the following:

Keyword Matching - Shows your ad when a search includes your selected words.

Phrase Matching - Shows your ad when a search includes your selected phrases.

Exact Query Matching - Shows your ad when a search contains your exact keywords and no others.

Negative Keyword Matching - Will not show your ad if a search contains certain words you select.

This unique targeting technique will enable you to create a highly targeted ad campaign and test your ads with a high rate of accuracy. What's more, you can even target your ads to a specific country or language.

The great thing about advertising with Google AdWords is that you will have complete control over your ad and how much you'd like to spend. You can open an account with a credit card with no minimum deposit required. Once you place your ad, it can begin running almost immediately.

Their advertising rates are very reasonable. The amount you spend on your advertising campaign will depend on two factors: (1) the number of times your ad is displayed and (2) the position, one through eight, in which your ad appears.

The advertising rates are as follows:

Position 1 - $15 per thousand ads shown
Position 2 - $12 per thousand ads shown
Position 3 - $10 per thousand ads shown
Position 4 - 8 $8 per thousand ads shown

The position of an ad is determined by how well it is performing. Ads with a higher clickthrough rate will receive a higher position and in turn will cost more.

In order to increase your clickthrough rate and spend less money, try to select keywords and phrases that specifically target the product or service you're offering. Avoid using common words, as these will use up your ad displays very rapidly. Instead, select words that specifically target your product or service. For example, instead of using a general keyword like 'software,' use a keyword that focuses on a specific software such as 'FrontPage 2002.' Or, a little less focused, 'web design software.' In addition, make sure you use your keyword phrase (search term) as the title of your ad. This will increase your clickthrough rate considerably.

When you set up your account with Google, make sure you use a different ad for each search term. Not only will this increase your ad's relevance in the search results, but it will also increase your clickthrough rate.

Once you place your ad, you can easily track your ad's response rate and make adjustments instantly. This is a great, low-cost way to find out which ads are performing the best.

How to reduce PPC campaign costs for your Google PPC Campaign

If a landing page (home page for example) for an Adwords Campaign is not relevant to your ads, then Google will raise the minimum bid amount for those keywords. Thus to keep your costs low, you need to take into account 3 things:
1. Keywords/research that you require for your ad campaign
2. The landing page (home page for example)
3. The Google Adwords Ad
1. The keywords that want to bid on should be relevant to the product/service you are promoting. However it would be advisable to find out what keywords people are using to search for your product/service.

To find out the best performing keywords for your PPC campaign there are many free online
keyword tools, this will help you to build up your keyword list. You want to use the keywords that have good (CTR) Click Through Rates

2. Landing page, ensure that the keywords you use for your PPC campaign are placed between the title tags, heading tags and page content. Include hyperlinks to the landing page from other pages on your website
, ensure you use your PPC campaign keywords as the anchor text for your inbound links. For example: SEO Services

Additionally optimize your hyperlinks with title attributes again use your PPC keywords. Our SEO Company offer this SEO service starting from £200.

3. PPC ad. Always use the keyword/s that your using in your AD.

If you follow these 3 steps, you will surely keep your Cost per click (CPC) low

Hope this helps:

Optimizing a website involves editing content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. To get your site to be seen via the 1st page of Google, then we can help.

Google AdWords provides Internet marketers with a cost effective alternative to banner advertising. If you want to increase your traffic and sales, give AdWord a try -- you'll be glad you did.

For further information, visit Google AdWords