You probably don’t need to read the latest advice from the online marketing consultants to figure out the basic idea behind link building. Without links, your site won’t develop authority. Without authority, it won’t move up on the search engines. But even the most savvy online marketing consultant would have to admit that doing that is just not as easy as it sounds.
More Is Not Better In Link Building
Just going out and getting a bunch of links won’t necessarily help your site. You need quality links to get higher search rankings. But sometimes figuring out what makes one link better than another is tough. This is where you do need to keep up with what the online marketing consultants are recommending or you may just be wasting your time.
Targeted Anchor Text Is A Must
When you start pursuing links on sites, you need targeted anchor text. However, you don’t want to use the same text everywhere. Google will notice that in a bad way. You want to use two or three different phrases and the proper name of your website. If you can’t get anything but an image link, make sure the site owner puts your anchor text or the name of your site in the ALT tag of the image.
Pay Attention To Links In And Out
Google looks at the site where your link appears and decides how much benefit your site gets back. A site with a lot of inbound links passes more authority to your site. At the same time, being linked on a site full of low-quality, outbound links probably won’t help you much.
PageRank Isn’t Everything
Don’t be one of those site owners who sees nothing but PageRank. A site with high PageRank can still have low link value. This is especially true of sites that sell links. Steer clear of sites that use phrases like “sponsored by” or “paid for by.” Google may not let that site pass PageRank at all. Move on. They’re not worth your time.
Concentrate On Site Relevance
Let’s say your site is about red widgets. You get a link on a site about purple doohickeys. That link isn’t worth as much as one on a site about red widget management. Make sure you’re pursuing links in relevant places and look at how those places are optimized. If a site owner gives you a choice of having a link on a page titled “About Us” or one with the title “About Red Widgets,” which one do you choose? The link on the optimized page, “About Red Widgets,” has more value.
An Online Marketing Consultant Checks What’s Not Obvious
Take your cue from the pros and check sites in ways that aren’t obvious. For instance, in any search engine, you can type in “cache:” followed by a site url and find out if the site has been indexed and when it was last crawled. But what do those dates mean?
Chances are good that if the site hasn’t been crawled in 30-45 days, it’s not a good place for a link. But some domains have more value than others. For example, links from .edu domains are better than from a .com, but .info is worth less. All these factors should be weighed in judging a site’s worth in your link building efforts.
Does Social Networking Matter?
We’ve all seen the little link bars under blog posts and in forums asking people to Digg or Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. Do you need to try to get links in places where social networking can happen? Yes. Alone those links may not have a lot of value, but Google is increasingly looking at the “active Web” in determining site authority.
It’s time consuming, but participating in forums and social sites and getting blog owners to run your articles with your linked anchor text included can be worth your time. But remember, relevance is a basic rule in online marketing consulting.
Are You Getting Clean Links?
When you get a link on a site, do you go look at the page’s source code? Is there anything extra in the “href” tag on the link? Is the site using redirect code? Is there a “nofollow” in the site’s meta data? If there is, the link is useless to you. It won’t pass any authority to your site because that code tells the search engines not to follow the link. Make sure you’re getting clean links.
When you’re on a tight budget and trying to develop your site and get higher search rankings, it can be a tough decision to work online marketing consulting into your thinking. The Web used to be pretty much a do-it-yourself place. That all started to change in 2004 when people began talking about “Web 2.0.”
It’s harder than ever to judge quality link building in the new world of Web applications and social networking. You can do it, but try to stay up to speed on what the online marketing consultants are recommending as good strategies. The Web is changing all the time. Good link building takes time and effort; you don’t want to waste those any more than you want to waste money during hard times.
Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts
Friday, August 20, 2010
Quick Link Building Tips
Link building is the most dreaded task of all serious SEO’s. Here are five quick and easy backlink building tips that you can apply today!
Link Building Tip #1 – Get Active in Your Community
I’m not talking about joining the local country club here (although that would be fun…), but rather about joining forums that are relevant to your niche. You want to find a forum (or forums) that is active and well ranked, and place your link in your “signature” section. This way, whenever you contribute to the forum (i.e. say something), you’ll be building backlinks. It is vital that your posts are of informational and educational use, and that you don’t just abuse the system in order to gain links. You’ll get banned quicker than you can say “backlink” if you do this. Contributing to the community is of the essence here.
Link Building Tip #2 – Suss Out Your Competition
Write down the website addresses of the top five results for your desired keyword. Then, using Google, type in “link:website” (replace website with the actual website address). This will show you where each site is getting their links from (well, most of them in any case) and hopefully spark some ideas for your site.
Link Building Tip #3 – Get Writing…
Writing and submitting articles is definately one of the most popular link building tactics around. You simply write a short article (400 – 600 words) and publish it on as many article directories as possible. Each directory will allow you to place your link in the “resource box”, thus growing your number of backlinks. You might be wondering “But what do I write about?”. The answer is simple – write about your area of expertise. So if you’re a handyman, write about some basic DIY tasks that people can carry out. Write how-to’s, 101’s and the like – Just give it some thought, it’s well worth it…
Link Building Tip #4 – Submit To Directories
Wherever there is an industry, you’ll find directories, especially on the internet. Do a search for your keyword and the word “directory”. Sign up to as many of them as possible – it’s a free link every time, and you might even find organic traffic (people) finding you on these directories (that’s what they’re there for, after all).
Link Building Tip #5 – Get Blogging
My final tip is to get blogging, or at least commenting on other people’s blogs. Have a look for relevant blogs and post some useful comments where suitable. Each comment will earn you a free link, plus potential direct traffic if the blog is popular and well followed. A word of warning though – make sure that the blogs don’t use “nofollow” tags, as this will render your link null and void in the eyes of the search engines.
And there you have it! Five easy link building tips that you can apply today. Best off all – they’re all absolutely free… Remember, link building is an ongoing exercise, and the more you make it a habit, the easier it will become. The only cost is your time and effort.
Link Building Tip #1 – Get Active in Your Community
I’m not talking about joining the local country club here (although that would be fun…), but rather about joining forums that are relevant to your niche. You want to find a forum (or forums) that is active and well ranked, and place your link in your “signature” section. This way, whenever you contribute to the forum (i.e. say something), you’ll be building backlinks. It is vital that your posts are of informational and educational use, and that you don’t just abuse the system in order to gain links. You’ll get banned quicker than you can say “backlink” if you do this. Contributing to the community is of the essence here.
Link Building Tip #2 – Suss Out Your Competition
Write down the website addresses of the top five results for your desired keyword. Then, using Google, type in “link:website” (replace website with the actual website address). This will show you where each site is getting their links from (well, most of them in any case) and hopefully spark some ideas for your site.
Link Building Tip #3 – Get Writing…
Writing and submitting articles is definately one of the most popular link building tactics around. You simply write a short article (400 – 600 words) and publish it on as many article directories as possible. Each directory will allow you to place your link in the “resource box”, thus growing your number of backlinks. You might be wondering “But what do I write about?”. The answer is simple – write about your area of expertise. So if you’re a handyman, write about some basic DIY tasks that people can carry out. Write how-to’s, 101’s and the like – Just give it some thought, it’s well worth it…
Link Building Tip #4 – Submit To Directories
Wherever there is an industry, you’ll find directories, especially on the internet. Do a search for your keyword and the word “directory”. Sign up to as many of them as possible – it’s a free link every time, and you might even find organic traffic (people) finding you on these directories (that’s what they’re there for, after all).
Link Building Tip #5 – Get Blogging
My final tip is to get blogging, or at least commenting on other people’s blogs. Have a look for relevant blogs and post some useful comments where suitable. Each comment will earn you a free link, plus potential direct traffic if the blog is popular and well followed. A word of warning though – make sure that the blogs don’t use “nofollow” tags, as this will render your link null and void in the eyes of the search engines.
And there you have it! Five easy link building tips that you can apply today. Best off all – they’re all absolutely free… Remember, link building is an ongoing exercise, and the more you make it a habit, the easier it will become. The only cost is your time and effort.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Online reputation management with SEO
is the practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media.he goal is to have people speak about your brand in a positive sense by achieving, maintaining and improving a positive online sentiment about it.
Being mentioned in social media can be a threat if not dealt with correctly, but can also generate great benefits if used the right way. It’s all about buzz and sentiment, and how you manage it."
Online Reputation Management or ORM, (* Brand Reputation Management or BRM in UK) requires more targeted optimization since the goal is to remove negative URLs from the top 1-2 pages of Google result pages.
Here are my tips for ORM:
1. Check if the website pointed to by the URL of the negative article or post has a free article submission link. Create and publish an positive and informative article regarding the ORMed website on this article website. This gives positive feedback to the ORMed website. Add links to the article that point to the ORMed website. Perform off-page optimization / link submissions that point to this article.
2. Push the lower ranked URLs higher by performing link submissions that point to these lower ranked URLs. You are in fact performing SEO for the positive URLs. This will take much of your time since you have several links (about two pages but depends on how far back from Google search results you want the offending links listed) to push higher in Google search results.
3. Use microblogging and social bookmarking sites to push the positive links higher. These sites are indexed faster by major search engines and you will see immediate results in less than an hour.
There are several websites that have more detailed info about Online Reputation Management. You just have to Google it.
What is Online Reputation Management?
It is rare that a successful long standing company does not at some stage have some kind of negative feedback from a competitor who is jealous, a dissatisfied client, a prima-donna who wants to look special or just someone who simply wants to rock the boat. Of course the vast majority of website owners do not have a problem with their reputation.
However, with more and more user- generated content media and social media opportunities, there is the danger that negative comments/posts can find themselves in the top 10 of Google, or even worse, above-the-fold on a search for your company name, individual name, brand/product name or main keywords.
I am a great believer in free speech. However, free speech has its drawbacks. Sometimes negative feedback can get written with little justification or evidence provided. This can be disastrous PR wise, especially for strong brands.
Sometimes, however, negative comments are justified. In this case, a marketing manager will still want the “negative” page on the second page of Google results. It is a bit of a problem for SEO companies to offer this service, as they could be seen as manipulating Google to the detriment of users if there is a real basis for negative comments, and could themselves face a problem with their reputation. “ABAKUS helping the XYZ cowboys to gain reputation!”. This article, however, assumes that the reputation management is justified.
Who Needs Reputation Management?
Anyone in any kind of business needs a reputation management plan, including those who are just beginning their careers.
•Career Development and Reputation Management. Anyone beginning a career or changing jobs can benefit from reputation management. One of the first things a hiring manager does when he or she receives a promising resume is to enter the name of the applicant into a search engine. As a job seeker, you want to make sure that what your potential employer sees on the internet makes the best impression possible. One incriminating photograph or inappropriate blog comment could take you out of the running immediately.
•Brand Reputation. If you’re marketing a product or service, you want to make sure that the information about your product or service floating around on the internet is positive. Consumers regularly use the internet to research purchases and will immediately write off any brand or company that has made a poor name for itself. Even one bad review can turn a consumer off completely.
•Online Crisis Aversion. If you’re running a business, you will likely undergo a crisis at some point or another. The Taco Bell incident mentioned above is a good example. Another example is Jet Blue, the airline that made its passengers sit on a tarmac for the better part of day while waiting out a storm that was tearing through the east coast. There is no doubt that a crisis of some ilk will happen to your company, and you’ll need a stellar reputation management to help you deal with it.
•Anonymous Online Defamation. Online character defamation can be a serious issue for businesses and individuals. The laws surrounding character defamation and free speech are tricky, so if you find that some anonymous person on the internet has created content about you that doesn’t present you in the best light, the quickest and easiest way to deal with it is through reputation management.
•Government Public Relations SEO. Surprisingly, government organizations haven’t been known to use SEO to its fullest potential. Electoral campaigns and international conflicts are but two of the many situations in which officials can benefit from government online PR and reputation management by making sure that internet users find positive information when they conduct online searches about public policy, tourism, and conflicts.
It’s clear that the number of people and businesses who could benefit from reputation management is immense. And both proactive and reactive reputation management are key.
What Can SEO 1 Services Do To Help?
Reputation management is an involved process, and one that you simply can’t afford to tackle on your own or leave to someone who doesn’t know how to do it well. Bad press can ruin your business, so it’s worth the time and effort to enlist the aid of someone who can do reputation management right the first time.
If the information that needs to be buried is minimal, customers can expect to see the positive effects of reputation management within a few months. For businesses that have experienced a large amount of damaging press, the process can take as long as a year. This means that you simply can’t afford to wait to start your reputation management campaign.
Being mentioned in social media can be a threat if not dealt with correctly, but can also generate great benefits if used the right way. It’s all about buzz and sentiment, and how you manage it."
Online Reputation Management or ORM, (* Brand Reputation Management or BRM in UK) requires more targeted optimization since the goal is to remove negative URLs from the top 1-2 pages of Google result pages.
Here are my tips for ORM:
1. Check if the website pointed to by the URL of the negative article or post has a free article submission link. Create and publish an positive and informative article regarding the ORMed website on this article website. This gives positive feedback to the ORMed website. Add links to the article that point to the ORMed website. Perform off-page optimization / link submissions that point to this article.
2. Push the lower ranked URLs higher by performing link submissions that point to these lower ranked URLs. You are in fact performing SEO for the positive URLs. This will take much of your time since you have several links (about two pages but depends on how far back from Google search results you want the offending links listed) to push higher in Google search results.
3. Use microblogging and social bookmarking sites to push the positive links higher. These sites are indexed faster by major search engines and you will see immediate results in less than an hour.
There are several websites that have more detailed info about Online Reputation Management. You just have to Google it.
What is Online Reputation Management?
It is rare that a successful long standing company does not at some stage have some kind of negative feedback from a competitor who is jealous, a dissatisfied client, a prima-donna who wants to look special or just someone who simply wants to rock the boat. Of course the vast majority of website owners do not have a problem with their reputation.
However, with more and more user- generated content media and social media opportunities, there is the danger that negative comments/posts can find themselves in the top 10 of Google, or even worse, above-the-fold on a search for your company name, individual name, brand/product name or main keywords.
I am a great believer in free speech. However, free speech has its drawbacks. Sometimes negative feedback can get written with little justification or evidence provided. This can be disastrous PR wise, especially for strong brands.
Sometimes, however, negative comments are justified. In this case, a marketing manager will still want the “negative” page on the second page of Google results. It is a bit of a problem for SEO companies to offer this service, as they could be seen as manipulating Google to the detriment of users if there is a real basis for negative comments, and could themselves face a problem with their reputation. “ABAKUS helping the XYZ cowboys to gain reputation!”. This article, however, assumes that the reputation management is justified.
Who Needs Reputation Management?
Anyone in any kind of business needs a reputation management plan, including those who are just beginning their careers.
•Career Development and Reputation Management. Anyone beginning a career or changing jobs can benefit from reputation management. One of the first things a hiring manager does when he or she receives a promising resume is to enter the name of the applicant into a search engine. As a job seeker, you want to make sure that what your potential employer sees on the internet makes the best impression possible. One incriminating photograph or inappropriate blog comment could take you out of the running immediately.
•Brand Reputation. If you’re marketing a product or service, you want to make sure that the information about your product or service floating around on the internet is positive. Consumers regularly use the internet to research purchases and will immediately write off any brand or company that has made a poor name for itself. Even one bad review can turn a consumer off completely.
•Online Crisis Aversion. If you’re running a business, you will likely undergo a crisis at some point or another. The Taco Bell incident mentioned above is a good example. Another example is Jet Blue, the airline that made its passengers sit on a tarmac for the better part of day while waiting out a storm that was tearing through the east coast. There is no doubt that a crisis of some ilk will happen to your company, and you’ll need a stellar reputation management to help you deal with it.
•Anonymous Online Defamation. Online character defamation can be a serious issue for businesses and individuals. The laws surrounding character defamation and free speech are tricky, so if you find that some anonymous person on the internet has created content about you that doesn’t present you in the best light, the quickest and easiest way to deal with it is through reputation management.
•Government Public Relations SEO. Surprisingly, government organizations haven’t been known to use SEO to its fullest potential. Electoral campaigns and international conflicts are but two of the many situations in which officials can benefit from government online PR and reputation management by making sure that internet users find positive information when they conduct online searches about public policy, tourism, and conflicts.
It’s clear that the number of people and businesses who could benefit from reputation management is immense. And both proactive and reactive reputation management are key.
What Can SEO 1 Services Do To Help?
Reputation management is an involved process, and one that you simply can’t afford to tackle on your own or leave to someone who doesn’t know how to do it well. Bad press can ruin your business, so it’s worth the time and effort to enlist the aid of someone who can do reputation management right the first time.
If the information that needs to be buried is minimal, customers can expect to see the positive effects of reputation management within a few months. For businesses that have experienced a large amount of damaging press, the process can take as long as a year. This means that you simply can’t afford to wait to start your reputation management campaign.
Friday, February 12, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
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
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
Saturday, February 6, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
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
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
Thursday, January 7, 2010
How Does Article Submission Help?
Article Submission is an ethical SEO strategy that is generally used to promote a website and also gain a steady flow of quality one way links. It is a powerful technique which involves submitting articles in various article directories to gain quick results. When such articles containing unique content are distributed across the web, they can be viewed by a larger audience. This helps the website gain greater publicity, popularity, and traffic.
How Article Submission Works?
SEO Services | Affordable SEO Services | Increase Website Traffic | SEO Traffic | SEO Copywriting | SEO Packages | SEO Traffic Spider
The first step in this process is to write unique and content rich articles. This can either be done by you or by
writers hired to write articles for you. Once your article is ready, it should be posted in the article directories. This can be done in two ways:
1)Using article submission software – here you will have to buy the article submission software in which you can load all your articles and submit them. The software will automatically submit your articles in the article directories.
2)Hiring professionals for article submission – you can hire professionals who can submit articles for you and save your time that would be spent in doing it yourself
How Does Article Submission Help?
First, it helps you to get quality one way backlinks which helps in increasing your page rank.It brings more targeted traffic to your website, since people clicking on the links in any of your articles are prospective customers already.
Article submission helps you gain more credibility in terms of the information provided through your articles. This is because your articles indicate to readers the knowledge that you possess about the topic being discussed.
Article submission is also a very successful marketing strategy for a website as it provides immediate and effective results.
Links that are generated from such content rich pages are always preferred by search engines.On continuously submitting articles to article directories, it will get a continuous flow of links to your site and this is something that search engines love.
How Should Your Articles Be?
You must ensure that your articles are unique, SEO friendly, and credible. You must try using the best of your keywords more often in your articles as it will make it more keyword rich. Additionally, make sure that your articles do not contain duplicate content and are exclusive, since search engines usually filter out articles or sites that contain duplicate content. Also, it would be a good idea to create several articles over a period of time and keep submitting them to article directories instead on writing only one article and submitting it to a lot of directories. It is also important to know that regardless of the articles you submit online, if their content is not trustworthy, they will not be of any help. Therefore, you must write articles which contain valuable information so that users will be enticed to click on your link which in turn will drive traffic to your website.
How Article Submission Works?
SEO Services | Affordable SEO Services | Increase Website Traffic | SEO Traffic | SEO Copywriting | SEO Packages | SEO Traffic Spider
The first step in this process is to write unique and content rich articles. This can either be done by you or by
writers hired to write articles for you. Once your article is ready, it should be posted in the article directories. This can be done in two ways:
1)Using article submission software – here you will have to buy the article submission software in which you can load all your articles and submit them. The software will automatically submit your articles in the article directories.
2)Hiring professionals for article submission – you can hire professionals who can submit articles for you and save your time that would be spent in doing it yourself
How Does Article Submission Help?
First, it helps you to get quality one way backlinks which helps in increasing your page rank.It brings more targeted traffic to your website, since people clicking on the links in any of your articles are prospective customers already.
Article submission helps you gain more credibility in terms of the information provided through your articles. This is because your articles indicate to readers the knowledge that you possess about the topic being discussed.
Article submission is also a very successful marketing strategy for a website as it provides immediate and effective results.
Links that are generated from such content rich pages are always preferred by search engines.On continuously submitting articles to article directories, it will get a continuous flow of links to your site and this is something that search engines love.
How Should Your Articles Be?
You must ensure that your articles are unique, SEO friendly, and credible. You must try using the best of your keywords more often in your articles as it will make it more keyword rich. Additionally, make sure that your articles do not contain duplicate content and are exclusive, since search engines usually filter out articles or sites that contain duplicate content. Also, it would be a good idea to create several articles over a period of time and keep submitting them to article directories instead on writing only one article and submitting it to a lot of directories. It is also important to know that regardless of the articles you submit online, if their content is not trustworthy, they will not be of any help. Therefore, you must write articles which contain valuable information so that users will be enticed to click on your link which in turn will drive traffic to your website.
How social bookmarking works?
Though several people have been using social bookmarking to publicize and increase traffic to their website, not many exactly know what this process is, how it works, or what its intended purpose is. Infact, you may be doing social bookmarking on the Internet without knowing that you are actually using it. Therefore, this process is explained below to help you gain a better understanding on it.
Fundamentally, bookmarking is an easy way to remember webpages on the Internet. It helps you in finding stuff that you are looking for much faster and in a shorter period of time as you already know the place where it is located. Similarly, social bookmarking also works the same way, wherein, you can tag any websites so that you can find them easily the next time you browse the Internet.
Additionally, social bookmarking enables you to collaborate with Internet users across the web by sharing your bookmarks of websites with them. It also allows users to save any number of bookmarks to a public website by way of tagging them with keywords that are descriptive.
How social bookmarking works?
In the social bookmarking process, people first find a website or a webpage of their choice which they want to bookmark. This website or webpage is then tagged using descriptive keywords which talk something about it. Tagging a website or a webpage helps the person tagging it and also other Internet users who are on the look out for the same topic or subject that has been tagged. People will also be able to easily find the tagged website or webpage with the help of descriptive keywords. Usually, people have to register with social bookmarking websites for creating social bookmarks for their use.
What social bookmarking does?
Social bookmarking enables the visitors of a website to get linked to other social bookmarking websites or other webpages with the help of a single link. In addition to this, it also helps users to search for websites by using keywords that will show websites ranking at the top based on the given keyword. Social bookmarking also keeps people updated on the latest trends and news. Some social bookmarking websites generate links to sites and articles and also allow their users or visitors to post their comments on these articles.
How does social bookmarking help?
First, social bookmarking helps you drive immediate traffic to your webpages, especially in cases where your site is tagged under popular tags. When you submit your site to social bookmarking sites, people can vote on your page quality, and more the number of people voting on it the more will be the visitor traffic to your website.
Second, social bookmarking also helps people making use of it to store webpages or websites that contain topics of their interest. It also helps them to enrich their knowledge on the subject or topic they have interest in.
Finally, social bookmarking also helps to arrange, search, and present any information easily and efficiently without much trouble.
Fundamentally, bookmarking is an easy way to remember webpages on the Internet. It helps you in finding stuff that you are looking for much faster and in a shorter period of time as you already know the place where it is located. Similarly, social bookmarking also works the same way, wherein, you can tag any websites so that you can find them easily the next time you browse the Internet.
Additionally, social bookmarking enables you to collaborate with Internet users across the web by sharing your bookmarks of websites with them. It also allows users to save any number of bookmarks to a public website by way of tagging them with keywords that are descriptive.
How social bookmarking works?
In the social bookmarking process, people first find a website or a webpage of their choice which they want to bookmark. This website or webpage is then tagged using descriptive keywords which talk something about it. Tagging a website or a webpage helps the person tagging it and also other Internet users who are on the look out for the same topic or subject that has been tagged. People will also be able to easily find the tagged website or webpage with the help of descriptive keywords. Usually, people have to register with social bookmarking websites for creating social bookmarks for their use.
What social bookmarking does?
Social bookmarking enables the visitors of a website to get linked to other social bookmarking websites or other webpages with the help of a single link. In addition to this, it also helps users to search for websites by using keywords that will show websites ranking at the top based on the given keyword. Social bookmarking also keeps people updated on the latest trends and news. Some social bookmarking websites generate links to sites and articles and also allow their users or visitors to post their comments on these articles.
How does social bookmarking help?
First, social bookmarking helps you drive immediate traffic to your webpages, especially in cases where your site is tagged under popular tags. When you submit your site to social bookmarking sites, people can vote on your page quality, and more the number of people voting on it the more will be the visitor traffic to your website.
Second, social bookmarking also helps people making use of it to store webpages or websites that contain topics of their interest. It also helps them to enrich their knowledge on the subject or topic they have interest in.
Finally, social bookmarking also helps to arrange, search, and present any information easily and efficiently without much trouble.
How Advantageous is RSS Feed, from an SEO Perspective
Backlinks today are an important part of the SEO process because when you build quality backlinks, your website stands a higher chance of getting indexed faster by the search engines. Also, from the long term perspective, it will help in boosting quality traffic to your site.
If you have gained an insight into the SEO world, you would have come across the word “backlinks” several times. For those new to the SEO industry, you might wonder what backlinks are and how essential they are for the success of websites.
In short, a Backlink indicates a link from another site to your website. These are also known as inbound links and their number indicates the popularity of the website. Backlinks are considered as votes by search engines: more the number of votes (backlinks) your website has, and based on the importance of websites linking back to yours, your site is assigned a trust rank.
Affordable SEO Services | Increase Website Traffic | SEO Traffic Spider | SEO Traffic | SEO Copywriting | SEO Packages | SEO Services | Website Traffic
Backlinks today are an important part of the SEO process because when you build quality backlinks, your website stands a higher chance of getting indexed faster by the search engines. Also, from the long term perspective, it will help in boosting quality traffic to your site. Apart from this, building backlinks serves your bottom-line of website visibility by improving your page ranking and ultimately your ranking in the search engines.
Additionally, it is not just enough to have lots of backlinks, but, it’s also the quality of backlinks that helps in achieving a better ranking in search engines. When calculating the relevance of a website to a particular keyword, search engines usually take into consideration the number of quality backlinks to that website.
Search engines like Google give a lot of importance to websites that contain more number of quality backlinks and also consider those websites as more relevant when compared to others in search results.
A backlink is considered as a quality link if:
a) It links back to your site with the keyword which you are optimizing for.
b) The website linking back to yours has the same theme as your website – this means that when your website contains an inbound link from another site, and that site has content related to your website, this inbound link will be considered as more relevant to your website. However, if this inbound link comes from a site that is totally unrelated to your site content, then it is considered as a less relevant backlink. Therefore, higher the relevancy of backlinks, the greater will be their quality.
For instance, if you have a website about furniture and you receive an inbound link from another website also containing furniture, then this backlink will be considered more relevant and of higher quality when compared to a backlink from a florist website.
Today, search engines watch out for websites that build quality backlinks slowly over time. Though it is quite easy to maneuver links on webpage's in order to attain a high ranking, it is much tougher to manipulate search engines with inbound links from other sites. This is also one of the reasons for backlinks gaining increased importance in search engine algorithms. Recently, search engines assessment for quality backlinks has become even tougher as there are many webmasters out there who make use of unethical techniques and deceive search engines to attain a higher ranking. These techniques are not only illegitimate but can also lead to your site getting banned.
Lastly, building quality backlinks could be a very time consuming and tedious process requiring a lot of patience, efforts, and also funds. However, it is a crucial step in creating blogs or any website since the quality and relevancy of backlinks can determine the success or failure of the site. Therefore, it is very important that you prioritize this in your SEO activity and hire professional SEO experts to whom you can outsource this task and achieve a better search engine ranking.
If you have gained an insight into the SEO world, you would have come across the word “backlinks” several times. For those new to the SEO industry, you might wonder what backlinks are and how essential they are for the success of websites.
In short, a Backlink indicates a link from another site to your website. These are also known as inbound links and their number indicates the popularity of the website. Backlinks are considered as votes by search engines: more the number of votes (backlinks) your website has, and based on the importance of websites linking back to yours, your site is assigned a trust rank.
Affordable SEO Services | Increase Website Traffic | SEO Traffic Spider | SEO Traffic | SEO Copywriting | SEO Packages | SEO Services | Website Traffic
Backlinks today are an important part of the SEO process because when you build quality backlinks, your website stands a higher chance of getting indexed faster by the search engines. Also, from the long term perspective, it will help in boosting quality traffic to your site. Apart from this, building backlinks serves your bottom-line of website visibility by improving your page ranking and ultimately your ranking in the search engines.
Additionally, it is not just enough to have lots of backlinks, but, it’s also the quality of backlinks that helps in achieving a better ranking in search engines. When calculating the relevance of a website to a particular keyword, search engines usually take into consideration the number of quality backlinks to that website.
Search engines like Google give a lot of importance to websites that contain more number of quality backlinks and also consider those websites as more relevant when compared to others in search results.
A backlink is considered as a quality link if:
a) It links back to your site with the keyword which you are optimizing for.
b) The website linking back to yours has the same theme as your website – this means that when your website contains an inbound link from another site, and that site has content related to your website, this inbound link will be considered as more relevant to your website. However, if this inbound link comes from a site that is totally unrelated to your site content, then it is considered as a less relevant backlink. Therefore, higher the relevancy of backlinks, the greater will be their quality.
For instance, if you have a website about furniture and you receive an inbound link from another website also containing furniture, then this backlink will be considered more relevant and of higher quality when compared to a backlink from a florist website.
Today, search engines watch out for websites that build quality backlinks slowly over time. Though it is quite easy to maneuver links on webpage's in order to attain a high ranking, it is much tougher to manipulate search engines with inbound links from other sites. This is also one of the reasons for backlinks gaining increased importance in search engine algorithms. Recently, search engines assessment for quality backlinks has become even tougher as there are many webmasters out there who make use of unethical techniques and deceive search engines to attain a higher ranking. These techniques are not only illegitimate but can also lead to your site getting banned.
Lastly, building quality backlinks could be a very time consuming and tedious process requiring a lot of patience, efforts, and also funds. However, it is a crucial step in creating blogs or any website since the quality and relevancy of backlinks can determine the success or failure of the site. Therefore, it is very important that you prioritize this in your SEO activity and hire professional SEO experts to whom you can outsource this task and achieve a better search engine ranking.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Social media maths: is time spent online a net gain or a loss?
A recent interesting article in Management Today mentioned the research we conducted on how many small businesses in the world have websites (answer: fewer than ought).
This was as part of a wider response to a recent report about how much time is wasted on social networking sites, and particularly by those who are purportedly at work.
It’s a difficult truth that, even while we evangelize about their transformative effect on businesses, such sites can easily be time-sinks even for the most diligent workers. Even the best of us cannot deny the temptation to take a quick peek at our Twitter stream, only to emerge twenty minutes later having been sucked into a debate about who would win a fight, Superman or Spiderman… or some equally unimportant subject.
The problem is that we can’t expect our employees to be using social networking sites effectively unless they are enthusiastic tweeters, Facebookers or bloggers themselves. As we’ve said a thousand times before, you really can’t understand these sites or what they do, until you have become fully immersed yourself. Undeniably, though, by their very nature, social media sites do suck people in and it’s a strong person indeed who can resist their lure.
What is the answer? Well, one solution is to do the tweeting and blogging yourself. Most people who own businesses are so wrapped up in them that their personal lives can barely be distinguished from their working ones. In no time, you’ll have gathered around you a social circle of people in the same field, and, as is the nature of these arena, you may find that such alliances are incredibly useful, in ways you never could have foreseen.
If that doesn’t appeal, you may find that the nature of your business allows you to give the job of social media marketing to someone who is mainly stuck behind a counter, with long periods of idleness: think garage attendant on a night-shift, art gallery attendant during the quiet hours, or cinema usher after the lights have dimmed.
What if your business simply doesn’t include such job descriptions? Well, you may just have to consider that 40 minutes of wasted time each week to be part of the cost of employing someone who is truly a social media specialist.
This was as part of a wider response to a recent report about how much time is wasted on social networking sites, and particularly by those who are purportedly at work.
It’s a difficult truth that, even while we evangelize about their transformative effect on businesses, such sites can easily be time-sinks even for the most diligent workers. Even the best of us cannot deny the temptation to take a quick peek at our Twitter stream, only to emerge twenty minutes later having been sucked into a debate about who would win a fight, Superman or Spiderman… or some equally unimportant subject.
The problem is that we can’t expect our employees to be using social networking sites effectively unless they are enthusiastic tweeters, Facebookers or bloggers themselves. As we’ve said a thousand times before, you really can’t understand these sites or what they do, until you have become fully immersed yourself. Undeniably, though, by their very nature, social media sites do suck people in and it’s a strong person indeed who can resist their lure.
What is the answer? Well, one solution is to do the tweeting and blogging yourself. Most people who own businesses are so wrapped up in them that their personal lives can barely be distinguished from their working ones. In no time, you’ll have gathered around you a social circle of people in the same field, and, as is the nature of these arena, you may find that such alliances are incredibly useful, in ways you never could have foreseen.
If that doesn’t appeal, you may find that the nature of your business allows you to give the job of social media marketing to someone who is mainly stuck behind a counter, with long periods of idleness: think garage attendant on a night-shift, art gallery attendant during the quiet hours, or cinema usher after the lights have dimmed.
What if your business simply doesn’t include such job descriptions? Well, you may just have to consider that 40 minutes of wasted time each week to be part of the cost of employing someone who is truly a social media specialist.
Managed link development campaigns as part of your SEO
Boost your website's rankings with a systematic programme of courting inbound links - the hard currency of search engine rankings.
Link development is now commonly referred to as the currency of the Internet. To simplify this to an extreme, if you have more links coming in to your website than going out, you will be seen as 'richer' - and your ranking upgraded accordingly. However, the links must be relevant otherwise the search engines will penalize the site. Therefore good quality links will benefit your site more than a large quantity of low quantity ones.
We will find and contact sites that are relevant to your field, but not in direct competition to you, and encourage them to link to you without having to give a link back to them. This is an ongoing process and we envisage the initial campaign should be for at least 12 months.
With a successful optimization and link development campaign, more and more websites will seek to be your link partners. We will monitor and vet all link enquiries, recommending and responding to favorable link partners, as certain links could be detrimental to your popularity ranking.
Link development is now commonly referred to as the currency of the Internet. To simplify this to an extreme, if you have more links coming in to your website than going out, you will be seen as 'richer' - and your ranking upgraded accordingly. However, the links must be relevant otherwise the search engines will penalize the site. Therefore good quality links will benefit your site more than a large quantity of low quantity ones.
We will find and contact sites that are relevant to your field, but not in direct competition to you, and encourage them to link to you without having to give a link back to them. This is an ongoing process and we envisage the initial campaign should be for at least 12 months.
With a successful optimization and link development campaign, more and more websites will seek to be your link partners. We will monitor and vet all link enquiries, recommending and responding to favorable link partners, as certain links could be detrimental to your popularity ranking.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Managed Internet Marketing with one way link campaigns
What is it and why is it important to SEO?
One way links are one way inbound links that are pointing to your website. Good quality, relevant, one way links help to achieve a high position in search engine results.
The quantity, quality and relevance of the anchor text of inbound links to your site is extremely important to Google. Anchor text is the visible text of a link to another site. Therefore, having a large number of these links is vital to any online business.
But how many should I have?
The only way to answer this is to find out how many inbound links your competitors have pointing to their website. The higher the number of inbound links they have means you need to aim to have more.
However, we have to stress the word 'relevant'. If an inbound link is relevant to your website, then the search engines will consider it a quality link and will take notice of it. Search engines include link popularity in the way they evaluate the web pages they include in the search engine databases. These inbound links are seen as a positive vote indicating the quality of the web page the link is pointing to.
A one way link building programme is extremely time consuming and requires continuous work - which is why we offer it as one of our managed services. We do the work, while you concentrate on your business.
One way links are one way inbound links that are pointing to your website. Good quality, relevant, one way links help to achieve a high position in search engine results.
The quantity, quality and relevance of the anchor text of inbound links to your site is extremely important to Google. Anchor text is the visible text of a link to another site. Therefore, having a large number of these links is vital to any online business.
But how many should I have?
The only way to answer this is to find out how many inbound links your competitors have pointing to their website. The higher the number of inbound links they have means you need to aim to have more.
However, we have to stress the word 'relevant'. If an inbound link is relevant to your website, then the search engines will consider it a quality link and will take notice of it. Search engines include link popularity in the way they evaluate the web pages they include in the search engine databases. These inbound links are seen as a positive vote indicating the quality of the web page the link is pointing to.
A one way link building programme is extremely time consuming and requires continuous work - which is why we offer it as one of our managed services. We do the work, while you concentrate on your business.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
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
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
Viral Marketing
Link building is probably the single hardest and most time consuming part of an effective SEO campaign, largely because it requires influencing other people.
Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.
The beautiful thing about viral marketing is that creating one popular compelling idea can lead to thousands of free quality links. If your competitor is building one link at a time and you have thousands of people spreading your ideas for you for free then you are typically going to end up ranking better.
Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly. If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly fizzles.
At the height of B2C it seemed as if every start up had a viral component to its strategy, or at least claimed to have one. However, relatively few marketing viruses achieve success on a scale similar to Hot mail, widely cited as the first example of viral marketing.
Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy
Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:
1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources
In SEO many people create content based around linking opportunities.
Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.
The beautiful thing about viral marketing is that creating one popular compelling idea can lead to thousands of free quality links. If your competitor is building one link at a time and you have thousands of people spreading your ideas for you for free then you are typically going to end up ranking better.
Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly. If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly fizzles.
At the height of B2C it seemed as if every start up had a viral component to its strategy, or at least claimed to have one. However, relatively few marketing viruses achieve success on a scale similar to Hot mail, widely cited as the first example of viral marketing.
Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy
Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:
1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources
In SEO many people create content based around linking opportunities.
Brand Building
Brand related search queries tend to be some of the most targeted, best converting, and most valuable keywords. As you gain mind share people will be more likely to search for your brand or keywords related to your brand. A high volume of brand related search traffic may also be seen as a sign of quality by major search engines.
If you build a strong brand when people search for more information about your brand and other websites have good things to say about your brand, these interactions help reinforcing your brand image and improving your lead quality and conversion rates.
Things like advertising and community activity are easy ways to help improve your brand exposure, but obviously branding is a lot more complicated than that
If you build a strong brand when people search for more information about your brand and other websites have good things to say about your brand, these interactions help reinforcing your brand image and improving your lead quality and conversion rates.
Things like advertising and community activity are easy ways to help improve your brand exposure, but obviously branding is a lot more complicated than that
Brand Building
Brand related search queries tend to be some of the most targeted, best converting, and most valuable keywords. As you gain mind share people will be more likely to search for your brand or keywords related to your brand. A high volume of brand related search traffic may also be seen as a sign of quality by major search engines.
If you build a strong brand when people search for more information about your brand and other websites have good things to say about your brand, these interactions help reinforcing your brand image and improving your lead quality and conversion rates.
Things like advertising and community activity are easy ways to help improve your brand exposure, but obviously branding is a lot more complicated than that
If you build a strong brand when people search for more information about your brand and other websites have good things to say about your brand, these interactions help reinforcing your brand image and improving your lead quality and conversion rates.
Things like advertising and community activity are easy ways to help improve your brand exposure, but obviously branding is a lot more complicated than that
Link Building
Search engines view links at votes, with some votes counting more than others. To get high quality links (that help your site rank better) you need to participate in the social aspects of your community and give away valuable unique content that people talk about and share with others. The below Google TouchGraph image shows a small graphic representation of sites in the search field that are related to SeoBook.com based on linking patterns.
Link building tips
* try to link to your most relevant page when getting links (don't point all the links at your home page)
* mix your anchor text
* use Yahoo! Site Explorer and other tools to analyze top competing backlinks
* don't be afraid to link out to relevant high quality resources
Link building strategies
* submit your site to general directories like DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, and Business.com
* submit your site to relevant niche directories
* here is more background on directories and SEO
* if you have a local site submit to relevant local sites
* join trade organizations
* get links from industry hub sites
* create content people would want to link at
Search Engine Indexing Limits.
1. Page File Size==> No more than 150 kilobytes (Before Images, CSS and other Attachments).
2. Amount of links==> No more than 100 unique links per page.
3. Title Tag==> No more than 70 characters.
4. Meta Description==> No more than 155 characters.
5. Parameters in URL==> No more than 2.
6. Depth of URL==> No more than 4.
Link building tips
* try to link to your most relevant page when getting links (don't point all the links at your home page)
* mix your anchor text
* use Yahoo! Site Explorer and other tools to analyze top competing backlinks
* don't be afraid to link out to relevant high quality resources
Link building strategies
* submit your site to general directories like DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, and Business.com
* submit your site to relevant niche directories
* here is more background on directories and SEO
* if you have a local site submit to relevant local sites
* join trade organizations
* get links from industry hub sites
* create content people would want to link at
Search Engine Indexing Limits.
1. Page File Size==> No more than 150 kilobytes (Before Images, CSS and other Attachments).
2. Amount of links==> No more than 100 unique links per page.
3. Title Tag==> No more than 70 characters.
4. Meta Description==> No more than 155 characters.
5. Parameters in URL==> No more than 2.
6. Depth of URL==> No more than 4.
On Page Optimization
It is hard to rank for keywords that do not appear in your page content, so each page should be organized around the goal of ranking for a specific keyword phrase, with some related phrases and related keywords mixed into the page copy.
Unique descriptive page titles play a crucial role in a successful search engine optimization campaigns. Page titles appear in the search results, and many people link to pages using the page title as their link anchor text.
If possible create hand crafted meta description tags which compliment the page title by reinforcing your offer. If the relevant keywords for a page have multiple formats it may make sense to help focus the meta description on versions you did not use in the page title.
As far as page content goes, make sure you write for humans, and use heading tags to help break up the content into logical sections which will improve the scanability and help structure the document. When possible, make sure your page content uses descriptive modifiers as well.
Each page also needs to be sufficiently unique from other pages on your site. Do not let search engines index printer friendly versions of your content, or other pages where content is duplicate or nearly duplicate.
Image Optimization
If your site has lot of images, you need to optimize them too as they can’t be read by the search engines. It’s very easy for a human reader to interpret the image into its meaning. However for a Web crawler the whole interpreting process is completely different. Search Engine spiders can only read text but not images. So you need to use some special tags for your images in order to give them some meaning.
Alt text : ALT text or Alternate Text is the text to describe your image when your mouse moves over an image on your web page. The text should be meaningful but short. You can use your relevant keywords as ALT text. If your browser can’t display the image for some reason, the alt text is used in place of that particular image.
File name : always use meaningful file name for your images, use names like “apple-iphone-cover.jpg” instead of meaningless “DSC24045.jpg”. Keep image file name same or similar to the ALT text.
Image Title : always use the title tag in images which will show the title as tool tip when a user moves his mouse over the image. Example of an image with title tag: [img src=” http://imagelocation.jpg” alt=”Image description” title=”Title of the Image”]
The "title" of a Web page is the name of the page as it appears on the top of your Web browser. For instance, the title of this page is How to Search Within Web Site Titles Using Google's Intitle: Syntax.
Sometimes you may want to find Web pages where one or more words appear in the title of the page. For instance, many Web pages may mention feeding iguanas, even if that's not the main focus of the page. If you'd like to find a page dedicated to iguana feeding, you can use the Google syntax intitle: to force Google to only list results that have the word "feeding" in the title. Do not put a space between the colon and the next word. The search would look something like this:
intitle:feeding iguana
This will find Web pages that are relevant to the keyphrase "feeding iguana," and it will only list results that have the word "feeding" in the title. If you'd like to restrict the search further, you could search for:
intitle:feeding intitle:iguana
You can also use the syntax allintitle: which only list results where all the words in the key phrase are in the title.
allintitle:iguana feeding
Image Linking : Whenever you want to link to your image, use the image keywords in your link text. Example: use “view an Apple iPhone”, instead of “Click here to view” as the anchor text.
We generate and send Google Analytics reports to you by email that tell you exactly what keywords your visitors searched for and even which search engine they used to find your site.
Increase Your Website Traffic In Less Than 1 Month!
Following are the main areas in a web page that search engines give more importance in their ranking algorithm:
1. Title =2.0
2. Link Popularity =2.0
3. The main body text =1.5
4. Domain name =1.0
5. Keyword Promience =1.0
6. Heading tags =0.5
7. Proximity of keywords =0.5
8. Bold or italic =0.4
9.Folder or filename =0.4
10. Meta description =0.3
11. Alt tag =0.2
12. Title attribute =0.1
13. Meta keywords =0.1
Total Score = 10
Unique descriptive page titles play a crucial role in a successful search engine optimization campaigns. Page titles appear in the search results, and many people link to pages using the page title as their link anchor text.
If possible create hand crafted meta description tags which compliment the page title by reinforcing your offer. If the relevant keywords for a page have multiple formats it may make sense to help focus the meta description on versions you did not use in the page title.
As far as page content goes, make sure you write for humans, and use heading tags to help break up the content into logical sections which will improve the scanability and help structure the document. When possible, make sure your page content uses descriptive modifiers as well.
Each page also needs to be sufficiently unique from other pages on your site. Do not let search engines index printer friendly versions of your content, or other pages where content is duplicate or nearly duplicate.
Image Optimization
If your site has lot of images, you need to optimize them too as they can’t be read by the search engines. It’s very easy for a human reader to interpret the image into its meaning. However for a Web crawler the whole interpreting process is completely different. Search Engine spiders can only read text but not images. So you need to use some special tags for your images in order to give them some meaning.
Alt text : ALT text or Alternate Text is the text to describe your image when your mouse moves over an image on your web page. The text should be meaningful but short. You can use your relevant keywords as ALT text. If your browser can’t display the image for some reason, the alt text is used in place of that particular image.
File name : always use meaningful file name for your images, use names like “apple-iphone-cover.jpg” instead of meaningless “DSC24045.jpg”. Keep image file name same or similar to the ALT text.
Image Title : always use the title tag in images which will show the title as tool tip when a user moves his mouse over the image. Example of an image with title tag: [img src=” http://imagelocation.jpg” alt=”Image description” title=”Title of the Image”]
The "title" of a Web page is the name of the page as it appears on the top of your Web browser. For instance, the title of this page is How to Search Within Web Site Titles Using Google's Intitle: Syntax.
Sometimes you may want to find Web pages where one or more words appear in the title of the page. For instance, many Web pages may mention feeding iguanas, even if that's not the main focus of the page. If you'd like to find a page dedicated to iguana feeding, you can use the Google syntax intitle: to force Google to only list results that have the word "feeding" in the title. Do not put a space between the colon and the next word. The search would look something like this:
intitle:feeding iguana
This will find Web pages that are relevant to the keyphrase "feeding iguana," and it will only list results that have the word "feeding" in the title. If you'd like to restrict the search further, you could search for:
intitle:feeding intitle:iguana
You can also use the syntax allintitle: which only list results where all the words in the key phrase are in the title.
allintitle:iguana feeding
Image Linking : Whenever you want to link to your image, use the image keywords in your link text. Example: use “view an Apple iPhone”, instead of “Click here to view” as the anchor text.
We generate and send Google Analytics reports to you by email that tell you exactly what keywords your visitors searched for and even which search engine they used to find your site.
Increase Your Website Traffic In Less Than 1 Month!
Following are the main areas in a web page that search engines give more importance in their ranking algorithm:
1. Title =2.0
2. Link Popularity =2.0
3. The main body text =1.5
4. Domain name =1.0
5. Keyword Promience =1.0
6. Heading tags =0.5
7. Proximity of keywords =0.5
8. Bold or italic =0.4
9.Folder or filename =0.4
10. Meta description =0.3
11. Alt tag =0.2
12. Title attribute =0.1
13. Meta keywords =0.1
Total Score = 10
Site Structure
How should you structure your site?
Before drafting content consider what keywords are your most important and map out how to create pages to fit each important group of keywords within your site theme and navigational structure based on
* market value
* logical breaks in market segmentation
* importance of ranking in building credibility / improving conversion rates
You may want to use an Excel spreadsheet or some other program to help you visualize your site structure.
Make sure
* your most important categories or pages are linked to sitewide
* you link to every page on your site from at least one other page on your site
* you use consistant anchor text in your navigation
* you link to other content pages (and expeically to action items) from within the content area of your website
If you are uncertain how deep to make a portion of the site start by creating a few high quality pages on the topic. Based on market feedback create more pages in the sections that are most valuable to your business.
Before drafting content consider what keywords are your most important and map out how to create pages to fit each important group of keywords within your site theme and navigational structure based on
* market value
* logical breaks in market segmentation
* importance of ranking in building credibility / improving conversion rates
You may want to use an Excel spreadsheet or some other program to help you visualize your site structure.
Make sure
* your most important categories or pages are linked to sitewide
* you link to every page on your site from at least one other page on your site
* you use consistant anchor text in your navigation
* you link to other content pages (and expeically to action items) from within the content area of your website
If you are uncertain how deep to make a portion of the site start by creating a few high quality pages on the topic. Based on market feedback create more pages in the sections that are most valuable to your business.
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