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Google has launched it’s analytics course at http://www.conversionuniversity.com This is an online video course that takes you through how to use Google analytics. Most people have using the google analytics very confusing indeed, even though it is an extremely good and free online analytic software. Anybody with a Google account to subscribe to using Google analytics on their websites.
In addition to learning how to use Google analytics course, you can be a qualified on Google analytics by taking the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ). However, you will need to register with $50 USD, to take the test. Here’s what Google says
” The Google Analytics Individual Qualification is a proof of proficiency in Google Analytics that is available to any individual who has passed the Google Analytics IQ test. An in-depth, step-by-step online course is provided to help you prepare for the test.”
To read the rest of the FAQS on Google analytics go here http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/bin/static.py?page=iq_faq.cs
Written by Salihu Ibrahim on March 6th, 2009 with no comments.
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There are many aspects in regards to search engine optimisation. There are on-page procedures such as optimising meta tags, titles, page copy, urls, alt tags and the like. We also know that another important aspect is off-page seo whereby a lot of time and effort is put in in order to obtain quality inbound links to your site. This normally takes the shape of directory submission, article writing and submission, competition analysis, social media marketing and blogging to name a few.
These are all crucial elements of search engine optimisation and are a major part of any seo specialists daily chors.
One element of SEO that can be easily overlooked is the building of a web site that is not only “user friendly” but also “search friendly”. By “search friendly” we mean that the search engines can crawl and spider your site unimpeded which will enable it to extract all of your content and in turn index it within the search engines database. After all, what use is getting thousands of inbound one way links to your site, if your site is not user or search friendly?
There are a number of things worth considering when building a user and search engine friendly web site. They are:
1. Use as much text as possible in the form of HTML - Search engines love plain text. They are not able to read images, video files, audio files or flash, so try to not use too much of these in your site design.
Another thing to consider is that some sites make users log in in order to view certain content or use a form to find content. Both of these are bad. Spiders/crawlers do not know how to log in to your site or fill out a form in order to find your content. So if you want your content to be indexed by the search engines, stay away from this. If you MUST do this, try to produce a snippet of the content to entice users to log in. That way the spider at least has something to chew on.
2. Make your urls understandable - This means creating urls such as www.mysite.com/how-to-bring-up-your-children.html and NOT www.mysite.com/children/article-09876R-YTUR-4tr.html. As you can see the first url is not only “user friendly” but is also “search engine friendly” meaning that the search engines read more meaning and relevance into this url than the second one. Dont forget also that if you were to copy the second url into an email, your signature or post on a blog etc it wouldn’t be totally clear where the link was going. This cannot be said for the first url.
3. Structure your site well - This means making your site as flat as possible. Instead of structuring your site in way that means a user has to click 10 times before reaching their target make the content a maximum of 4 clicks away or less.
4. Design your site for users NOT search engines - As much as possible treat the search engines as if they were human beings manually scouring your site for content to index. If it is easy for humans to find what they are looking for on your site, logic says that the spiders will also find what they are looking for and index it. The more “speedbumps” you put in the way of spiders, the slower your site will be crawled and indexed (if at all).
5. Content is king - One of my favorite expressions which is so true. Great content has many benefits, after all, its what we are all after, even the search engines. The search engines job is to find “relevant” search data. When the search engine starts dishing out “irrelevant” results, thats the time when it is going to become out of favour with web users who will move onto another engine.Having great site content has many benefits such as if your content is good and original, people will want to link to it and your site, so its a good way of building natural links which is something that google likes. If you write good genuine creative content on your topic you will start to become an authority in your chosen field meaning more links and brand/site awareness.
The more content you have the more opportunity you will have of inserting your keywords making it look as natural as possible to the search engines. Although keyword density is no longer a major factor with search engines, it is something that needs to be done.
Well, thats the end of this article with some tips on making your site not only “user friendly” but just as importantly “search friendly”. It is something that can be easily overlooked especially as gaining backlinks is viewed as THE most important SEO practice at the moment.
Overlook it at your peril!!
Until next time…
About the Author: Rob Griggs is an SEO specialist based in Spain. For further information on his web design and seo services, please visit his search engine optimisation spain web site.
Written by Salihu Ibrahim on September 12th, 2007 with no comments.
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After clicking search button, check below for search results.
Have you ever thought about using expired domain names to make money for your business?. If not, you should be researching this aspect of online business so that you can add another income stream to your business.
There are many ways to make money using expired domain names.
1. you could park your expired domain name after acquisition and it will make you money.
2. you could use it to send traffic to your other sites.
3. you could develop the expired domain name site itself.
4. and many other ways.
For a comprehensive set of tools you can use to accomplish s successful expired domain name business go to http://www.domainersgazette.com/reference-guide-for-a-new-domainer-seomainer/trackback/
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Written by Salihu Ibrahim on September 9th, 2007 with no comments.
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The article teaches how to write your ads. The pitfalls of badly created ads and the gains to be derived from ads that sell.
Article by Tom Killian
Whether you are starting a new business or looking to attract new sales there are a few things you can’t afford. Losing potential clients to your competitor and wasting money on ineffective advertising.
Unfortunately, these things happen more often than not. So, why do some businesses do so well while others fail? It’s not due to more marketing dollars spent. Instead a strategic plan was evoked to produce an effective advertisement.
There are many important elements that go into producing an effective ad. First, let me start by saying that coming up with a great ad it isn’t rocket-science. There are no complicated formulas to follow in order to create an ad that grabs the readers’ attention.
Second, using just creativity can kill your ad. Let me explain. Creative ideas are just that, creative. Before you slap down an idea and call it “brilliant” take the few minutes and ask yourself the following questions:
* Who is my targeted audience?
* Does the ad clearly communicate my message?
* What is “unique” about my message?
* How does my ad compare to my competitors?
* What will motivate my targeted audience to respond?
Your ad has to be more than just creative. It must exude value in its message. Think of the reasons why you buy a product or service. Almost every reason for a purchase has some sort of value tied to it. Whether it saves money, tastes good or satisfies an emotional need, it serves a valued purpose.
Make Headlines Work for You
The headline is by far one of the most important elements in creating an effective ad. There are thousands of pages both in print and online that cover the subject of headlines. Why? Well, quite frankly, it makes or breaks an ad. The headline is in essence the voice of your ad. It shouts out: “Hey This Product Will Make You Rich, Here’s How!”
Rather than using: “Jane’s Homemade Cookies” use “Instant Smiles with Easy to Bake Homemade Cookies”.
Always use appealing keywords in your headline that attract attention or stir up curiosity. The goal is to get your targeted audience to read the rest of your copy. Consider using the following keywords when writing your headline:
New, How, Why, Free, Save, Fast, Now, Announcing, Introducing, Wanted, Make, Grow, Sale, Limited, Guaranteed.
Next time you notice a headline that grabs your attention; use it and test it on your product or service. But always keep away from exaggerating your offer. You will quickly lose credibility if you are not honest with your targeted audience.
Writing Simple Yet Effective Body Copy
Once you accomplish transitioning the reader from the headline into the body copy, build momentum by relating to the viewers’ needs and satisfying their desires with each written word.
When writing the body copy; keep words simple and to the point. Use sub-headlines whenever possible and keep paragraphs short.
It’s important to make it easy for the reader to scan through the copy. If your offer consists of many benefits, use a bulleted list.
Avoid cluttering up your ad by trying to cram too much in the space provided. Eliminate unnecessary words that can drown your message.
Using Visual Elements
There are no set rules of where the graphics must be placed on your ad. However, when selecting illustrations or photographs, display your product or choose ones that are relevant to your offer.
Using graphics can enhance your message as well as grab a viewer’s attention when they glance around on a page. Remember, graphics can communicate a message before a single word is read.
Ask for the Sale While Creating a Sense of Urgency
Limited-time offers can create a sense of urgency, but giving your reader a valid reason why they should act now generates more sales. Again, use benefits to attract the reader to take action.
Is there a free gift with the purchase? Will it enhance their lives immediately? Is it a special one-time low price offer?
People love bargains. Use discounts to attract those who want to take advantage of your offer by providing a coupon with an expiration date.
Lastly, specify how your product or service can be obtained and ask for the sale. If it requires a phone call ask them to pick-up the telephone and call. If you require payment, tell them what forms of payment you accept and how to make them.
About the Author: Tom Killian is a partner at Media D’Vine. An Orlando, Florida based agency specializing in marketing and advertising. Tom has been successfully building online businesses for over 9 years. http://www.mediadvine.com.
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Written by Salihu Ibrahim on July 19th, 2007 with no comments.
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About Google’s “Supplemental Index” – and how to get pages (URLs) out of it.
If you don’t know what the “SI” is, crack open your copy of SEO Fast Start and begin reading at page 51.
“SEO Fast Start” was written by Dan Thies of seofaststart.com and you can download it free.
If you have pages in the Supplemental Index, here’s how to remove them, step by step. These instructions assume you have fewer than 1000 pages on your site. If you have more than that, read them, follow them, and then watch this space for further instructions on how to troubleshoot a larger site.
1) Start by going to www.google.com, and clicking the “Advanced Search” link to the right of the search box. In the advanced search form, select “100 results” from the drop down menu, and type your domain name in where it says “Only return results from the site or domain.” Then click the Google Search button.
2) The search result page (SERP) will probably say something like “1-100 of 682 results.” If they’re showing you less than 100, skip to step 4.
3) Scroll to the bottom of the page, and look for the numbers (1 2 3 4 etc) under the Gooooooooogle graphic. Click on the largest number (for most sites, the number 10). This will take you to the last page of search results.
4) Scroll down to the bottom of the last page of search results, and look for a link that says “repeat the search with the omitted results included” – click that link.
5) This will take you back to page 1, showing 1-100 of however many results.
Now, as you move through these search results from page to page, you will notice that some of the pages are labeled as a “Supplemental Result.” Bummer, eh?
Introducing The “Buddy System”
Just kidding… we learned all about the buddy system at camp, right? If you ever let your buddy get out of sight, one of you will be eaten by a bear. What we’re going to do next is similar to the buddy system anyway.
You have two kinds of pages (URLs) – either they’re in the main Google index, or they’re in the supplemental index. Actually you may also have some pages that aren’t in either index, but that’s a whole other problem that I am not going to solve today.
If you have the time, make a list of all the “supplemental” pages, and all the “main index” pages. I’m sure there’s some easier way to do this than doing it by hand… but I don’t know what it is. That’s why I say, if you have the time. Maybe you’re real busy. I don’t know. Maybe too busy to deal with this whole SI problem. If you are too busy, pick ten (10) of each, or some other number you can manage with.
For every page that’s in the SI, pick a page that’s in the main index to be it’s “linking buddy.” So if Page A is in the main index and page B is supplemental, maybe Page A can be Page B’s linking buddy. Now, go put a link on Page A that points to Page B. It helps, of course, if these pages are logically related in some way. Do this for all of your linking buddies.
Wash, Rinse, Repeat…
Now go away for a couple of weeks. Take a trip to the islands or stay at home and get some work done – maybe do some work to promote your web site so that it has more PageRank to begin with (start reading at page 63). Then repeat the steps above, observing which pages have just gone from the supplemental index to the main index, and giving those pages a little time before you assign them to be another page’s linking buddy.
If you discover that the number of supplemental pages far outnumbers the pages that are actually in the main index, so that you can’t find a linking buddy for everyone, you may want to look at your site structure (Chapter 4, don’t make me look up the page #), and of course, you could always help yourself out by building more links.
This process can be time consuming, but as long as you’re doing a reasonable job of building links to your site, you shouldn’t have to keep doing this stuff forever. Moving pages into the main index means that those pages can now participate in building your site’s PageRank, and that they can pass link reputation to your other pages.
It’s a good thing. Trust me. Supplemental results aren’t the end of the world (thanks for letting us know, Matt Cutts) but they aren’t a delicious chocolate sundae either. I prefer sundaes. That’s why I need to go to the gym.
For large sites (over 1000 pages), see you next week…
If your site has more than 1000 pages, you should be able to find a few supplemental pages by following the steps above, but what you really want to do is use a tool like GSite Crawler to spider your site and map out all the URLs, then check Google to see which ones are supplemental.
I’ll be back next week with details on how to crawl your way out of the supplemental index with a large site.
For anyone who found that this moved a little too fast for you, please read SEO Fast Start (it’s free) and get up to speed. Thanks!
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Written by Salihu Ibrahim on July 17th, 2007 with no comments.
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Anybody who monitors their rankings with the same vigor that we in the SEO community do will have noticed some fairly dramatic shifts in the algorithm starting last Thursday (July 5th) and continuing through the weekend. Many sites are rocketing into the top 10 which, of course, means that many sites are being dropped at the same time. We were fortunate not to have any clients on the losing end of that equation however we have called and emailed the clients who saw sudden jumps into the top positions to warn them that further adjustments are coming. After a weekend of analysis there are some curiosities in the results that simply require further tweaks in the ranking system.
This update seems to have revolved around three main areas: domain age, backlinks and PageRank.
Domain Age
It appears that Google is presently giving a lot of weíght to the age of a domain and, in this SEO’s opinion, disproportionately so. While the age of a domain can definitely be used as a factor in determining how solid a company or site is, there are many newer sites that provide some great information and innovative ideas. Unfortunately a lot of these sites got spanked in the last update.
On this tangent I have to say that Google’s use of domain age as a whole is a good filter, allowing them to “sandbox” sites on day one to insure that they aren’t just being launched to rank quickly for terms. Recalling back to the “wild west days” of SEO when ranking a site was a matter of cramming keywords into content and using questionable methods to generate links quickly I can honestly say that adding in this delay was an excellent step that ensured that the benefits of pumping out domains became extremely limited. So I approve of domain age being used to value a site – to a point.
After a period of time (let’s call it a year shall we) the age should and generally has only had a very small influence on a site’s ranking with the myriad of other factors overshadowing the site’s whois data. This appears to have changed in the recent update with age holding a disproportionate weíght. In a number of instances this has resulted in older, less qualified domains to rank higher than newer sites of higher quality.
This change in the ranking algorithm will most certainly be adjusted as Google works to maximize the searchers experience. We’ll get into the “when” question below.
Backlinks
The way that backlinks are being calculated and valued has seen some adjustments in the latest update as well. The way this has been done takes me back a couple years to the more easily gamed Google of old. This statement alone reinforces the fact that adjustments are necessary.
The way backlinks are being valued appears to have lost some grasp on relevancy and placed more importance on sheer numbers. Sites with large, unfocused reciprocal link directories are outranking sites with fewer but more relevant links. Non-reciprocal links lost the “advantages” that they held over reciprocal links until recently.
Essentially the environment is currently such that Google has made itself more easily gamed than it was a week ago. In the current environment, building a reasonably sized site with a large recip link directory (even unfocused) should be enough to get you ranking. For obvious reasons this cannot (and should not) stand indefinitely.
PageRank
On the positive side of the equation, PageRank appears to have lost some of it’s importance including the importance of PageRank as it pertains to the value of a backlinks. In my opinion this is a very positive step on Google’s part and shows a solid understanding of the fact that PageRank means little in terms of a site’s importance. That said, while PageRank is a less than perfect calculation subject to much abuse and manipulation from those pesky people in the SEO community it did serve a purpose and while it needed to be replaced it doesn’t appear to have been replaced with anything of substantial value.
A fairly common belief has been that PageRank would be or is being replaced by TrustRank and Google would not give us a green bar to gauge a site’s trust on (good call Google). With this in mind one of two things has happened; either Google has decided the TrustRank is irrelevant and so is PageRank and decided to scrap both (unlikely) or they have shifted the weíght from PageRank to TrustRank to some degree and are just now sorting out the issues with their TrustRank calculations (more likely). Issues that may have existed with TrustRank may not have been clear due to it’s weíght in the overall algorithm and with this shift reducing the importance of PageRank the issues that face the TrustRank calculations may well be becoming more evident.
In truth, the question is neither here nor there (as important a question as it may be). We will cover why this is in the …
Conclusion
So what does all of this mean? First, it means that this Thursday or Friday we can expect yet another update to correct some of the issues we’ve seen rise out of the most current round. This shouldn’t surprise anyone too much, we’ve been seeing regular updates out of Google quite a bit over the past few months.
But what does this mean regarding the aging of domains? While I truly feel that an aging delay or “sandbox” is a solid filter on Google’s part – it needs to have a maximum duration. A site from 2000 is not, by default, more relevant than a site from 2004. After a year-or-so the trust of a domain should hold steady or at most, hold a very slight weíght. This is an area we are very likely to see changes in the next update.
As far as backlinks go, we’ll see changes in the way they are calculated unless Google is looking to revert back to the issues they had in 2003. Lower PageRank, high relevancy links will once again surpass high quantity, less relevant links. Google is getting extremely good at determining relevancy and so I assume the current algorithm issues have more to do with the weíght assigned to different factors than an inability to properly calculate a link’s relevancy.
And in regards to PageRank, Google will likely shift back slightly to what worked and give more importance to PageRank, at least while they figure out what went awry here.
In short, I would expect that with an update late this week or over the weekend we’re going to see a shift back to last week’s results (or something very close to it) after which they’ll work on the issues they’ve experienced and launch a new (hopefully improved) algorithm shift the following weekend. And so, if you’ve enjoyed a sudden jump from page 6 to top 3, don’t pop the cork on the champagne too quickly, and if you’ve noticed some drops, don’t panic. More adjustments to this algorithm are necessary and, if you’ve used solid SEO practices and been consistent and varied in your link building tactics – keep at it and your rankings will return.
About The Author
Dave Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Inc. Beanstalk offers search engine optimization services to businesses small and large as well as providing consulting, training, copywriting and link popularity programs. To keep your site optimized and monitor its results you’ll want to bookmark their SEO blog and free SEO tools pages.
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Written by Salihu Ibrahim on July 13th, 2007 with no comments.
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The PageRank of a website is determined largely by the importance, or popularity, of the site based on the PageRank of the sites linking back to it. You must take advantage of quality backlinks to increase the PageRank of your site.
What are backlinks?
Plain and simple, backlinks are links that point back to your site. They are links you have exchanged with or received from other sites, as well as links placed strategically by you in forum posts, blog posts and comments, and the resource box of submitted articles. The submission of your site to website directories also provides backlinks that are highly favored by search engines.
Ideally these links, especially those placed in your forum signature and resource box of published articles (see my related article “Your Signature – An Internet Marketing Goldmine”), will contain keywords in the text of the link to create “anchor text.” For example, “Online source for anniversary gifts” instead of “Click here for online anniversary gifts”. Placing keywords in the text of the link anchors your keyword(s) to your url rather than anchoring “Click here” to your url. Not only do you have a backlink to your site, you have created a link of higher quality that includes the keywords you are targeting in your overall marketing campaign.
Why do I need backlinks?
The number of quality backlinks linking to a site is one of the main criteria used by Google and other search engines to rank and place websites. This statement, written by David Austin in a Feature Column of the Monthly Essays on Mathematical Topics, sums it up: “The fundamental idea put forth by PageRank’s creators, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, is this: the importance of a page is judged by the number of pages linking to it as well as their importance.”
With this all-powerful statement from the creators of Google, the importance should be clear: you need backlinks to attract the robots that determine the importance of your website. The value of your page, your website, in the eyes of Google’s robot lies in the number and quality of the links that it finds from other sites to yours. As the number of other popular, high-ranking sites find your site worth linking to grows, your popularity goes up along with your position in the search results.
In other words, quality backlinks are needed to entice search engines to stand up and take notice.
Backlinks are also helpful in leading visitors to your site. In this regard, backlinks are much like bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel to find their way back home. When your site is new, the robot will not place your site at the top of the results list immediately no matter how much time and effort went into the design and SEO of your site. Links from other sites that searchers are likely to find could lead them to your site if they look through the links page to find related products that might be available on your site.
In addition, links placed in posts to forums and blogs and the resource box of published articles have the potential of being seen and followed by thousands of visitors every day. If the forums, blogs, and article directories have high page ranks, you have more than just a link for visitors to follow, you have a quality link that will serve to increase your page rank as well as your traffic.
What are quality backlinks?
Quality backlinks are links from websites that have a higher page rank than your site, links from websites that have content or purpose related to your site (also known as relevance), links that include anchored text, and links that are built naturally over time, not a sudden increase in links just for the sake of having a high number of links.
Google has made it very clear that the importance of a site in the eyes of Googlebot is greatly influenced by the number and importance of the pages linking to it. In order to increase your PageRank, your website’s importance in the eyes of search engines, seek out links from higher-ranking sites that have related content, include anchored text in your signature for forum and blog posts as well as your resource box in articles, and let links build naturally over time. These practices will be a valuable part of your overall marketing strategy.
About the Author: Claudia Pate is the owner of The Anniversary Shop, traditional and modern anniversary gifts, and Common Sense Ebiz, guide to online business opportunities. Learn more about article writing to increase your PageRank with quality backlinks.
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Written by Salihu Ibrahim on February 17th, 2007 with no comments.
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So you have a slick, eye-catching web site with lots of fancy graphics and flash animation, congratulations! You excitedly type in your site’s url in Google’s search engine…and your site shows up in Google’s supplemental results.
What’s going on? What exactly are Google supplemental results and why would you not want your web site to appear in them? According to Google’s FAQ page, supplemental results are part of Google’s auxiliary index (main results are drawn from the main index) and pages, which appear on the supplemental listing, have “fewer restrictions” than those that appear on the main results page. They further say that the inclusion of sites on the main or supplemental index is purely automated and does not affect page rank at all.
In truth however, pages that appear on the main index will almost always show up first in a search. Supplemental search results will only show up if there are very few or no results at all in the main index. Plenty of older web sites also tend to populate the supplemental results page. Needless to say the supplemental results page is not where you want your site to end up. Ironically several people have emailed Google asking that their sites be included in the supplemental index!
So how does a site end up in the supplemental results page? And more importantly how does one get out or even avoid inclusion in the first place?
Several factors may affect your inclusion in supplemental results but keep in mind it is best to avoid these factors at the outset, as it is easier to stay out of supplemental results than to get out.
One of the most crucial factors to consider is the text content of your web page; whether it is in the title tag, description tag or actual web page content.
In the title tag, take care that you don’t use the same title for more than one page. Make sure that the title is actually related to the page contents and that is not very long or “spammy”. Google will almost always send pages that it thinks spam-ridden to the supplemental index. Another common error in title tags is the use of too many or identical keywords. These considerations also apply to the description tags as well; take care that text here is not too long, repetitive, spammy or unrelated to the page’s content. Another thing to watch out for in the description tag is the use of undecipherable language or using a different language than the contents’.
Just like in the title and description tags, using duplicate content text in several different pages will probably result in inclusion in the supplemental index. Web pages with little or no text content is another candidate for the supplemental index; image tags, prices and small descriptive text do not normally count as Google generally considers these as commercial page contents, destined for…you guessed it: the supplemental index. Long url’s or url’s with lots of dashes are also generally thought of as spam by Google which is the reason why many pages hosted by free sites end up in the supplemental index.
Aside from your web page’s text content, another important factor is the actual structure of your website; an orphaned page (one that is not linked from your site or others) and pages with poor or no backlinks may be relegated to the supplemental index, along with pages that are nested several pages deep in your web site. Pages such as these are thought by Google to be of lesser importance than better-designed sites, so off to the supplemental index they go.
Okay, so you didn’t take all these factors into consideration and now your beautiful web site is on the supplemental results page…what now?
The first thing you can do is to write some good content. A few lines of text won’t be enough-make sure it is relevant to your subject and that potential visitors to your site will enjoy reading it. That goes for all the pages in your website, try not to have less than 50 words on any page on your site. And if you have any text content that you “borrowed (copied)” from another site, now would be a good time to change them.
Rewrite your title and description tags to be as descriptive and relevant to your site as possible, but take care not to make them too long or contain repetitive keywords.
At this point you may also want to consider revising the linking structure of your web site; it is better to send all your back links to all the pages in your website rather than to just one page. Check to see that not too many of your pages are nested very deep within your website. You can probably get away with links three pages deep but two pages deep is much better. Don’t forget to check for any orphaned web pages!
Sometimes in spite of your best efforts in correcting all those common problems, one or more of your web pages still stubbornly show up in the supplemental results page. You might consider making some new, more prominent links to these stubborn pages from your home page. In some cases more drastic measures may be necessary like a complete reworking of the link structure of your entire web site, or even publishing them on a new url.
These are only the more common factors to consider if you want to avoid being relegated to the supplemental index results. As you can see, rectifying these issues after you’re website has already been placed in the supplemental index does not guarantee relocation to the main index; remember it is much easier to avoid being placed in the supplemental index than it is to be taken out. So do it right the first time and design your website accordingly, and hopefully you can enjoy the benefits of main index listing and the high result ranking that you wish for.
About the Author: Mikhail Tuknov, search engine marketing specialist is founder of Infatex (Search Engine Marketing Company). With an extensive background in Internet marketing, Mikhail Tuknov offers SEO, PPC, SEM services.
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Written by Salihu Ibrahim on November 29th, 2006 with no comments.
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By Kim Roach
Many webmasters are not using their websites’ traffíc to full potential. The Web is full of wasted advertising space. Chances are that even your website has some virtual wasteland. These are areas that often go unnoticed by even the most experienced marketers, resulting in the loss of thousands of dollars of potential revenue.
Below, four of the most underused online real estate spots are discussed as well as how you can reclaim these areas while maximizing your profíts.
1. 404 Error Pages
The dreaded 404 page is something that almost everyone has encountered in their online journeys. The most common reasons for landing on a 404 page include:
- a mis-typed URL
- an out-of-date bookmark
- a search engine link that is out-of-date
- an internal broken link that the webmaster hasn’t noticed
Surveys suggest that approximately 40% of users who run into a 404 Page Not Found error will leave your site, nevër to return.
However, as a webmaster, these pages should be customized in order to help the user find their way back to your website. To create your own customized 404 page, keep the following guidelines in mind.
Provide an explanation of what went wrong. A nice way to apologize would be to offer them a frëe report. By using this technique, your visitors will not only be impressed by your creativity, but you can also collect their name and email adress at the same time.
Provide a link to the site map. By redirecting them to your sitemap, they should be able to quickly and easily find what they are looking for.
Provide a search box for users to target in on exactly what they originally came for.
Use minimal navigation. This is not the place to put your entire site navigation. You simply want to pull them back into your website so that you are not losing any of your potential customers.
Some Good Examples of 404 error pages can be found at:
http://www.lockergnome.com/404
http://www.fool.com/error
2. Exit Strategies
Did you know that on average only 1 – 2% of your visitors will actually buy your product. This means that approximately 98% of your visitors are leaving your website without buying. Most of them will nevër return.
Fortunately, there is a way to tweak your website in order to take advantage of this lost traffíc.
You can salvage much of this traffíc through the use of exit pop-ups. Now, you may feel that these are outdated and annoying, but testing has shown that they work.
So, the next time that your visitor clicks on the back button, present them with a pop-up that will offer them a frëe report. By implementing this technique, you will be able to capture the name and email of many of your website visitors, allowing you to contact them in the future with additional information and product offers.
You can also use an exit pop-up to survey your visitors. Find out exactly why they didn’t buy or what type of information would have made them more interested. This priceless information can help you to improve your marketing techniques and increase your conversion rate.
3. Thank You Pages
Did you know that the “Thank You” page (the page you display after someone subscribes to your newsletter or buys your product) is one of the most responsive pages on your website?
The Thank You page provides a prime opportuníty for promoting some of your other products and/or services.
You can use this space to easily increase your online profíts. For example, why not use the following message on your thank you page after someone has subscribed to your newsletter.
“Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. Remember to chëck your inbox for your first issue.
In the meantime, I would like to introduce you to a product that I highly recommend for increasing your website traffíc at ….”
This is an easy way to send traffíc to an affilíate link so you can earn some additional revenue from what is often unused advertising space.
You can use this same technique for your order form confirmation pages. Thank the customer for their order and recommend they chëck out a related product. You could also offer an upsell to a higher-end version of the same product. Don’t take this space for granted. Order confirmation pages are some of the most highly responsive real estate on your site because the customer already has their credít card in hand.
Another great technique is exchanging thank-you pages with other web sites.
For example, if you have a website about fitness and you know of another website that caters to a similar audience, you can partner up and exchange advertising. To do this, you would promote the other person’s service or product on your own thank you page. By partnering together, you can both attract many more clients and/or additional salës.
4. Email Messages
If you are not regularly sending out an email newsletter, then you are failing to capitalize on existing traffíc. Delivering your own ezine allows you to make additional profít from the traffíc you are already receiving. Simply place an opt-ín box on your website and start collecting the names and addresses of your website visitors.
Of course, you will also need to offer them some valuable info in exchange for their name and email. A frëe report often works extremely well for this.
However, starting your own newsletter is just the beginning. You must also use this priceless space to optimize your revenue streams.
To produce additional profít from your email campaigns, simply place a small text box in each of your outgoing emails promoting one of your products or an affilíate product.
This is very similar to advertising, except you are placing your own internal ads instead of advertising for others. This is an extremely simple technique that many people miss out on. This one change can instantly produce additional salës, increased affilíate commissions, and more opt-ins for other lists you want to promote.
A small ad can be placed in a number of spots, including:
Order Confirmation Emails: Anytime someone orders from you, they should be receiving an email receipt to confirm their purchase. This is also the perfect time to promote a related product or service. People are much more likely to order when they are in the buying mood and already have their credít card out. This is why upsells and thank you page offers are so powerful.
“Thank you” emails: Whenever you send out a confirmation email to people who subscribe to your ezine, you should also be including some sort of promotion or ad within the email.
This is also the perfect time to offer them some “recommended reading” (i.e. affilíate links) If they have subscribed to your ezine, then they are obviously looking for additional information about a particular topic, so why not offer them some additional resources to help them in their quest for knowledge. These recommendations can be ebooks, membership sites, or even another newsletter that you operate.
Remember, your prospects are looking for products to fill their needs. If they don’t buy from you they will simply buy from someone else.
Unsubscribe emails: Do you send an email to confirm that someone has been unsubscribed after their request? If not, you should. This is a great opportuníty to make one last offer. Or, if you simply want to find out more about your departing subscribers, you could set up a survey to find out why they unsubscribed and how you can make the newsletter better.
Take a close look at your own web site and marketing process and start finding places that are not optimized to their fullest potential. Almost every website online has wasted space that could be optimized for promoting additional products.
Take action now so that your space no longer goes to waste.
About The Author
Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews and SEO-News newsletters. You can also find additional tips and news on webmaster and SEO topics by Kim at the SiteProNews blog. Kim’s email is: kim @ seo-news.com
Technorati Tags: quality articles
Written by Salihu Ibrahim on November 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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Recent changes in the Google Adsense program has many online website owners and marketers seriously concerned. Many have seen their Adsense profíts and income flatline… seen their four or five figure monthly Adsense income disappear overnight. For many the Google Adsense bubble has burst.
What happened?
First, Google made a change in its Adsense program, letting advertisers choose between putting their ads in the search results or on the content pages of Adsense publishers. Search won out and started to receive the higher bids. Search results convert better than content ads.
Next, Google has cracked down on Junk Adsense sites, like they should. These sites consisted mainly of software generated re-hashed search engine links and were totally annoying to say the least. But Google also cracked down on ‘squeeze pages’ or ‘affilíate landing pages’ – a lucrative source of income for many online marketers, mainly because these pages helped marketers build an opt-ín list or use permission based email.
The results of these changes produced an Adsense meltdown for many online marketers.
Some Internet marketers are speculating recent changes could even mean the death of Adsense. One online marketer, Scott Boulch even published a free report entitled ‘The Death of Adsense”.
Many affilíate marketers would agree with Boulch on some of his points, especially the obvious fact that using Adsense on your web content is starting on the bottom rung of the online marketing ladder. Instead of receiving pennies per clíck with Adsense, alert marketers and webmasters have already discovered that by using CPA (Cost-Per-Action) and direct affilíate links, they can produce significantly more revenue from their web pages. Why eärn pennies per clíck when you can eärn $5, $10 or OVER $100 per clíck?
But the fine people at Google are catching on…
In the past Google has made its own swing to the Cost-Per-Action direction with its referral system for the Firefox Browser and giving webmasters credít for signing up Adwords and Adsense accounts.
Many online marketers believe Google needs to expand on these baby steps and open their Adsense affilíate program up to third party products/advertisers. In a recent company statement Google offered some hope: “We’re always looking for new ways to provide effective and useful features to advertisers, publishers, and users,” the company stated “As part of these efforts we are currently testing a cost-per-action (CPA) pricing model to give advertisers more flexibility and provide publishers another way to eärn revenue through AdSense.” Basically, in cost-per-action, advertisers pay for leads, purchases or customer acquisition. It would help with the clíck fraud issue and the monetary returns could potentially make Adsense’s revenues pale in comparison.
As more and more commerce goes online… acquiring customers for such diverse services as ínsurance, real estate, telephone, marketing, web hostíng, travel, mörtgage loans, cable TV, banking… you name it, almost any service or product sold in the marketplace is now turning to the Internet for customers and lifelong clients.
Enormous sums of monëy will change hands. Perhaps, the most lucrative of these is customer acquisition. Advertisers are turning to the Internet and webmasters/marketers for acquiring these lifelong customers for their respective services and products. Businesses and companies are quickly realizing paying an attractive lead generating fee/commission is smart business. They quickly build a client base for their services or products and quickly recoup their expenses – realizing in the long run these leads will generate huge profíts.
It can also mean huge profíts for the CPA networks like ValueClick’s Commission Junction and Rakuten’s LinkShare who supply the advertisers with publishers and website marketers to harvest these leads. It can be a lucrative venture for all involved, especially for those online marketers who have cornered the search engines for lucrative niche markets in big ticket items. Even small ticket items pay quite well for those marketers who know how to market online.
Contextual advertising is fine, but CPA (Cost-Per-Action) will offer much better returns for the website owner. Making any profitable site much more profitable. It will and is opening up a whole area of marketing opportunities that nevër existed before we had the Internet. Creating a complex structure of advertisers, publishers and the Affilíate/CPA companies that connect the two.
Of course, cutting out the middle man has always been even a more profitable venture for most marketers. As more and more webmasters realize they can make much more with dealing directly with companies, rather than going through a middle process like Google Adsense or the countless other affilíate/CPA networks … online marketers can reap even bigger rewards.
For an online marketer when you get a telephone call or email from the CEO or the affilíate manager with a company or service you’re promoting with your website – you know you have made it! Dealing directly with a company usually means bigger commissions and special exclusive deals just for you or your sites.
Only fly in the ointment, all that extra paperwork and business wheeling and dealing. Many marketers and website owners like the idea of someone else handling all the tracking, collecting payments, promotional materials… they just like to sit back and build more websites and content. It gives the affilíate marketer a lifestyle that they are looking for on the web. They just like to market and promote with their sites and let someone else worry about the details. Therefore, there will always be a place for contextual ads like Google Adsense… “Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”
However, could CPA be a better alternative for the current Adsense contextual ads?
Google would be the natural choice for a middleman if there ever was one. Besides, many savvy marketers know the Google brand name is trusted online, any product/service promoted through Google would be an easy sell. Many argue Google already dominates the web, why should it not be the one to handle these CPA transactions through its Adsense program.
On the flip side, over countless updates and changes to its indexing, many webmasters have experienced more than a few negative dealings with Google. Many have won, many have lost in this Google Age, but all have realized riding the Google Search Engine is like running with the bulls at Pamplona, totally thrilling unless you’re one of the unfortunate few who get trampled in the process.
About The Author
The author is a former teacher who now works full-time online operating numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com. For the lastest trade information in your own industry try: http://bizwaremagic.tradepub.com.
2006 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
Written by Salihu Ibrahim on September 27th, 2006 with no comments.
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