Google has added a new line of code to the AdSense Code setup page. If you login to AdSense to copy and paste new revised code to your pages, you will see the new code. The old code still works, so there is no need to update your code (at least, not yet). JenSense has her thoughts on this from Sunday. For example, I have a channel named "Cartoon Barry", the date I generated the new code was on the 26th of September, 2006. You can see that Google inserted "//2006-09-26: Cartoon Barry" between the google_ad_type and google_ad_channel code.

google_ad_type = "text_image";
//2006-09-26: Cartoon Barry
google_ad_channel ="3343792610";

So this tells people that the ad channel id 3343792610 is named by me as the Cartoon Barry channel.

We have to threads talking about this change, and some people are worried.

The difficulty for us is the severe paranoia Google have about telling us anything - even stuff as simple as this. Thanks to the paranoia at Googleplex this simple change will no doubt have all of the conspiracy theorists (including me :) ) running off at a tangent for a while. Whereas coming forward with information that clearly has no reason to be held secret would be a positive step.

One person thinks that this will lead to:

This it would seem, is a move by Google in preparing to perhaps hide Publisher IDs and perhaps require Publishers to indicate where they are displaying Ads......

Until we know more, speculation at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

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You've all seen the adverts. "Freelance writers wanted!" they scream from the pages of just about every freelance jobs site on the Internet. "Get paid to blog!" To many people, this sounds like some kind of dream job. If you keep a blog yourself (and Google says that a few thousand of us do), then the chances are you're currently blogging for free, either because you see blogging as a good opportunity to drive traffic to your website, convert traffic that's already there into sales, or just because you feel you have something to say.

If this sounds like you, then of course you're going to jump at the opportunity to get paid for something you'd do for free. Who wouldn't? And if you're a freelance writer looking for work, you're probably going to jump at the opportunity to: you write, you make money. What could be simpler?

Well, the paid-to-blog business isn't quite that simple, unfortunately. You see, you're technically not being paid to blog. What you're doing is blogging on someone else's website, and being given a share of the Google Adsense profits your posts make - in most cases, 50% goes to you, the rest to the web page publisher.

Still sound good? It may well do. After all, on the Internet, content is king. There's good money to be made from Google Adsense (the program whereby you displays Google adverts on your website and are paid every time someone clicks on them). Isn't there?

Well yes, there is. But in order to make money from blogging on an Adsense site, you're going to need to be able to do more than just write. First of all, you're going to have to be able to identify a niche to write in. This can't be just any old niche, either: it has to be one which you can churn out content on, day in, day out - and content which people will want to read.

You also have to know how to drive traffic to the content you create. On the paid-to-blog sites, some of the traffic is already there: but in order to make real money from this type of writing, you'll need even more traffic than that. Where are you going to get it? What do you know about internet marketing? About driving traffic to websites? What do you know about search engine optimisation? You'll need knowledge of all of these things if you want to make money from blogging - and even if you have that knowledge, you'll still need the energy and enthusiasm to blog every day.

Say you have all of that. What can you make?

Theoretically, there's no limit to what you make. There are people out there making a very nice living from blogs and adsense. There are even more people, though, who aren't making a cent. Realistically, you're much more likely to fall into that second group. So, is blogging for money a great freelance writing opportunity?

In a word, no. Blogging networks are great places for people who'd like to make a few dollars per month doing something they'd happily do for free anyway, or for people looking for a lively blogging community to join. They're not for serious freelance writers who want to make a living wage from their writing.

Still want to make money from blogging? Find a corporate giant who needs someone to maintain their blog - and is willing to pay for it. Save the paid-to-blog network for your free time.

Amber McNaught is the owner of WritingWorld.org, a site which aims to help freelance writers find freelance writing jobs

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If you have joined the blogging revolution that is sweeping the net, and you think you might want to make a little revenue - or a lot of revenue - from your blogging efforts, you need AdSense tips for bloggers. Blogging has opened up an entirely new way of how non-technical people interact with the Internet, and now, anyone can publish anything about any topic - without having a website - and anyone can profit without even having a product! Adsense for blogs make perfect sense. Google's advertising programs are designed to work with sites related to the keywords for the ads that are being presented. Each time you add content to your blog, the Google spiders gobble it up. The more you update, the more the Google spider visits your page. Ultimately, you move up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for the topics that you write about. You see where this is going. The higher your search ranking, the more traffic you receive, which ultimately leads to higher revenue from AdSense ads.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discuss this topic in the ReveNow AdSense Forums.

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Email marketing once proved to be immensely effective, but the greedy and idiotic polluted the well by spamming the planet with everything from weight-loss products to sexual enhancement drugs and beyond. Because of the stench, filters and laws have been created to attempt to fix the problem, but still the Internet is polluted with more and more junk each day. So obviously, filters and legislation are not the solution, for consumers, publishers, or marketers.

Everyone has been left scratching their heads and asking... What do I do to avoid this crap and make the Internet mine again? How do I build my business and promote it without having to deal with email? After all, what's the point in spending money on email advertising campaigns when there is no guarantee that the emails will even reach their destination?

Enter... RSS. RSS is the perfect communication tool. It's applications far outreach those of email for marketing, publishing and personal communications. RSS is the answer to our communication woes.

Using RSS to create blogs for communicating with customers, affiliates, partners and family is far and away more effective and reliable than email ever was. As a marketing tool, it really packs a punch that email never could. The reason being is that blogs are targets for search engine spiders. They are themselves, a web presence, whereas email never was and never will be.

Just like a web page, search engine spiders hit blog pages and rank them. The difference between the static web page and the RSS feed is that web pages seldom update their content, RSS feeds, by design, are created to be dynamic and provide regularly updated content, in theory, depending on the blog owner of course. This prompts the search engine spiders to revisit and rerank them more often.

For writers, publishers and and anyone else with something to say, RSS has been a godsend. It has provided the answer to the question of what to do now. Blogging has replaced email for those who have become frustrated with dealing with the problems of email publishing and marketing. Publishers can now get their message out to their subscribers without the headaches associated with sending email, or posting static pages to the web. Even publishing an ezine to the Internet as a web page required the sending of email to make readers aware of the newest issue.

As with anything, there is a right way and a wrong way to do things, and blog publishing is no exception. Now that RSS has become the rage for marketing purposes, several people have taken it upon themselves, in the name of the almighty dollar, to pollute this well too. The newest rash of 'RSS tools' have created some issues of ethics and and credibility. With perhaps the honest intention of being search engine optimization tools, or an automated system for fetching content, this batch of stuff has too much potential for misuse. The result of misuse of these types of programs can be devastating. Already some of these programs have been banned from places like Google and Blogharbour because of this potential.

Programs such as these in the hands of the inexperienced, will cause future problems for bloggers down the road. More and more pages generated using these programs will be banned, and getting banned, right out of the gate, for a newbie, would be a sad thing indeed.

The right way to use blogging to increase your search engine presence is to publish good content. Period. Provide useful information to those who are looking for it. Become someone's trusted information provider, and you have a customer for life. Publish keyword rich articles that give the searcher what they are looking for... solutions for problems.

Publish your information regularly. Weekly is good, daily is better. Sending pings and things too often will get you blacklisted too.

And here is where networking comes in... Find content for your blog from article banks, where authors submit their work for reprint. List yourself in databases as one who accepts article submissions. Get to know other authors and publishers and share content with them. Syndicate your blogs in exchange with other bloggers. Watch your world explode with new opportunities.

Automation in business is a good thing, but it has its place. Nothing beats human communication when dealing with people and creating partnerships. Do you want to talk to an autoresponder? No, and I doubt anyone else does either.

Some of the new programs designed for the automation of article collection have legal issues to consider. The biggest being copyright infringement. Not every author wants their work reprinted, or they require control over where their work is displayed. (Which is as it should be.) Without manually seeking your content, you could very well find yourself being served papers for publishing someone else's work without permission.

Plagiarism is another issue. If you don't follow certain rules for reprinting contributory work, you stand to be hounded for plagiarism. Yet another sticky issue.

Some of the new programs mock safelists, or resemble FFA sites. Before long, those types of blog pages will become banned as well. Search engines will figure out a way to block non-informational blog pages, those that carry nothing but links or classifieds. (Is your head sore from hitting that brick wall yet?)

Still, there are other programs designed to post spam to blogs using the comments feature. This is referred to as comment spam. The only solution thus far, to battle comment spam, is to disallow your readers the option of leaving comments. This is a bad thing, because allowing your readers to interact with you is supposed to be one of the benefits of using this form of communication.

The makers of these programs may have had good intentions to start with, but have ultimately created Frankenstein's Monster. Many are stating that their programs are not spam, because they do not involve email. That is a cop out if I ever heard one. Spam is the transmission of unwanted stuff, whether it is sent to your inbox, or your blog, or even the search engines themselves. Search engines want relevant content, not pages of of keywords, or links. So feeding them page after page of nonsense is spam.

Everyone hates spam, except the spammers, so why be a part of something loathed by so many and embraced by a few? Bad business if you ask me.

The only real way to combat these issues is to simply not use the programs themselves. Do your due diligence and create a reputation as a trusted information provider, not a blog bomber, and your business will prosper. Using these programs will ultimately diminish your reputation and your livelihood.

Your customers are looking for information, a solution to a problem. Give that to them, not just endless pages of links. You will achieve your rightful spot in the ranks, and you stand a far better chance for longevity. There are good RSS tools available, you just need to look beneath the sales copy to find them. And if you are new to RSS and blogging, do some research. Find someone who knows, really knows what RSS is and how to use it, and ask some questions. Don't go out and spend buckets of money on something you're not sure how to use, because you could be doing yourself more harm than good.

A few good books to read some solid information on RSS and blogs...

RSS, Blogs and Syndication

RSS Advertising Secrets

Taming The eBeastie

Copyright ฉ 2005

The Trii-Zine Ezine http://www.ezines1.com/

Trina L.C. Schiller - http://www.trinaschiller.ws/

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As with any good web developer, the ability to time the changes Google will update your website and refresh the content for better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is in your favor. Welcome to the world of "Google Dance". The Google Dance is simply that the predetermination of when the actual update will commence.

What really happens is Google sends out spiders to crawl the Internet, usually done to DNS (Domain Name Servers), upon spidering all of the available tables it begins to go through each individual site and updates the content on to Google.com. Thus if you watch your rank on the Google Toolbar, you can tell when your overall page rank has changed.

Understanding SEO and what is necessary to improve your overall ranking. Webmasters have been looking for ways to increase the odds of guessing when the next spidering would commence. There are various versions and servers that go out and crawl thousands of servers at a time, it takes time to relay and decipher this information back to the web server that Google.com pulls its information from.

Some vendors have created programs that actually go out to the data centers themselves to find out approximately when the last index was kicked off. Depending on the information returned from the trace the exact time and date are pinpointed. Is there really that much of an advantage to doing it this way? It depends, if you have a vital update that you want to optimize your site, you may want to know when the last time Google visited your site for content to keep information fresh and relevant.

There are many data centers that Google uses to spider across the world. Each center has a specific region it covers and all the information is gathered in aggregate and returned back to populate Google.com. With this many data centers the chances for continuous indexing is good, but not guaranteed.

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com/. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

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We've added one additional format to the list of available ad formats: the small square (200x200). The small square supports text, image, and video ads, so using this format when opted in to both text and image ads will enable you to show a wider variety of ads on your pages. To view the small square, and all our formats, visit our Ad Formats page.
To implement a small square on your site, just follow our instructions. And while you're at it, take a moment to look at our ad placement and color suggestions to be sure you're using your new ad unit most effectively.
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Everyone knows that if your website has a high Google Pagerank, you have all chances to reach good search engine positions, to get serious partners, or simply get more money selling text links.

But how to get a high Pagerank? (Let's clarify: saying 'high Pagerank', we mean at least PR6)

Of course there are many different ways. You may start exchanging links with PR1-2 websites, then with PR2-3, then with PR3-4 etc? and after a year of this madness you'll probably get a result.
But till that time, your mailbox will burst from tons of "link exchange proposals" and your website will look more like a free-for-all directory. Or you may start writing articles adding your website URL in the bottom, but not everyone can do this, and it'll also require many months of efforts.

But here's the better way!

There are many websites with strong search engine positions and high , where you can buy text links for a certain fee. Depending on the strength of a website and the value of its links, it may cost from $10 to $3000 (and more) for a ROS (run-of-site) text link. Everything will depend on your budget and goals. If your goal is PR6 - it may cost for example $200 per month to reach it. Yes, it's not cheap, but it's only the first step?

So, you go ahead and buy the link(s); and after the next Pagerank update (generally once a month), you get your fair PR6 (let's suppose that it takes 1 month and $200).

During the second month you need to hurry up, and to organize several link exchange campaigns with other PR6 (or even PR7) websites. Remember: you're not a newbie any more - you're "PR6 website".

3-5 campaigns should be enough. This month will also cost you $200? BUT? after the end of the month, when you have several working link exchange campaigns, you simply stop buying text links and wait for the next update.

If you made everything correctly, you will not loose your Pagerank (maybe even increase it).

So here's the simple way to reach PR6 for quite reasonable price. Or course $400 may be a big amount for a young webmaster or a newbie. But it'll save you from many months of exhausting work, from headaches; and it'll save your time. Finally, you'll also be able to sell your own text links in order to return your investments.

Good luck.

About The Author

Olga Rose - webmaster of Dedicated Hosting Directory (http://www.dedicatedhostingdirectory.com/).

The website offers you full information about dedicated hosting, plus the review of top dedicated servers.

This article may be reprinted or published without the authors consent as long as the "Author" section and weblinks are kept intact.

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With tons of competition and copycats online, you need a trustworthy search engine expert to help you tackle the competition and outdo your competitors in internet sales. There are many ways to go about killing the competition online and as long as it is honest work by your search engine guy, your web site will reap profits from it.

Millions of people use search engines to find products and services online and many global companies grew from merely having a web site and search engine expert. To be precise, there are about 20 web pages added to the web every second. 85% of internet users use search engines to search for products and services online. With so many websites, how are your potential customers able to find your products and services?

-- Benefits of search engine optimisation --

1) Generate online sales and revenue

2) Advertise products and services globally

3) Greater market capitalisation of products

4) Create and establish brand name

5) Tap potential internet markets

Natasha works in Definite Web Designs Australia, providing SEO consultancy to Australian and US businesses.

(http://www.definiteweb.com/)

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Focusing a Keyword:
When people tell you to target the word "free" they are out of their minds. The single word is too general and has too much competition. I just did a search on google for "free" and it returned 5,080,000,000 results.

I am not saying that free should not be on your page, it is on most of mine. I am saying that keywords should define the product or idea. Free alone just does not get this done.

There are many different ways to find keywords for your website. Some good keyword ideas are:
• Words people would search for to find your product
• Data mine your site level search information if you have a site level search product.
• Problems your prospective customers may be trying to solve with your product or service (even if they do not know you exist)
• Keyword tags on competitors websites
• Visible page copy on competitors websites
• Related search suggestions on large search engines (such as Teoma or Yahoo!)
• Related term suggestion at smaller engines such as Gigablast, Vivisimo, Become.com and Snap
• Keyword groupings via tools such as Google Sets
• Lexical FreeNet – helps find related terms and ideas.
• Tag Cloud – free Folksonomy tool showing related terms. If your product name or brand are related to other common terms in your market, then you are doing a good job working your brand into the semantic language.
• Keyword suggestion tools (which are covered in the next section

Keyword Selection Tips:
The goal of keywords is to choose terms that will bring well targeted traffic to your web site. Each page on your site can be targeted for a few different keyword phrases. Typically I like to just do about 1 to 2 primary and 2 to 3 secondary phrases.
Single word keywords are usually not well targeted and hard to obtain.
Longer keywords are easier to rank well for and typically have better conversion rates.

Tagged: blog statistic, Google, google analytics, SEO.

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1.Website Analysis: In-depth analysis of the client’s website in order to fully optimize the content, structure and traffic flow. Access to detailed web log files are crucial in this stage.
2.Keywords Optimization: Identify, compare and select ultimate keywords/phrases. The stage involves extensive analysis of the competitor's web sites, meta tags and submitted keywords/phrases.

3.Meta Tags & Web Page Optimization: Meta tags are generated based on the selected key word/phrases and placed on the pages of the client’s web site.
4.Submission of Web Pages: Optimized web pages are submitted to leading search engines and categories for top placements and positioning.
5.Link Optimization: Add relevant external inbound links and outbound links to and from other websites. Link Optimization is also a significant factor in Search Engine Optimization. We have learnt from our experience that if websites links are properly optimized that can result into top search engine positioning and placement.
6.Reporting: There are many types of reports, but for the most part these reports can be segmented into 5 basic groups.

• Ranking / Positioning Report: Lists all keywords by search engines and their respective ranking. The detailed reports include ranking for root and branch pages.
• Original Ranking: Reports current ranking compared to ranking prior to the SEO campaign for each keywords.
• Submission Report: Lists the last time submissions were made to each of the search engines. The detailed reports include specific submission information to the directories.
• Link Report: Lists all new external inbound links from other websites and external outbound links to other websites.
• Search Engine Maintenance Report: Journals all activities associated with a SEO campaign.

7.Maintenance: Analyze results and revise tactics to maintain or improve search engine positioning.
Optimization work continues long after the optimized site is launched. The continued areas of effort fall into 4 basic categories:

• Analysis and revision of page optimization: To maintain top ranking, SEO Analysts must evaluate the results and make tactical modifications based on performance observations.
• Adaptation to search engine algorithm changes: Search engines are constantly modifying their ranking algorithms. It is not unusual to see several changes each year for each search engine. These changes must be identified and analyzed in order to maintain top rankings.
• External link structure maintenance: Websites change their design. These changes can affect or "break" inbound or outbound external links which can adversely affect website ranking.
• Continued submissions to search engines:Over time, search engines "clean house" and drop older site pages from their database. Sometimes pages are dropped inadvertently. Whether purposely or not, search engines must be monitored continually to be sure website pages are properly indexed or resubmit pages that have been dropped. To improve positioning or placement in search engines, web pages should be re-submitted over the period of time.

Search Engines & Directories

Continuum Systems has short listed the following leading search engines and directories. Clients may choose to include any of the search engines and directories in their promotion plan.

From Continuum Systems

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SEO's top of online marketing tree

Simon Hayes

A NEW breed of consultant is earning up to $350,000 a year marrying marketing pizzaz with tech savvy to help companies and wealthy individuals improve their rankings on Google searches.

Underlining the importance of sites such as Google, Yahoo and ninemsn searches to the growing digital economy, the "search engine optimisation" consultant is now top of the online marketing tree.

Commanding sky-high salaries, SEOs carry a bag of tricks to massage clients' search rankings, helping them appear higher up - or in rarer cases, lower down - the list in search results.

Search engines use "bots" - software that automatically scans the web for new and changed pages - to document and catalogue content.

The engines then employ complex algorithms to rank web pages according to their importance to internet users.

The job of the SEO consultant is to redesign websites so they attract the attention of bots and receive the best possible ranking. The higher a site's ranking, the more likely internet users will click through to the web page.

Because Google looks at two major factors - the relevance of the page's content to a search, and the number and quality of the links to that page - SEO consultants are forever rewriting web content, and trying to generate additional links to clients' sites.

The easiest way to get a link is to rent space on a "link farm", a simple web page that contains only links to other sites. Search engines count the links, and rate those pages more highly.

Getting a link from a government or educational site is more valuable, because Google ranks them higher, so SEOs sometimes pay ordinary websites to link to their clients' pages.

"I've never seen it in Australia, but there are government sites elsewhere in the world where $50 a month is a lot of money," said Zak Asani, director Sydney SEO firm Found Agency. "There's a web site for the ministry of energy in a Latin American country. I don't know how the web master got away with it, but there's a link on the home page.''

More commonly, SEOs buy text link ads on newspaper websites and blogs in an effort to convince Google their sites are valuable. Fees range from $US20 a month for an Australian blog all the way up to $US1750 for The Wall Street Journal website.

Right at the bottom of the pile are "link monkeys", computer experts in developing countries who are paid by SEOs to put in links on other sites by typing comments into guest books or submitting information to online directories.

If you have a background in technology, marketing or journalism, there could be a place for you as an SEO consultant, with salaries ranging from $40,000 up to $350,000 depending on skills and experience.

"We just get people with no experience and train them up," Mr Asani said. "Finding people with experience is very difficult."

Mr Asani and his team work for clients such as News Limited's real estate classifieds site realestate.com.au and the Fast Impressions speed dating agency.

"We have had a couple of individuals who were wealthy who wanted negative references to themselves disappeared, which was an expensive exercise," he said. "You've got to optimise the 20 sites below them so the (negative reference) is moved down. We had one individual pay $100,000 plus because there was a (press release) about him on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission website that ranked No.2 when you searched for his name.''

All this self-promotion and manipulation is not surprising, given the amount of credence placed on the internet as a research tool.

"From time to time our consultants will Google candidates to see if they have a fraudulent background, for examples by reading press articles and ASIC files,'' said Jane Bianchini, national manager of recruitment firm Candle ICT.

Googling candidates has turned up all sorts of things, including one candidate for a senior management position who was a clown in his spare time.

From http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au

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Google doesn't like porn. Not only that, but Google doesn't like salacious references couched in irony, copy concerning scantily clad people or anything with the whiff of fleshy impropriety. If Google were an individual, he might be described as something of a teetotaller.

So it's no surprise that prominent blogger and AdSense publisher Coolzor received a warning letter from Google asking him to alter a post that contained nude photos and references to porn. The post in question isn't exactly XXX fare; it intelligently discusses a European advertising campaign that includes photos of world leaders in compromising positions. Adult comedy surely, but pornography worthy of censorship?

Coolzor decided to censor the images in his post, but his situation is similar to that of other publishers across the Web who find themselves affected by Google's content guidelines. Some would call it the price of doing profitable business, while others would bemoan the idea that Google is censoring intelligent conversation for the sake of profits. In Coolzor's case, surely an algorithm unable to parse social commentary from smut must be at fault.


Google needs to do a better job of policing AdSense. By better job, I mean it needs to hand review takedown notices from time to time. An intelligent human would understand the difference between Coolzor's post and, say, Fleshbot.

It's not really an economic argument, since Google profits from more automation, not less. It's made up of engineers, not social workers. But the company would engender a lot more plaudits if it took a human interest in its human publishers.

Call that a feel-good argument if you will, but when your customers are chatty bloggers in the business of directing conversational traffic, it's not a bad idea to show a little love.

P.S.: Remember when people thought Google Checkout could help the adult industry make online transactions?

posted on Thursday, September 07, 2006 3:08 PM by Steve Bryant

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Search Engines are hard to tame, that's for sure. But if you can get on their good side, search can be your biggest ally when it comes to generating tons of free traffic to your business web site. Not many people understand how search engines think. So, search engine "optimization" ends up either ignored or left up to highly paid experts.

You can do this yourself, or at least very affordably

Here's a quick tip that you can put to use immediately that doesn't require any specialized knowledge of the Internet. You can do this yourself if you know how to program HTML. Or, if you don't, you can hire someone far more affordably than a Web Marketing guru to handle this for you. In fact, if you're considering hiring a Web promotion expert to maximize your website's placement in the search engines, you're really better off doing as much of the housecleaning yourself as you can, before you call in the big guns. Otherwise, you'll waste your money having them take care of trivial things you could handle yourself.

What Do Search Engines Think About?

Before I let you in on this simple secret, let me explain a little bit about how search engines "think". You see, the job of a search engine, like Google, for example, is to make sure that people find a web page that's incredibly likely to have the exact information they're hunting for. The search engine does this by measuring and comparing two aspects of billions of pages: Popularity and Relevance.

Don't get me wrong, just because it's two things, doesn't make it easy. To compute popularity and relevance requires tons and tons of processing power. In fact, Google only updates its popularity information once a month or so because it's such a huge effort.

Is Your Page "Relevant"?

To determine whether your page comes up when someone searches, Google asks of your page: "Are you relevant to this search?" For example, a certain page might be the most popular page about socks and have the best information about socks you would ever want. But, if you're looking for a new muffler, that page is not at all relevant, now is it?

Is this Accident Making Your Whole Site Less Relevant?

Having the world's best information on mufflers isn't enough to get you to the top of the heap, either... not if you make this easy mistake that seems to happen on nearly every web site at one time or another.

What is this silly mistake made on too many websites? Broken Links. You might recognize the error you see when you click on one and your browser says "404 Not Found" or "404 page not found".

Intelligent search engines will subtract points from your search relevance if you have broken links on your web site. Not just your home page, mind you - anywhere on your site at all. You see, the search engines view broken links as "stale" content. And as we covered earlier, the job of the search engine is to give the best possible results.

Maybe you've kept old links around when your web site was redesigned. Maybe you've linked to a buddy's business, and now that web site is long gone. Maybe it was a simple typo... Hey! It could happen to anybody.

In the end, having broken links anywhere on your website will hurt your placement in search engine results. Before calling in an expert to help you with your search engine placement, make sure you double and triple check your web site for broken links.

Daiv Russell is a Web Marketing Strategist at Envision Software - http://www.Envision-Web-Promotion.com - Learn the secrets behind Envision's 4C Web Marketing System and see how we turned our web site from a dull, zero-traffic dead zone into a lead-generating powerhouse. http://www.EnvisionSoftware.com/Internet-Marketing-Secrets.asp

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The Budget Webmaster's 6 Step Guide to Improving Existing Rankings in Google

You know the scenario. You get an occasional click from Google for a certain keyword. You go to find out why you aren't getting more clicks, and you find out that you're ranked in the 30's, 50's, or heaven forbid, the 300's. "Great", you think, "I finally get ranked for a good keyword and it's a worthless ranking".

Not necessarily.

If you got ranked for a keyword you wanted At All, the game's not over yet. If your site's content is geared towards that subject, you can get your ranking in search engines increased, at no cost. How?

The first thing you want to do is find out how well you are ranked for this keyword. For Google in particular, this used to be a difficult chore. In the old days of 2003, you'd spend your valuable time doing a search on your desired keyword, then a sub-search for your site, and crawling through pages of listings to find out exactly where you stood.

Now there is hope in the form of the following website. Direct your browser to:

http://www.googlerankings.com/index.php

You can use this site to find out what number you come up for in the Google listings, which can be very powerful information if used correctly. If you're ranked in the top 1000, you have a shot at raising your listing for that page by tweaking the page to be a little more relevant.

So, secondly, you have to know how good a shot you have at getting a better listing. Go to:

http://www.searchguild.com/difficulty/

I posted a tip about this a month ago, and it's also in the free optimization Guide I released the week of March 7th. It tells you how hard it is to rank well for certain keywords in Google. You'll need a free Google API key to use it.

Now that you know your chances, the third piece of information you need to know is how much traffic you can expect. Digital Point has a free tool that gives an approximation of how many hits per day a good ranking gets. Access it here:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Okay, let's say everything checks out so far. You rank in the top 1000. The term you want won't be that hard to get, and will get you enough traffic per month to justify your efforts.

Our fifth step is to take the term you chose and optimize your page.

This site does periodic reports on the search engines, and their February report gives their analysis of what the best ranking pages in Google have in common. And as a free bonus, it will also tell you what Yahoo wants. Follow the following link for details-http://www.gorank.com

Now that you know what to shoot for, you need to know how the page you want will measure up- you need to calculate your keyword density. You can also do the sixth step at gorank.com - it has a free tool that will calculate it for you. Prepare your page with that in mind, re-upload, and you're almost done.

Great, you're all set. Now you should submit your site to Google, right?

Wrong. Absolutely not. If you can help it, you should never, ever submit any page of your site to Google. Let it find you. HOW it finds you can affect your page rank. I don't mean that there is a standard penalty for submitting. There's been speculation on that for a while but I have yet to prove it matters.

What I DO know from personal experience and testing on my member's sites, is that getting the Googlebot search engine spider to happen upon your site shaves up to 6 weeks off the standard time it takes for indexing. You can show up in Google in as little as 4 days.

Which site links to you can also affect your Google Page Rank. While this is not as important as it once was, it still carries significant weight- my site didn't start getting spidered on a daily basis until my Page Rank increased to 5.

So even if the spider comes to your site on a Monthly basis, you're better off waiting for the spider to come back by. That's the seventh step, let your page be re-discovered with it's great new changes.

And yes, there's an even faster, better way to get Google.com's search engine spider to re-index that page, but that's another article, isn't it?

For more free traffic tips, subscribe to her newsletter at ftdsecrets-subscribe@topica.com or visit her feed enabled blog: http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/blog

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