Adsense Tricks Trips - How to Spring Clean Your Website

Spring is a wonderful time of year but it might not be so wonderful for our online business. The weather is getting nicer and people are spending more time outside, away from their computers. One way to get more people to come to your website is to do some spring cleaning and I don’t mean your house! 

Our websites can get stale and outdated if we do not clean them up periodically. There are lots of things you can do to freshen up your site and bring new life and new customers to your online business. 

1. Add a new section filled with resources, information and maybe even some special deals for your customers. Use relevant keywords to improve your ranking. For example: if you own a home decor business, offer decorating tips and advice. Show people how to decorate on a budget or how to redecorate with things they already own. By providing information and resources along with your products, you are giving people a reason to keep coming back. This is how you build trust with your visitors and get more sales.
Continue to read more here >>  SEO Tips: How to Spring Clean Your Website by Terri Seymour

Adsense Tricks & Tips - Top Tips for great Keywords by Google Adwords

Read more about the latest and best Top Tips for great Keywords by Google Adwords

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SEO: Do You Really Want Your Site on Page One of Google?

Do you really want your website on page one of Google for your chosen keyword phrase(s)? What do you want your online marketing campaign to accomplish for you?
I asked a potential new SEO Coaching client last week this first question. From my end of the phone call, it sounded as if he almost fell out of his chair!

I followed up by asking him if he could ever think of ANY reason for his website pages NOT to be found on page 1 in the Google SERPs (search engine results pages).
How ’bout you? Can you think of any reasons you’d NOT want your pages to be found for your targeted keyword phrases on page 1?

Keep in mind, I’m talking about your chosen keyword search phrases.
I can think of at least 3 reasons. Maybe you can come up with some of your own.

Is there Commercial Intent?
Let’s say you have not just a page 1 Google result, but you’re actually the first result. Here is an important question for you to ask yourself.
What is the commercial intent of this keyword phrase? Do the words contained in the keyword phrase give any indication of someone getting ready to spend money on a product or service like you offer?
For instance, compare these keyword phrases: Keyword Research, Keyword Research Specialist and Keyword Research Consultant. The latter 2 phrases give an indication of someone who is getting ready to spend money.

You can also Google the Microsoft Commercial Intent Tool and consider its’ results when evaluating your keyword search phrase choices.
If you are targeting a keyword phrase that has questionable commercial intention at best, is there any reason to really be found on page 1? Wouldn’t it be better to target more appropriate phrases instead?

If there’s no commercial intent, how does that help your online marketing?
Can you see where I’m going?

How Much Traffic Really Matters
Now, I’m giving you a choice: you can have a first page result (with commercial intent) and your position number is 4.
Your other choice is a different keyword search phrase with a second page result, position number 12, also with commercial intent.
So, the choice is obvious?
Well, I forgot to give you the rest of the details.

The first page choice has monthly search queries for its’ phrase of 3,240.
The second page result choice has monthly search queries for its’ phrase of 22,167.
Do you still believe that the best choice in this example is the first page result?
According to numbers from Aaron Wall’s site, approximately 6% of search users will click on that number 4 result in Google. That’s 194 visitors in a month.
This is figuring average title and description tags of typical online marketing ability to convert to a click. “Your mileage may vary.”

And for that second choice, the second page result? Over 1% should click on the search result, but let’s use just 1%. That’s 222 visitors per month.
Last time I checked, 222 is more than 194, so the second page result trumps the first page result, because the second page result has much more traffic than can convert to a transaction.

How Many Google AdWords Ads Show for your Chosen Keyword?
If you don’t see many AdWords ads, this should be a warning!
One of 2 problems exist (or both):
1. There isn’t enough traffic for AdWords advertisers to target the phrase.
2. There isn’t commercial viability for the phrase.
Either way, is a first page result going to help you? Probably not.

The Value of a Committed Searcher
Want a recipe to waste your time (or your employees’)?
Get a first page result in Google for your keyword search phrase and place your toll-free phone number in big numbers on the top right of each of your Web pages.
People clicking the first result in the SERPs are often less serious than those who go through the first few results or who continue searching onto the second page.
There may be something to be said for avoiding people who almost randomly click the first result and who may have impulse control “issues”.
Now, if you have a large staff to answer your incoming phone calls AND if your conversion rate from those calls is strong, then the potential problem I described probably isn’t a problem for your business.
On the other hand, if you are a solo professional, this strategy can be hazardous!
How are you going to perform your paid work when you get “Internet lookiloos” asking you questions they could get answered, if they would simply read a few words on your website?
Are these the best potential clients for your services or products and the best use of your time?
A second page result could bring you more serious potential customers, people who might be more likely to actually READ your website content, understand your products or services better and who might be more likely to convert to a transaction.
It’s sure something to think about.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against first page rankings for your online marketing. I’m just for thinking a little further down the road than JUST first page rankings.

About the Author
Marketing online since 2004, Paul Marshall can help you market on a budget. He’s an Online Marketing Consultants expert offering marketing services (and d-i-y Coaching). You can learn more about Paul on his Affordable SEO LinkedIn profile and at Strategic Web Marketing.net.

How Google Applies Science to Search (Part 1) By Kalena Jordan (c) 2008

Dr. Craig Nevill-Manning is a New Zealander who joined Google in 2000 as a Senior Research Scientist to develop more precise search techniques. Previously, Craig was an assistant professor at the Computer Science Department of Rutgers University, where he conducted research in data compression, information retrieval and computational biology. Before that, he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Biochemistry Department of Stanford University, where he developed a software suite used by pharmaceutical research laboratories to identify the role of particular proteins within cells.

A scientist at heart, Craig is probably best known as the developer of Froogle (recently re-named Google Product Search) and the founder of Google's software engineering center in New York City.

This article is a summary of his presentation at Webstock 2008.

Google's Spelling Bee

Craig started his presentation by talking about one of his first challenges in his job at Google: the spelling correction tool. As the popularity of the search engine grew, Google needed to be able to spell-correct lots of obscure words. So his solution was to take a sampling of content from the entire web. Craig's team came up with a algorithmic model and ran it over the web. He discovered that there were several correct answers to the same question. For example, words like "kofee" could mean either the searcher is seeking a cup of java or information about Kofee/Kofi Anan.

To combat this, Craig came up with an interesting solution: the "Did you mean?" alternative spelling option, based on predictive examples of searcher spelling patterns. You can see this in action if you type in "kofee anan" in Google. Above the search results is a line that reads: "Did you mean: kofi annan" and links to the search results for this spelling variation too.

But the research went even further. Craig's team worked out how to take into account the context of the search query by studying the two or three other keywords surrounding the query, for example "kofee cup" or "kofee anan". The research used the science of bigrams and trigrams to better understand how people search. Bigrams are groups of two written letters, two syllables, or two words, very commonly used as the basis for simple statistical analysis of text. So Craig and his team applied this knowledge to Google's spelling correction system and now, Google's algorithm can determine the searcher's intent with much more accuracy, based on the context of the search query.

As an example of the spelling challenges that Google faces, Craig showed the audience the huge number of ways "Britney Spears" is misspelled on the web. He said it's encouraging to see that the most popular spelling is also the most correct one. Scale is important!
Reach Out to Your Target Visitors with Web CEO!


Google Maps Lead to Apps

The Google team wrote the code for Google Maps many years ago but the code was actually built into your browser. When Google maps first launched, people took the dense data-script and worked out how to reverse engineer it for their own use. Google engineers decided to release an API key to make these mash-ups easier after seeing so many people reverse engineer Google Maps without Google's help. Now people can mash-up Google maps within minutes to create their own applications.

To show how easy this is to do, Craig took the audience through the steps to create an interactive application with Google Maps. In the space of about two minutes, he signed up for an API key, grabbed the HTML code and pasted it into his page. He then hacked the map to show Wellington Town Hall (our location) and made the point how easy it is to create really useful tools out of technology that is already available.

As an example, Craig showed the audience Seattle Bus Monster. This site uses an API key for Google Maps to make Seattle bus data and tracking available 24/7. Anyone who needs to catch a bus can look online and instantly find their nearest bus location and run to the bus stop in time to catch it. It's these types of interactive applications that add value to both corporate and government sites.

Craig referenced Rodney Brooks from MIT whose provocative paper "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" offered new logic and a completely different view of machines. The idea is that there is no center of control among robots so you should make lots of them; don't treat them so precious. Craig said developers should use this logic to create lots of small apps that you can replicate and tweak, rather than one big expensive app that can go horribly wrong. Scale trumps smarts every time!


Experiments in Scale That Have Impacted Google's Operations

Precision vs. Recall

Back in the early 90's, information retrieval on the web was limited to things like Lexus/Nexus. So at that stage, Google would take queries and apply it to the broadest possible search. This was great recall at the cost of precision. But Larry and Sergey wanted something better so they decided to use Boolean search. At the time it was heresy because everything was focused on recall. But the Google founders knew that things had to be super relevant so they developed an algorithm - the core algorithm. It was very simple and relied on Boolean search to determine relevancy.

Genomic Sequencing

In the mid 90's a large project - the Human Genome Project - was underway. The race was on to sequence the genome. Scientists decided to feed this out to a bunch of different people. They chopped up the genome for researchers everywhere and allowed it to replicate. The researchers mapped each chunk with genetic markers and computed a tiling path of tiny fragments.

Sequencing was very expensive, so the data was computed based on a minute number of chunks - very labor intensive. The sequencing took forever and reassembling was a long way off. But then a company came along that said they could do it faster. Sequencing becomes cheaper by automating the job using machines rather than individual people so this company used a clever computer algorithm to conduct the sequencing. This reduced the cost and the researchers were therefore able to reassemble more fragments and achieve a rough draft of the genome in 2000. This sequencing approach was the shotgun approach, where accuracy is lower, but the larger scale allowed the impossible to become possible.

Web Definitions

Google used to do a terrible job of defining terms. Craig noticed people were searching for "definition of...", or "what is a...." etc so he wanted the search engine to provide better results for these searches. He found lots of web pages that contained glossaries and definitions, so he hacked up a Perl script to get the glossary formats.

The first recall results were only 50 percent accurate. He wanted to improve this rate, so he did some experiments with the data. But he could never reach an accuracy level he was happy with. It was later he realized that most of the questions people actually needed answers to could be answered with his crappy little Perl script. He concluded that 100 percent accuracy is not important, that scale is much more important.

Now Google allows you to use the "definition:" query and the question format to get definitions from around the web. Type in "what is a blog?" and you'll get lots of results from Craig's original script.

Protein Sequencing

In biology, Craig says, you're constantly producing proteins. The proteins fold up with particular sequencing. Within computing, you can use this knowledge to do amazing things. You can conduct computations with this type of data but it's time consuming. Somebody at Stanford University noticed that proteins spend a lot of time moving about before folding into an alpha helix. So it was suggested they start the computations with lots of configurations. In this way you can parallelize the data by scale and one will be magically close to a folded protein. So they worked out a way to reduce the problem to a simple process based on mass scale. This is why Google uses maximum scale to conduct algorithmic computations.

Chess vs. Go

You can now compute the value of any potential move in chess. Based on that information, you can compute your projected probability of winning the game from any move. Chess grand masters put a lot of time into this knowledge. But the opposite is true for the game Go, because there is more randomness to the game play.

(Stay tuned for Part 2)
About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Knowing How to Use Offline Advertising in Internet Marketing

Knowing how to use offline advertising in internet marketing can give you a significant advantage over your competitors, since many do not use offline methods to advertise their products.Offline advertising is particularly relevant if you are selling a product, or offering a service, that attract customers locally. For example, you could offer a fitness aid at your local leisure center. Many leisure or fitness centers will allow you to put a free poster offering your product, but even if they charge you for it the price is usually small. Perhaps you have a golf training aid that you can advertise at your local golf club.

Local classified ads are also a good means of getting your product some local publicity. The classified ads pages or even adverts placed on selected pages of your local press, frequently provide you with local orders. The beauty of these is that they are very easy to follow up, either with back-end products or new ones. You need not even restrict yourself to the local press. How often have you seen an internet marketing advert on the national press? They are not uncommon, and although expensive, they must produce a good return.

If you have a niche website, it could be worth your while browsing round your local newsagent and checking out the magazines on display. You know the kind - all these racks upon racks of magazines on every topic you can think of. Have a word with the newsvendor and find out some of the more popular magazines that cover your niche. These could be good publications for placing your adverts, especially if they are not too expensive and they have a good circulation.

Continue to read the rest of the post here >>

How to Use Offline Advertising in Internet Marketing

Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, Web Traffic, Earn Money Online, Adsense, Adwords, Money, Offline Advertising, How To, Andre Sanhez

Web Site Marketing Strategy Hints And Tips

Your web site marketing strategy is the essential factor that determines the success or failure of a business web site. This is true whether your web site is an extension of an offline business, or you run an completely online business. Web site marketing is unlike any marketing you may have done using other media.

However, marketing your web site on the internet shares many common core marketing foundations that underlie your marketing efforts regardless of the media you use. I am a strong believer that for a small business, all marketing should be based on the old direct marketing mantra of attention, interest, desire, and action. In this article I am going to discuss those aspects in terms of how they are crucial in marketing your web site on the internet.

Regardless of the media you choose, nothing will ever happen if you don't attract the attention of prospective buyers. This is one of the very basic tenets of successful marketing. On the internet, this concept is evaluated by the traffic that you receive on your web site. But there are a lot of factors that affect how much traffic you get, and only part of it is the actual content of your web site. There are two ways you can get attention in any media: you can earn it or you can buy it.

All the major search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc.) show up two different types of results when a customer uses them.

The most relevant results based on the search algorithms used by the engine are called 'free' or 'organic' since they are the natural result of running a search.

The second type of result are actually paid advertisements, and they can be very difficult to distinguish from the results that are actually relevant to you query.

It is important to keep in mind that no matter how good the engine, the results are still hit or miss. It is a computer program sorting web pages based on mathematical formulae, not live people helping you select the best results, so as a person hoping to be indexed, you must be willing to put the time and effort into checking how you rank on the major engines and tuning your word choice to optimize that. If you can't make it onto the first (or second at the very least) page of results, your traffic will drop dramatically! Most people don't bother to wade through the hits on the pages after that. Even second-page ranking will hurt your ability to attract new users.

One of the most effective ways to increase internet traffic is buying some form of advertising. One of the most pervasive forms is banner advertising. Originally, these were very popular forms of advertising, but as they became more prevalent, their effectiveness waned. They can still be effective as long as you have a clear marketing strategy and are able to track your advertising statistics.

Text advertisements are probably the most common form of internet advertising today. Google has paved the way, and if done correctly, your internet traffic can multiply quickly by using Google ads. MSN and Yahoo also offer text advertisements on their sites. One downside to text advertising is that the cost can add up fairly quickly, depending on how many hits you receive for your ad. Each time a searcher clicks on your text ad, the provider charges you a set amount. Another way to increase traffic to your site is to buy traffic from someone who has an e-mail contact list or has a lot of traffic on their site already.

Any approach to publicizing your website or portal must begin with the aim of grabbing attention of the web surfers and internet addicts. To grab attention, you must deliver your message to surfers on websites they frequently visit. You can publicize your website by doing the hard work yourself or by availing expert help, or a mix of both.

Doing it yourself means you will have to commit your time, energy and money. It might sound daunting but ultimately proves to be cheaper as well. Availing expert help can get your results without eating your time. To set the cash registers ringing, it is suggested that you develop your own mix of both ways suited to your own needs and resources.

You can get more information about Business Marketing at http://www.BizRave.com. Eric Menzies writes about Search Engine Marketing Firms and other topics.

Signs It's Time To Redesign Your Website

Signs It's Time To Redesign Your Website
By Erin Ferree (c) 2007

Designing your first website is a stressful undertaking. It
requires you to dig deep into your business in order to write
the copy for your site. You need to work with a designer and go
through the process of creating a site that looks unique and
works well. Plus you'll end up investing a lot of time, energy
and money. And finally, after all that, you're finished and it's
time for the site to go live. What a relief!

Many business owners go through this same process. By the time
the process is finished, many entrepreneurs are very glad that
it's over - and don't want to do it again anytime soon.

Unfortunately, websites don't last forever. Even if you plan
your site to work for the current vision for your business, you
can't accurately account for the entire future of your business.

Eventually you'll have to make some changes to your website.
Some of these changes can be accomplished with simple
maintenance, and by making updates to your site. But there's
only so far that patching and revising your current site can go.
If your site is particularly outdated, or if it's not working
well for you, it's probably time to consider a full-scale site
redesign.

Some signs that it's time to redesign your site include:

Your Business Has Changed or Grown

If your business is no longer the same as it was when you
designed your site, chances are that you should redesign
your website to reflect that. If you've only had a few small
changes, you might be able to just update your current website.
But, if you've changed your business direction, decided to
offer new products or services, or if your company has grown
significantly, it will pay off to redesign your site. Reconsider
how the changes to your business should be reflected or
addressed in the structure, design and strategy behind your
website.

Your Site Looks Like It Was Designed in 1995

Some signs of an outdated web site include: chunky, slow-loading
graphics, old-style "framed" coding, where the site is divided
up into panes that load separately, little animated cartoon
clip-art throughout the site, and text created as images instead
of in HTML. Having any of these on your site could reflect
poorly on your business, making you look 'behind the times'. It
can also make you look like you don't care enough about your
business or about technological advances to keep abreast of
them. Keeping your company's website looking modern will
increase its credibility.

The Information on Your Site Isn't User-Friendly

If you cringe when you read your site text, or if you regularly
get questions on your site text from visitors, re-structuring
your copy or rewriting it can help to fix these problems. If
you've been adding to your site over time and the navigation
has become unwieldy or confusing, restructuring your navigation
could be another pressing reason to redesign your site. You want
visitors to be able to easily find their way around your site
and to be able to access all the information you have within a
few clicks. Laying out your site to make that possible can make
your visitor's experience on your site a lot easier.

You Apologize for the Site When Referencing It or Handing Out
Your Business Cards

Your site should be a source of pride. It should offer your
clients and prospects an easy way to get a lot of information
about your business. And, if you have to apologize for
out-of-date information, broken images, poor design, difficult
navigation or anything else on your site, it makes you look
unprepared and unprofessional. Make sure your site is in top
shape and looks impressive, so your clients believe your
business is in good shape too.

You're Not Getting Good Results in the Search Engines

Poor rankings in the Search Engines can be a result of not
optimizing your site well. Poor search engine ranking can also
be a result of bad design choices or coding on your site. Make
sure that your site isn't designed using frames and that the
text is coded in HTML. Flash sites are also more difficult to
optimize for Search Engines.

It's Not Bringing in inquiries and Helping You to Make Sales

If your site was designed long ago, then there's a good chance
that it was designed as "brochureware". This means that the site
was designed just to act as an online brochure. This was very
common a few years ago, when websites were new. But recently
businesses have realized that a website can do a lot more than
just impersonate your brochure - it can help you close sales,
bring in new prospects and make your business easier to run.
To bring in more inquiries and make more sales include the
following when you redesign your site:

- Calls to action to encourage your visitors to take specific
actions - like purchasing something, contacting you, or signing
up for a newsletter.

- Forms, scripts, or programs to make your business easier - like
contact forms, project estimating tools, and an autoresponder
email series that can help you keep in touch with your clients
and prospects. Including a shopping cart or Paypal buttons on
your site can also help you to make more sales without any
additional work.

- Downloadable information packets, articles, questionnaires
and white papers can answer a prospect's questions about your
products or services and help them to move closer to buying.
And, if you require the prospect to enter their email address or
other contact information, it can help you to grow your prospect
list as well. These are just a few of the functions that your
site can perform for your business. To get ideas for other ways
that your site can help you increase your business, look at the
other sites that you visit and note the functions they perform.

Your Site is Costing You a Fortune to Update

If you're racking up huge bills because of changes and still
have a lot to go, it might be time to consider a whole site
redesign. Make a list of everything that you want to do on your
site and consult a web designer about redesigning your site with
those changes in mind. Often, if you have extensive changes to
make to your site, it can be less expensive to just start over.

If your site is designed in Flash or coded in such a way that
you can't maintain it yourself, redesigning and re-coding your
site could allow you to do so. Having the ability to make
changes and update your own text will let you make revisions
quickly, at no cost. And you can play with your site and make
revisions to see what will work best for your business and
clients.

If your site has any of the problems mentioned here, it's time
to redesign. The steps needed to update and revise will differ
depending on the problems and issues that your site has - you
may not have to start from scratch. But, do make sure that you
address all of the problems that your site has so that you won't
have to redesign again any time soon!
================================================================
Erin Ferree is a brand identity designer who creates big
visibility for small businesses. Her workbook, "Design a Website
That Works", will walk you through all of the questions that you
need to answer in order to create the best possible website.
http://www.elf-design.com/  http://www.elf-design.com/
products-webWorkbook.html
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