Brute force, no matter how strongly applied, can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom and dignity. It is not enough, as communist systems have assumed, merely to provide people with food, shelter and clothing. Human nature needs to breathe the precious air of liberty.
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Make more money with Pay Per Click advertising
You’ve got the perfect website, now you want to make some money. Does it seem like you’re having problems attracting customers? Are you spending money, but not making any?
Then you need to advertise and one of the best methods, with the fastest results, is a PPC or pay per click campaign. This type of advertising uses keywords and phrases to the max. Businesses that want just a campaign will need to establish applicable keywords that are directly associated with their particular business. This way when customer type in a particular phrase or keyword for a search, they will be led right to you.
One must use caution though because some keywords are quite expensive. You may be better off bidding for a less desired keyword that is still applicable to your site.
If a PPC campaigns seem a bit overwhelming you can consider hiring a consultant to manage your campaign. Consultants are experts that know how to put together a strategic plan after assessing a clients needs. Thus bringing large profits.
Of course, the more keywords you have the more chances customers will click on your site. Software, such as Atlas Search (formerly Atlas OnePoint or GoToast) or Bid Rank can help with the bidding and purchasing of keywords and will track your keyword listings.
Complete the needed research before starting a PPC campaign. There a large variety of PPC search engines to choose from. Most PPC search engines charge a monthly rate. Lesser known engines will be much more cost effective. Of course, if payment is not made then your listings will promptly be removed from their engines.
Potential profits are on the horizon by starting a PPC campaign. With a good list of keywords and wise PPC campaign managment, you’ll be generating more revenue with a healthy ROI compared to more traditional methods.
Link building has always been a hot topic. In the beginning of the web hyperlinks were virtually the only way to get visitors to a site, because search engines were in their infancy. When search engines grew to be the major source of the web traffic, links didn’t lose their weight, as search algorithms started to rank sites according to the quantity and quality of their incoming links. And today links become increasingly important with the growing significance of the new Web 2.0 social networks.
Link Popularity Building Strategies
Thus, links rule the Internet. Once a routine task of a webmaster, link building has emerged itself into a full scale industry with millions of dollars in turnover. Ranking algorithms perceive links as a proxy for a human judgment, or a user’s positive endorsement of a page. The idea is as follows: a user discovers a page, likes its content, links to the page, and the page gets higher ranking. This is the so-called ‘natural way’ of acquiring links.
The natural way of acquiring link works is too slow and can be pretty unfair. New pages on big and established websites are far more likely to be discovered by web users, and these pages will get the major part of the new links (like 90%); while new pages on fresh sites will get trinkets. This is a serious defect of the link ranking system which is discussed more in details in my article Popularity Ranking Faults.
Since the natural way of getting links for a new website can take forever, some additional boost is required. There are many strategies of link building able to ensure you some initial ranking and exposure, which are necessary to make the ‘natural way’ work. Some of these strategies can be very tricky and do more harm than use. So it is critically important to keep in mind the following tips of link building.
Link Building Tips
Be a user when building links . The point is to make your link exchanges look like they are acquired the natural way. Make sure that your links appear in places where search engine expect them to be. This should be pages relevant to your content. Link must be in the page copy or in a sidebar possibly among the other links pointing to pages also relevant to your topic. The anchor text must look naturally - so no keyword stuffing.
Analyze your own motives of linking to the sites you like. What motivates you to cite a web resource? Is it a collection of online tools or handy tutorials? Or may be it is a provoking title? Apply this ‘reverse engineering’ to your pages, and use unique interesting content to attract links.
Avoid things that can damage your reputation in the eyes of search engines. No link farms, suspicious looking websites or poor quality link exchanges. Forget the reciprocal links - they no longer have any significant weight. Do not participate in three-way or similar linking schemes - these attempts to disguise reciprocal linking are easily to detect. NASA managed to get a man on the Moon with computers less powerful than a GameBoy, so why do you think Google can’t discover link triangles with all the computing resources at its disposal?
Buying links. This practice is pretty much discouraged by Google, because it undermines the idea of the proxy for human judgment. So you have to be especially savvy when buying links. Avoid link trading sites or any site publicly announcing that is sells links. Don’t mix buying links with paid advertising. You pay for an advertisement on a high traffic page expecting visitors referred by your ad. Buying links has a different purpose - increasing your link popularity.
Do not be obsessed with backlinks. There is an intense focus on link building but not enough focus of content creation. Links must reflect the quality of content. If you think your site has not enough incoming links, you should think about how to improve the quality of content and make it more appealing, not about more link exchanges.
Link penalties. Many people are afraid to get penalized for linking or being linked by fishy websites. If there is a need to put a link to a site which you do not want to be related with, use rel ‘nofollow’. Google confirms that this attribute is critical in link analysis, so you should be fine. Links from dubious sources to your site are out of your control and all the major search engines assure that they don’t punish people for that. However too many links from such sites (like tens of thousands) can bring an unwanted attention of search engine quality teams. They can ban your site if they found you responsible for boosting your rankings, but you can always submit reinclusion.
To sum up
Make your linking strategy look natural. Avoid the known patterns of artificial link building and do not obsess with links at the expense of content creation.
Here are a few ground rules that will save you a lot of work in the long run
As an online marketer, website owner and editor, I’m exposed to a huge number of articles every single day of the week. The importance of quality article writing is paramount, and so is the need to follow some basic common sense. Here’s what a friend of mine had to say (he’s an article directory owner):
“I sometimes receive complaints from authors who are angered by the fact that their article has not been published, which leads me to believe that there are still a lot of people out there who do not understand article marketing, nor the role that directories play… “
Hmmmm…
For those who are not finding success with articles, or for those considering starting out, here are a few ground rules that will save you a lot of work in the long run and will likely get your article marketing career off to a much more auspicious start.
Read the article directory’s specific terms of service and guidelines. This may seem like a boring, tedious and long winded waste of your valuable time but in the long term it will save you hours of frustration and wasted effort. All directories set their own rules and some are stricter than others. Most directories labor under a huge number of submissions and the work of sifting through them is often the job of one individual. This means that if your opening paragraph or introductory statement is poorly written or contains mistakes, that is as far as the editor will go before hitting the delete key. The luxury of time to edit an author’s mistakes or to decline an article as opposed to deleting it, is one that most editors do not have.
Mass submissions are usually viewed as spam. Let’s face it, none of us are capable of writing over 200 articles in a day - I would say that even producing more than ten would be a pretty amazing feat of productivity. It should come as no surprise to those submitting large numbers of articles in a 24 hour period to find that they are all deleted. Article directory software usually allows for quick erasure of such submissions, so if you don’t want your work to fall victim to mass deletion, don’t mass submit. All that is needed is a little common sense. If you are using a submission service, set the option to stagger your submissions over a longer period of time.
Proof read your articles. If you don’t know what this means, look it up! If your writing is riddled with spelling errors, poor structure, punctuation horrors and grammatical butchery, don’t be surprised if none of them get published. I could write thousands of words on the most common mistakes seen in people’s writing. These usually involve spelling and grammar. Spell check your articles, even if you think you’re perfect, you will often be surprised at the mistakes you make. If you tend to misspell a word regularly, you will never correct it unless you make yourself aware of it.
If you are of the opinion that these things don’t matter (after all, people will know what you mean!) then think again. If you want to write and, more importantly, see your work published and picked up by other website owners and bloggers, you need to demonstrate an ability to write well.
As an example, all the “SEO experts” who talk about search engine optimisation (sic) but don’t even understand that being able to spell their claimed occupation correctly would lend a little more credibility to their claims. Just for the record, most words ending in “ize” use a “z” and not an “s”. This is a very common mistake, but it would be corrected by the use of a spell checker, as would so many others.
If you want to write with authority, you have to be able to exhibit basic literacy. Yes, this is important and should be borne in mind by those who eulogize about “the Queen’s English”, thus making themselves look even more foolish than those they chastise. (a good example of a word that does actually end in “ise”) Regardless of who is on the throne, it is always “the King’s English”.
None of us are perfect and this is not a lecture on grammar and spelling, no matter how needed it might be.
If you are tempted to use PLR articles, even if you rewrite them in an attempt to make them unique, remember that you will be competing with all the other shortcut seekers who are doing the same thing. It’s another shortcut to the delete key for a lot of directories.
When it comes to the resource box, it is quite amazing how many authors defeat their entire purpose by making a mess of this vital section. If the article directory in question allows one, two or three live Hyperlinks, make good use of them. Think about your anchor text very carefully. In other words don’t say……to find out more click here and Hyperlink the words “click here”. The resource box is where you need to give readers a compelling reason to visit your site(s) but it is also the one place you can make the most of good keywords as the anchor text in your links.
Use the resource box wisely and take full advantage of everything the directory is offering you by way of promotional tools. Adding your URL without making it a live link is a pointless waste of time if the directory allows you to use Hyperlinks in your resource box. Conversely, adding more than the quota of permitted links will probably result in deletion of your work.
Another thing to watch is linking directly to affiliate programs. Read the directory’s policies on this point or again, you may well find yourself on the cutting room floor. Many directories will stipulate that you may only link to affiliate programs indirectly by referring readers to your own site or domain. Some do not allow straight redirect links either.
Relevancy is also an issue here too. In other words, submitting a PLR piece about gardening and linking to your MLM program is not very helpful or wise, just one more recipe for deletion.
I should finish by saying that yes, you can churn out badly written articles to your heart’s content, just don’t be surprised at the results.
As more consumers browse the Web on their cell phones, the No. 1 search engine must cope with less space to place ads…
Google’s biggest threat may not be Microsoft (MSFT) or Yahoo! (YHOO).
No, one of the most formidable challenges facing Google (GOOG) is likely sitting in your pocket or purse. It’s your cell phone, and it will put added pressure on Google and other Internet companies to revamp the way they handle online marketing.
As more people use cell phones and their tiny glass screens to gain access to the Internet, Google and its fellow online advertisers will have less space, or what’s called ad inventory, to place marketing messages for customers. Google makes money selling ad inventory. And its ad inventory is diminished on a cell phone.
iPhone as Tipping Point
Google can now fit about 10 ads on a standard computer screen. (If you look at Google search results on a PC monitor, paid ads are the listings at the very top and along the right.) But on your cell phone, if you type in a search query at google.com you get only one or two paid ads in response.
Imagine the horror that would befall your business if a large slice of what you sell suddenly disappeared. A similar fate could befall companies that depend on online advertising, as small screens become the gateway to the Internet.
Of course, no one’s suggesting that consumers will abandon standard computer screens overnight. And early research shows that mobile advertising may be more effective than standard online advertising, suggesting that it will be more lucrative for the companies that rely on it. Still, the shift is coming fast enough that Google must get prepared.
It was Apple (AAPL), a frequent Google collaborator, that tipped the trend. Consumer use of mobile Internet in the U.S. has longed trailed Asia and Europe, where standardized cell networks made it easier for handset makers to produce gadgets that tap the Web at blazingly fast speeds. But in the summer of 2007, Apple rocked America by launching the iPhone. The computer maker wasn’t the first to put the Web on phones, but for many consumers, the iPhone made the experience more robust.
Almost two-thirds of Americans have had some experience with mobile Internet use, and the adoption trend is most pronounced among teens and young adults, according to Pew Research Center. About 60% of adults 18 to 29 use text messaging every day, compared with only 14% of their parents. Nearly one-third of young adults use mobile Internet. This is the future, because people take their media habits with them as they age.
Why Google Wants In on Cell Phones
So, as Apple and demographic trends thrust the mobile Internet upon us, how will advertisers and we consumers of electronics respond?
Google will try to expand ad “shelf space,” especially by redesigning cell-phone software. In November, Google announced it was launching an Open Handset Alliance to design a new operating system, code-named Android, which would provide a “truly open and comprehensive platform” for cell-phone users. A few scratched their heads as to why Google would get into the cell-phone interface business. But now it’s clear; Web screens will soon be two inches wide, and Google wants a say in what fits on that tiny screen.
Our bet is that the new Android interface will encourage mobile device users to flick through multiple layers or pages, similar to the iPhone album-art menu. This will create more room for ads. Expanding the visual ad inventory will be crucial for Google, as evidenced by the recent announcement that it will begin selling small display ads on cell-phone screens.
Another implication is that consumers may have to start paying for “free” stuff. Sure, there’s a lot that’s free on the Web now, as many, including Chris Anderson of Wired, have noted. Yet, even Anderson notes that most “free” content models really just transfer the hidden cost from you to third-party advertisers, who subsidize your content in hopes of getting attention. If online social media such as Twitter, Facebook, or Digg can’t figure out ways to entice money from advertisers, they’ll have to grab it from you.
More Personal Ads on the Way
Our hunch is that free content systems may stick to the big Web pages, where more ads can fit. For tiny screens, systems such as Twitter that work well in small detail will
eventually have to charge, make money some other way, or go away. Consumers push back on paying for something that is already free, so the only solution we see is to keep ads very minimal—and very personal.
Which brings us to one of the biggest implications of wider use of the mobile Web. Advertisers will increasingly rely on personalization. Today, collections of Web sites known as ad networks track consumer behavior across multiple sites, and then shoot targeted ads to users. This behavioral targeting approach, found via WPP Group’s (WPPGY) 24/7 Real Media, Blue Lithium, Tremor Media, and other Web networks, often results in ad response rates 5 to 10 times higher than standard banner ads.
Personalization works, and several companies are working on ways to make it work better. Microsoft recently filed a patent application that would use offline data such as credit-card transactions, estimated physical location (from cell-phone towers), and TV viewing habits to serve you a customized ad the next time you go online. The fact that you bought cleats for your kids this morning, went to a high school football game in the afternoon, and turned on ESPN when you got home would conceivably trigger a personalized sports ad on your cell phone.
Better Marketing Through Profiling
ComScore (SCOR), the Web site ranking service, is taking a different approach, using “biometric signature” profiling to match the keystrokes and mouse-click patterns of different users on a single computer. The idea here is to get beyond the gadget to the individual user who touches it. The system can identify whether Dad or Mom or Sis is sitting at the keyboard, and then match the individual user with a rich profile of demographic data to improve ad targeting.
Pondering all this, we called Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, to see what concerns privacy groups might have about a future where marketers track your every move. “Personalization is actually a great idea,” Rotenberg said, “but it should be done in a way that doesn’t require detailed data collection” about an individual.
It’s a nice hope, Rotenberg’s, that advertising and Google can survive in a world where the ways to reach consumers via glass screens grow smaller and smaller. But we suspect hyperintrusive data profiling is coming fast.
After all, Internet screens will soon be a lot smaller. And no one as rich or as smart as Google gives up so crucial a slice of sales without fighting back.
1. Do search engines care about the usability of your web pages? Does it make a difference whether your web pages are easy to navigate or not?
A recent patent application from Yahoo indicates that search engines might take a look at your web page design. The document includes a long list of factors that search engines can consider to determine the usability of a web page.
Why can usability be important to search engines?
The patent application contains a short paragraph that explains why search engines might consider the usability of web pages:
“It can be important to make web pages easy and pleasing to use, which can be particularly important for web pages it is desired to monetize. [...].
If such web pages are not easy and pleasing to use, the money-making potential of those web pages can be jeopardized. One conventional indication of whether a web page is easy and pleasing to use is called ‘clutter’.
Web pages with good usability usually have a higher conversion rate than cluttered web pages. Web pages with good usability often have a higher quality than other web pages and search engines try to return high quality web pages in their search results.
Which factors can search engines analyze to determine the clutter of your pages?
Yahoo’s patent applications provides a list of 51 web page elements that can be analyzed to determine the clutter of a web page:
According to the patent application, Yahoo might also consider the presence of animated and flashing ads and the average ad luminosity.
What does this mean to your web pages?
Good website usability can greatly improve the conversion rate of your website. If your website gets many visitors but only a few sales then it might be that your web pages are too cluttered and that you have to improve your website design.
Google has a similar patent application with the name “Detecting and rejecting annoying documents” so it seems that good website design becomes more and more important if you want to get high search engine rankings.
The HTML code of your web pages must make a good impression to search engines. If search engines find that your web pages don’t have the right content then these pages cannot get high search engine rankings.
Analyze your web pages with PageOneRankings.com.au FREE SEO Site Audit to find out how search engines see the contents of your web pages and what you can do to improve your pages so that they get top 10 rankings on Google and Yahoo.
Tweet This Post links powered by Tweet This v1.3.9, a WordPress plugin for Twitter.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.dalepillars.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}