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By Eric Gruber in Featured

googlelogoEvery time, Google changes its algorithms – it causes a frenzy among those internet marketers relying heavily on the search engines. The latest change made many marketers stock up on Maalox and Pepto Bismol as it made them literally sick to their stomachs. Google’s latest change was an attack on article directories and content farms like Ezinearticles.com.

You see, many internet marketers were writing 150-200 word articles that gave no informational value whatsoever, just to get the link. They were after the SEO benefit and not taking full advantage of what article marketing has to offer. But now, because of the new Google algorithm change sites like EzineArticles.com have lost a lot of visibility on Google and this has many internet marketers up in arms.

Now, unlike many internet marketers, I think the change is a GOOD thing – and here’s why…

4 Reasons Why I Think the New Google Algorithm Change is a Good Thing

1. It forces article directory sites like EzineArticles.com to enforce stricter editorial guidelines. Google wants quality! Your readers want quality! I can almost guarantee this is why EzineArticles.com now requires you to write articles at least 450 words in length. And, it’s why they are going to review your articles even more thoroughly for spelling, grammar and formatting errors. They are increasing their quality control – and that’s usually a good thing.

2. It forces you the article marketer to go beyond the article directories – and target the best websites, ezines and blogs. Now, as the Google algorithm change focuses on article directories (and I’m sure this is only the beginning!) you cannot solely focus on SEO. You need to start putting your content on targeted websites, ezines, blogs and forums that your audience is going to every day. This way, you go directly to your audience instead of hoping they find you on the search engines. Plus, these sites will give you the credibility and expert status you need to build your business. To find out the correct way to submit your articles so you can get published on more websites (and not just the article directories) go to:

http://www.articlesubmissionsecretsrevealed.com/special

3. It forces you to use other mediums to get your content out in front of your prospects. If you didn’t have a reason to start engaging in social media before – now you do. Besides trying to get rid of the “junk”, Google is changing its algorithms based on the way people search. Now, your prospects are gaining the information they need from social media sites like LinkedIn. If you want to be found and if you want to be heard, then you need to engage in social media.

4. It forces you to start creating articles that give prospects the perception that you are the thought leader. You think sites like Entrepreneur.com and WomenEntrepreneur.com (which my article submission clients have been published in!) want to publish regurgitated content that is already all over the Web? No way! So, if you are going to go beyond the article directories and get your articles published on top websites, then you need to up your game. You need to start offering information that is usually held back – and you need to “wow” publishers and readers with the information you are revealing.

How to Embrace the New and Upcoming Google Algorithm Changes…

Understand that article marketing is not what it used to be. No longer can you submit an article to thousands of article directories and expect the traffic to come pouring in! Whether you’re just starting out in article marketing, or you already run an article marketing campaign, you have to learn how it should be done in today’s world if you want it to succeed.

If you need help, remember that my online article submission secrets course, will take you by the hand and literally walk you through setting up and executing your new article submission campaign from the very start.

Here’s to submitting articles the right way – that won’t have you affected by the recent Google algorithm change and any upcoming changes.

Article marketing expert Eric Gruber creates online marketplace opportunities for authors, internet marketers and small business owners who want more website traffic, publicity and prospects. If you’re looking to build your business with article writing and article submission, check out Eric’s free ebook: How to Build Your Business Just with Articles at:
http://www.FreeArticleMarketingBook.com

By Jill Whalen in Featured

SEOIn my day-to-day reviews of client websites, I see lots of things done to websites in the name of SEO that in reality have no bearing on it.

In an effort to keep you from spending your precious time on supposed SEO tactics that will have absolutely no effect on your rankings, search engine visitors, conversions or sales, I present you with 16 SEO tactics that you can remove from your personal knowledge base and/or SEO toolbox as being in any way related to SEO:

1. Meta Keywords: Lord help us! I thought I was done discussing the ole meta keywords tag in 1999, but today in 2011 I encounter people with websites who still think this is an important SEO tactic. My guess is it’s easier to fill out a keyword meta tag than to do the SEO procedures that do matter. Suffice it to say, the meta keyword tag is completely and utterly useless for SEO purposes when it comes to all the major search engines – and it always will be.

2. XML Site Maps or Submitting to Search Engines: If your site architecture stinks and important optimized pages are buried too deeply to be easily spidered, an XML site map submitted via Webmaster Tools isn’t going to make them show up in the search results for their targeted keywords. At best it will make Google aware that those pages exist. But if they have no internal or external link popularity to speak of, their existence in the universe is about as important as the existence of the tooth fairy (and she won’t help your pages to rank better in Google either!).

By Michael Tasker in Featured

yesThe skill of how to use persuasion in website sales copywriting is so very important for information marketers and will determine the degree of success that they will enjoy from their internet business. Once this skill is learned, you can utilize the ability to influence the prospect or customer to take any action that you wish them to take.

So what do you want the visitor to your website or blog to do? Is it to sign up for a free report in return for them giving you their email address details or to make a purchase of a product or service that you are recommending to them? Whatever it is, you want the person reading or listen to you to take a specific action that you want them to take.

The fact is, and don’t ignore this important point, each piece of content that is created whether an email, blog post, article or sales letter should always direct the reader to take a specific course of action. The question is how do you get them to take such action or should it be rephrased to say how do you influence them to take the action that you want?

A very effective technique to utilize is to try and get them to persuade themselves that the action requested to be taken is in fact in their best interests. Put simply, you get them to say “yes” instead of “no”. In fact, you get them to say “yes” repeatedly in their heads. Get them to think “yes”. Not once or even twice, but several times.

Within the sales copy, by using a series of discretely placed questions, you can elicit the “yes” response in the mind of the reader. Simple questions such as “would you not like to benefit too?” and “does that sound good to you?” will virtually compel the reader to respond “yes” to themselves. It encourages them to think positively about your product and also about you.

The more times that the reader thinks about the word yes and mentally answers “yes” to questions asked, the greater the prospect of them taking the action you want. It is referred to as the “yes, yes” sequence and should be adopted in all communications with prospects and customers where your goal is for them to take a specific action.

The secret to utilizing this method is to ask questions in a very subtle way through ensuring that when one is asked, the text is part of the natural flow of the sales copywriting message. You don’t want to interrupt the interest and intrigue for the reader with a blatant question that could appear to be out of sync with the message that you have created. Some of the most effective questions are those that doe not come across as appearing as questions but more as a link between one part of the sales copy and another.

When you discover how to do copywriting for a website utilizing this very effective method, you will witness a greater number of them taking the action that you wish for, which will ultimately influence the rate of sign ups to your email list or sales of your products.

The Internet Business Start Up Kit is the resource you need if you want to create your own profitable niche website business. From initial market research to traffic generation techniques, you will not find a better step by step guide to lead you through the stages to your own internet marketing success. My review is available here.

By Mik Horton in Featured

google+1In this article you will find out about Google Plus One, the new social feature Google has added to it’s SERPs. You are probably familiar with the Facebook “Like” button and Googles’ +1 is a similar concept. The big difference is that Plus One will have a direct influence on the search results people see at Google. So let’s find out about the impact of Plus One on your SEO efforts.

Here’s the basic concept of the new social seo with plus one. If one of your friends or network members in +1 has searched on Google and then recommended something via the “+1-Button” You will see this in the search result pages. Google hopes to improve the results this way. You will be able to see which of the search results have been liked by your network and which ones haven’t.

You will start with every of your Gmail and Google Talk Contacts in your network on Plus One. But You will be able to import your Twitter and Facebook Followers. This way you can instantly use all of your social media contacts and insure that all your current social network connections will find Your +1 Likes and can also jump start your search engine listings by asking them to like you on +1 via the existing social networks.

Now let’s take a look at this statement from Matt Cutts from Google:
“The primary benefit is that search gets better. It gets better in the user interface immediately, and we’ll look at it as a potential signal to improve search quality as well. I find social search extremely useful, especially with the recent updates. This change continues the evolution of social search, and it’s a natural progression to improve the search experience.”

You see that sites that get a lot of recommendations via the Plus One feature will be considered more important and advance in the rankings. So even if you completely ignored social marketing up to this day and concentrated on a SEO approach to traffic you will have to go social now. Social SEO is coming and you better be ready to dominate your niche in Plus One.

The main focus will be to grow your Twitter and Facebook Networks in your niche to be ready to start Plus One with a huge network. But you can also start to add more related Gmail contacts. Use other Google products like sites, groups or docs to find people related to your niche. Then add them to your contacts. Since Google will not launch a complete social network (at least not now ) there will be no way of directly searching and adding members in Plus One.

Another instant preparation is to do a makeover of your Google profile. Once the Plus One System is in place your profile will be the page that people visit to find out more about a person that has recommended a site. Many people are not even aware they have a Google profile page when they start using a Google service. Spice up Your profile now to be ready when +1 starts. The system is first launched for the English market and will be available internationally later. But You can go to Google Labs Experimental Search and join as a beta tester right now.

You can find out more about the impacts of social seo on the authors Blog about Affiliate Niche Marketing.

By Terri Seymour in Featured

facebook-logoSocial media marketing is absolutely essential in today’s online business world. It has taken the internet by storm both professionally and personally. Social media marketing means to market your business with the use of social networks, blogs, message boards, discussion groups, online communities and other such media. Some of the most popular social network sites are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Social marketing involves a lot more than just signing up and pasting up your page. You need to maximize your page’s effectiveness and keep it fresh, updated and alive. Below are 10 things you can do to optimize your Facebook page to make sure your business is getting the maximum benefits.

1. Create an Effective Profile – Do not use a half-done profile. Fill in your profile completely. This is for your business so be professional yet show people you care about your customers and will be there for them. Make sure your photo (if of yourself) is professional. You could also use your logo. Let people know what your business can do for them. Write an effective mission statement. Let your visitors know why they should do business with you but be careful what you reveal for security reasons.

2. Get Your Visitors Involved in Discussions – This is a great way to get your visitors to “Like” you and to keep coming back. Start helpful and informative discussions about topics related to your products or services. For example: if you sell home décor, start discussions about home decorating ideas, budget decorating, home improvement, etc. Encourage people to join the discussions and leave their business signature for more exposure.

3. Customize Your Page – Don’t let your page be one of the cookie cutter pages like everyone else. Customize it to fit your business needs and the needs of your visitors. Use images that brand you and your business and make it enjoyable and memorable.

4. Events and Contests – Keep your page alive and active with special events and contests. Each time a fan RSVP’s the event, it shows up in his profile. And so on and so on. Thus creating a ripple effect for your business.

5. Special Offers and Sales – People are always looking for good deals and special offers so don’t disappoint. Show your visitors you want to give them the best possible deal on your products/services.

6. Multi-Media Integration – Use audio and video content for your page. Audio and video can be extremely effective in capturing and holding the attention of visitors. According to webnox video is 58% more effective than just using plain text!

7. Make Your Tabs More Memorable – Facebook does allow you to change the usual boring tabs to more suit your needs. Make them unique to your page and business. You can also change the order in which you present your tabs. You can find easy to follow online tutorials on how to do this.

8. Utilize Your Sidebar – Take advantage of your sidebar space. This is a great place for testimonials or newsletter sign-up forms. You can also use this space for affiliate links, a survey for your visitors to help improve your page/business. Add links to your main website or special offers you may have going.

9. Add a Poll to Your Page – People like knowing their opinion matters so add interest to your page with a poll. You can add them using a free poll creator from Vizu. Polls can attract attention and encourage your visitors to interact with your page.

10. Post Regularly – I cannot stress this enough! Do not start your page and then let it sit for weeks at a time. You have to be there every day updating, adding new content, checking things over, and finding ways to improve your page. I recently started using social marketing and unfortunately need to take my own advice on this one. I have just not been involved enough with my Facebook page but that will soon be changing. The hold that social media has on the internet is astronomical so do not be left out in the cold!

So far I am involved with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn so feel free to come over and see me. I would love to see your page as I am learning more about this phenomenal marketing tool. I hope we all can use these types of sites to help each other improve our business and increase our sales!

Terri Seymour (also known as “The eBook Lady”) has over ten years online experience and has helped many people start their own business. Visit her site at http://www.seymourproducts.com for resources, $1 and $2 resell ebooks & software, articles, affiliate programs, RSS feed, and a free business ebook with Master Resell Rights.

By Debralee in Featured

cows_0Starting a new blog or website can be a bit of a trial, but it’s almost always more of a challenge to get people to come and visit it at first. Inevitably you end up having to go and read up on online marketing and that’s where the fun and games begin.

If you’ve ever struggled to understand the lingo when it comes to promoting a website or blog online then the following list of definitions should help you to find your way around.

Social marketing
You have a cow.
You show some friends a clip of a man being hit in the crotch.
They tell their friends who pay money to come and look at your cow.

Social media
You have a cow.
You tell your friends.
People start listening to what you have to say.

Affiliate marketing
Your neighbor has a cow.
You show a film clip of a man being hit in the crotch.
You charge people to go see your neighbor’s cow.

Traffic
You have a cow.
You put it on the side of the road.
People stop to look at it.

Spam
You have a cow.
You put it in the middle of the road, stopping traffic.
A few morons buy some viagra from you, making the initiative profitable.

SEO
You have a cow.
You put up a road sign with “Cow” in the title.
Passers by stop to look at your cow; you charge them for parking and sell them lemonade.

Content
You have a cow.
You write a novel about it.
A pig farmer copies your novel, paraphrases and publishes it as his own.

PageRank
You and your neighbor each have a cow.
You both put signs up to advertise your cows.
You pay someone to move your sign directly in front of the neighbor’s in the middle of the night.

Advertising
You have a cow.
People pay you to paint their logos onto your cow.
Your cow looks like a billboard.

ROI (Return On Investment)
You have a cow.
You pay $50 to dye it pink.
People flock to buy tickets to see your cow; you earn $1000.

Conversion
You have a cow.
You refurbish the barn.
More people pay to look at the cow.

Reality
You have a cow.
No one cares.

If you still don’t understand online marketing…

Don’t have a cow, man.

David Mercer, http://www.siteprebuilder.com, is one of the most experienced technical writers in the world today, having contributed to books that have have been translated into virtually every major language in the world.

By Aliza Earnshaw in Featured

reviewsIf you’re running a business that depends on local traffic, you probably know that good reviews can bring more customers through the door.

But did you know that getting reviews – and not necessarily just good ones – can help your business rank better in search results?

It’s true. Getting customers to review your company on your Google Places listing, in Yahoo! Local, Bing, CitySearch, Yelp and other review sites helps you in a couple of ways:

- Ninety percent of consumers consult the Web before they head out of the house to make a local purchase. Yes, you read that right – 90 percent, according to digital marketing analysis firm eMarketer Inc. If your business has plenty of reviews for people to read – and most are enthusiastic, or at least positive – you’re likely to get some new customers. That’s because 70 percent of people believe in the validity of reviews written by strangers, according to The Nielsen Co.

By Ben Jackson in Featured

SEOptimizationSo you decided to outsource your SEO, or maybe just some of it because of a lack of time. Where do you start for finding a reputable SEO service that won’t break the bank?

For starters, there are a lot of great SEO services provided by capable Warriors for hire in the Warriorforum that offer honest services.

However, there are always going to be discrepancies with what SEOs anywhere on the web offer and what you get. So how can you tell if an “SEO Expert” can really put his money where his mouth is?


1. Testimonials

This is the most important factor for gauging the honesty and effectiveness of an SEO service. Is it working for other people? If there are a lot of other individuals or businesses having great success with the service then you can probably assume the same results for yourself. However, things aren’t always this clear-and-cut. You’ll still want to look deeper in case the reviews were mostly by newbies or if there were not enough reviews on which to base a judgment.

By Kristina Weis in Featured

snailHelp your website be faster than this snail. (Photo from Flickr CC by Randy Son Of Robert.)

Faster Websites Can Rank Better

Having a fast site – or at least a site that’s not slower than the average – can help you gain or maintain good search engine rankings and traffic to your website.

Site speed refers to how fast all the elements of a web page – its text, images, video clips, etc. – appear in a web browser window after someone clicks a link to that page, or types its URL into the browser navigation bar.

Early in 2010, Google added site speed to its website ranking algorithm. Now a website’s loading speed is one of about 200 factors that help Google determine which websites to rank highest in results for a specific search term. That means site speed has to be considered when you’re working on your website’s search engine optimization (SEO).

Google added site speed because a faster site is better for people, and Google wants its results to be of high value to searchers.

First: Check How Fast Your Site Loads

Use any of these free tools to check how long it takes to load your website into a web browser window:

  • Pingdom’s site speed test is a popular tool for checking website load time. It’s easy to use.
  • Google Webmaster Tools has a section with information on the speed of your website, from the source that may matter the most. Once you’ve logged in to Webmaster Tools, click “Labs” on the left, and then “Site Performance.”
  • WebPageTest.org‘s website performance test lets you check the speed and performance of your website in different web browsers such as Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox. It also allows you to test how your site performs in different geographic locations.
  • GTmetrix.com‘s website speed test combines info from Google Page Speed and Yahoo! YSlow in a nice presentation with a nice list of things you can do.

What’s Considered a “Fast” Website?

Alexa says that Facebook has below average site speed.

To give you an idea, Alexa says that Facebook.com takes just over 2 seconds to load, and that 70 percent of sites are faster. Alexa.com provides traffic statistics for most of the world’s top million websites. If your site is in this group, you’ll find some good information about your site on Alexa, and you’ll be able to compare your site to others in the top million.

In general, a website that loads in 2 seconds or less is doing well. A website that loads in 2 to 5 seconds isn’t fast, but it’s probably good enough.

A website that takes more than 5 seconds to load is likely to annoy some of its visitors. The longer it takes a website to load, the more likely the site is to be hurting its standing with Google. The search giant considers site speed as a factor when ranking web pages in search results.

How Can I Make My Website Load Faster?

Here are some relatively simple and quick fixes to speed up your website.

Some of these things you may be able to do yourself. For the rest, your hosting company or the person or company that created your website for you should be able to make these changes pretty easily for you.

#1 Website Compression

Compressing your website’s content – using gzip compression, for example – can help reduce the time it takes your webserver to send your website’s content to site visitors.

Compression affects the text elements of your website — HTML, javascript, and CSS — and speeds up the time it takes them to load. For more information on website compression and how to do it, read our article about compression.

Compression does not affect the images on your website though, so read on.

#2 Optimize Your Images

a) Don’t Use Images Any Bigger than Necessary
Don’t use a large image. Yes, you can set the width and height in HTML to 100 pixels by 100 pixels, if that’s the size you want to display – but your site will still be carrying a large image that loads slowly. If you want to display an image that is 100 pixels by 100 pixels, use an image of that size, or scale down your large image before placing it on a web page.

I asked AboutUs community members to share their experiences with compression tools. Ed Mus of Deals2Save.net recommended a tool he’s used to optimize images for load speed: Smush.it, available at Yahoo.

b) Choose the Best File Format
The file format of your images can help you or hurt you. Don’t use a JPG file unless you want to include a photograph with a huge range of colors. For most images, using a GIF or PNG file is usually fine, and these types of files load faster.

  • GIF is great for images with few colors – for example, most company logos.
  • PNG is a file format specifically for websites. PNG images have good quality, but sometimes they don’t display in Internet Explorer 6.
  • JPG is a traditional and common file format for photos. It’s best to convert a JPG image to a PNG, unless you really want a highly detailed, slow-loading photo for a specific reason.

c) Don’t Use Images If You Don’t Need To
Your logo or a photo must be included as images – there’s no other way to convey them to your site visitors. But many websites put things like a phone number, address or other text into an image, even though it’s not necessary. And really, it’s not a good practice. Images are not only slow to load, they’re also essentially invisible to search engines, unless they include descriptive alt text. Search engines can’t “see” the information in an image, so use text to convey any information that can be rendered as text.

#3 Put Your Code in Optimum Order

Placing your style sheets near the top and JavaScript near the bottom of the coding for each of your web pages can improve the perceived speed of your website for human visitors.

When someone directs a web browser to a web page, the browser starts from the top of the code and works its way down. The style sheets are one of the more important pieces for human viewers, because they determine how the site will look. After that, your website’s actual content will load pretty quickly. It’s as if the style sheets set out a framework, and then the content loads into that framework.

The JavaScript – or <script> tags – provide things like interactive features or actions that your viewer won’t notice unless they perform an action on a web page. So allowing the JavaScript to load last means your visitors see everything on the page that’s visual, even while the JavaScript is still loading. So your visitors see your page as loading faster than it really does.

Why does this matter? Because people are impatient. If a web page seems very slow, they’re more likely to leave.

#4 Remove Unnecessary External Code

Many websites have some code whose purpose is to pull something from a service that’s out of their control. For example, a website may use:

  • A “share” button from a service such as AddThis
  • An e-commerce shopping cart provided by another company
  • A widget that displays the company’s recent tweets on Twitter

The code for Google Analytics can also slow your site down a bit, though the insights you’ll gain from using analytics usually outweigh this slight disadvantage. I recommend that you take advantage of other speed improvements, and keep the analytics.

It’s wise to check the speed of any external features on your site. If you aren’t using a feature, or if it is of minimal value to your business and website, you should remove it.

#5 Get Specific Recommendations for Increasing Site Speed

Google Webmaster Tools’ section about site speed. If you use Google Webmaster Tools for your site, you can find out how fast your site loads for Google. You’ll also find some general technical suggestions for improving your site’s performance, speed or both.

If you browse the web using Firefox and already have the Firebug add-on, you might find Yahoo’s YSlow and Google’s Page Speed extensions quite helpful. While you’re viewing a web page, you can click on these extensions to pull up information about why that web page is slow, and get ideas for improving its speed.

Google introduced a new tool on March 31, 2011 called Page Speed Online. It analyzes the speed of web pages — and the mobile version of pages — and gives suggestions for improving their load time.

#6 Get a Better Website Host

“Really, the best thing someone can do to speed up their website is to have a site hosted at an operator that knows what they are doing.”
—Karl Matthias, system administrator at AboutUs.org

For the majority of websites, many factors that can speed up a website – or slow it down – are in the control of the company that hosts the site. That’s why it’s important to have a competent host that responds quickly when you have a question or problem.

If your website is loading too slowly, you probably want to look at your hosting company’s service first. You may want to consider upgrading to a better hosting package with your current hosting company, if the better package includes a promise of increased speed. Otherwise, shift your site to a hosting company with a better offering, reputation, or both.

Note: Depending on the type of website software you use, not every host or hosting plan will be able to accommodate your site. Before you switch, make sure the company and hosting package you’re considering can handle everything on your website.

Some good hosting companies:

For the more technically inclined, consider Amazon EC2, Slicehost and Linnode.

How Do I Make These Changes?

You may be able to implement some of the suggestions above yourself through the system you use to edit your website’s content.

If you use WordPress, the W3 Total Cache plug-in may be a good do-it-yourself solution.

For anything you can’t do yourself, ask your website hosting company, or the person (or firm) who created your website for you.

Want more? For more complicated and technical methods for speeding up your website, see Yahoo’s list of rules for site performance and Google’s articles on site speed.

Check out how your home page looks to search engines and people with the free Home Page Analysis. Want a deeper look at all your site’s pages? Try an AboutUs Site Report.

This article, originally published on AboutUs.org, was contributed by Kristina Weis of AboutUs.org (visit). Kristina is a community manager for AboutUs.org who talks with a lot of website owners who are trying to promote their business online. Have a question? Contact me.

By David Mercer in Featured

googlelogoI came across a curious issue with Google analytics the other day. I had just posted a blog entitled “Online marketing explained with reference to cows” at www.siteprebuilder.com/content/online-marketing-explained-reference-cows.

I could see that the post was generating a lot of traffic and wanted to know where it was coming from, so I went to Google.com and typed in “online marketing explained” to see if the post had already been indexed and if it was ranking highly for that keyphrase.

Sure enough, the blog post had been indexed and it was showing up in the first or second spot in Google, ranked amongst the posts indexed in the last week. Awesome! Now I wanted to know if all the traffic was coming from that keyphrase or were there others, so I headed to analytics.

As it turned out, only one visit had come from that keyword in Google. Instead, the influx of traffic was coming from social networks like Stumbleupon and reddit and not organic search.

Here’s the strange part:

The visit recorded by Google analytics for the keyword search “online marketing explained” was credited to my service provider and not Google search. But obviously, I never actually clicked through to my page because I already knew what the post was about.

I tried the experiment again, and sure enough, Google analytics was registering a visit from Google search despite there being no actual visit.

In other words, a user only has to search for a term that results in (I assume) a first page result for your site and Google will lead you to believe that it sent a visitor to your page. It’s treating a search result as an actual visit, which seems really underhanded.

The upshot of all of this is that webmasters who rely on Google analytics to determine how well their online marketing campaigns are performing, or how well their SEO efforts are paying off, are not being given an accurate picture of the traffic they are receiving.

I would have to spend more time analyzing the way the visit hits work in analytics and Google search in order to determine precisely by how much Google is inflating its search result visit numbers.

At a rough guess, if Google records a visit for every first page result for your website or webpages, and assuming a rough actual click-through rate of around 20% (which is very generous), then Google is over-representing its traffic by a factor of 5 for each given keyword.

This means that your website could be getting 5 times less organic search traffic than you are being led to believe.

The situation is made far worse when you consider that the analytics figures reported by Google are then used by webmasters to determine their traffic amount and how much they can charge advertisers.

Advertisers are then paying cash for traffic that doesn’t exist. So Google’s inflated numbers effectively lead to a situation in which, mislead web businesses end up overcharging their advertisers based on effectively fictitious numbers.

Worse, by inflating their perceived search traffic, Google gains an unfair advantage over its competing search engines, because everyone wants to go with the search engine that brings in the “most traffic”.

Now, maybe they have a good explanation (I will ask them), but it seems to me that this is a subtle, but deliberate, way to boost the perceived importance of Google search for webmasters using analytics (which is a lot of webmasters).

David Mercer, http://www.siteprebuilder.com, is one of the most experienced technical writers in the world today, having contributed to books that have have been translated into virtually every major language in the world.

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Write Current Content and Explode Your SEO – A SPN Exclusive Article

Best Free Business Cloud Apps You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

Has Google Replaced Content as King of the Web?

SEO Short Cheat Sheets

Beef Up Your Internet Marketing and Your Body At The Same Time!

Optimizing Your Business Facebook Page for Maximum Hits and Return Visits – A SPN Exclusive Article

SiteProNews Blog News

Google Celebrates Art Clokey’s Birthday
Not many people will recognize the name Art Clokey. But a lot more people will recognize the green c...
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Reader Rescue : Should My Meta Description Tags Just Duplicate My Title Tags?
Hi Everyone From early days learning SEO, I went ahead and did all my meta descriptions with a bi...
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Death of Steve Jobs Fails to Break Twitter Record
We all heard the sad news yesterday that Steve Jobs, founder and visionary at Apple, had died at...
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