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Hello. My name is Mike Small and I have been an SEO consultant for about ten years. In October of 2007 I published an article about “AdSense Farming.” Since writing that article I have received over 100 emails from readers asking for a bit more on the subject. I just got one last night in fact, so I figured I’d add a little more search engine optimization flavor to the concept of making money with AdSense. But before I begin I would like to stress that this is not a method to get rich quick. I make anywhere from $50 to $150 per month/per site that I have built using this information. Of course it only costs about $1 and a half hour (one time) to build each one, so the profits are quite nice. So, here we go…

Over the past couple years I’ve heard hundreds, if not thousands of stories about people who got rich from Google AdSense. It seems strange that I’ve never actually met one. It feels almost like an urban legend in the making; “I know a guy who knows a guy who made a killing on AdSense.” Kind of strange, don’t you think?

Do you ever feel like the reality of big profit is close but just beyond your grasp? Yeah; so did I. The good news is; it’s not your fault. We are simply trying to attain the dream that some “friends of friends” have already attained. We’ve bought the so called “wealth building” products that promised us an overnight fortune, but for some reason we never made the big bucks. To be honest this really made me question myself. If they can do it, why can’t I? Then I realized that making money from AdSense is a lot like farming. Some crops (or keywords) yield a higher price than others and the more fields you have planted, the better your chances of making good money.

Of course, in this case your “field” is just a website, which can be had at a cost of next to nothing. So, all-in-all, even small profits are pretty much all profit. A few months ago I tried to apply this idea to the real world. And the results were quite nice. Within two weeks I was making an average of $3.50 per day; about $105 a month, per site. It doesn’t sound like a lot but for a one-time fee of $99 I can host up to 100 AdSense farms, forever. The hosting company even supplies free Web content that gets a ton of traffic for me. That’s free traffic clicking my AdSense links month after month, every single month.

So, how do you get started? It’s really easy and very inexpensive. I’ll show you exactly how I did it, step-by-step.

First, if you don’t already have one, sign up for a free Adsense account at http://www.google.com/adsense. But do NOT get your ad code yet. I have some tips that can triple your response rates - and income.

Next, sign up with http://www.WhyParkWeb.com or a similar service. Just be sure to pick one that can create content rich, search engine optimized site for you automatically. That’s how you make your AdSense money. Please Note: When I registered for this service it was $99 and would let you have 100 automatically created websites - forever.

If you go decide to go for it, here are some tips from a 10 year veteran search engine optimization specialist that will put your sites over the top!

Okay, let’s do this by the numbers…

#1 Find the best keywords

Google gets more searches than any other search engine so let’s peek into their database, shall we? Check out https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in any keyword or phrase you can think of that you believe your target audience is looking for. Not only will it give you tons of data on that and related keywords, it will also provide “Additional Keywords to Consider”, which is a section at the bottom of the page.

Try to use specific keyword phrases whenever possible. For example, if you are optimizing for a flower store, instead of “flowers” try “send flowers.” Now refine that a bit to reflect how people actually speak (”I am sending flowers.”) and try see what “sending flowers” gets you. WOW! As it turns out, “sending flowers” has very little competition and is extremely popular.

#2 Write a killer title Google loves

Take your most important specific and general keyword phrases and put them together, specific first; general second. Let’s use “sending flowers” and “flowers”. Now separate the keywords or phrases by a pipe (that vertical key over the Enter/Return key). We now have “sending flowers | flowers”. Now go back and grab one or two more relevant keywords like “wedding flowers” and “Mothers Day” and combine them like this “sending flowers | flowers for weddings, Mothers Day and more”.

Now you’ve covered all your bases and build a fantastic keyword rich title that won’t look like keyword spamming. You can also change the Mothers Day to Valentines Day, Easter, as needed.

#3 Write a META description that gets you noticed

This is important. Not only can this tip alone get you ahead of most competitors, but it’s also what readers see of your site before they decide to visit. You need to write something for people, but that search engines will like. Don’t worry. It’s a lot easier than it sounds.

Take all of your keywords and line them up in order of importance. Since “sending flowers” gets more searches than any other, let’s start there and use the same logic for the rest. Now we have, in order, “sending flowers”, “flowers”, “wedding flowers”, and “Mothers Day.” Be sure to improve your keyword prominence (relevance based on position) by using your best keyword within the first few words of the description, like this: “Sending flowers has never been easier. Here you will find inside tips on the least expensive ways to send the freshest wedding flowers, Mothers Day arrangements or whatever else you need.”

As you can see, we used all of our keywords without overloading the text and broke it up a little by adding some detail. It works great! Just try to keep the description at or under 250 characters (including spaces).

#4 Add great content

Why Park does 99% of the work for you. All you have to do is enter your keywords into the article finder provided by the “Research Your Keywords” link (located beside the keywords box.)

Without using any imagination at all, I found 172 articles in a few seconds…

sending flowers - 5 flowers - 151 wedding flowers - 16

Total Articles: 172

Add “roses” and get another 59! That’s 231 articles in 10 seconds. You get the idea - more general related keywords can take you over the top and give you a huge, content-rich search engine friendly site, in seconds!

#5 Use the best-pulling AdSense ad style and color combination

My click-through rate (CTR) tripled when I switched to this format.

Select ad size 336 x 280. If that’s too big, try 300 x 250. And try to make your ad border and ad background colors the same as your Website’s background color. It helps it blend in and take away some of the “advertisement” feel. It’s also usually best to go with the standard blue hyperlink color for the actual links.

#6 Get submitted to major search engines fast and free

I use this place all the time. They submit your site to 40 search engines instantly, for free http://www.submitexpress.com/.

You’re ready! You can do this - Good luck!

Author:  Former Information Technology Manager for Harvard University, Michael Small is the author of several well-known search engine optimization books including the SEO Answer Book - http://www.SeoAnswerBook.net

To know why Adsense is essential for your content sites is to know first how this works. The concept is really simple, if you think about it. The publisher or the webmaster inserts a java script into a certain website. Each time the page is accessed, the java script will pull advertisements from the Adsense program. The ads that are targeted should therefore be related to the content that is contained on the web page serving the ad. If a visitor clicks on an advertisement, the webmaster serving the ad earns a portion of the money that the advertiser is paying the search engine for the click.

The search engine is the one handling all the tracking and payments, providing an easy way for webmasters to display content-sensitive and targeted ads without having the hassle to solicit advertisers, collect funds, monitor the clicks and statistics which could be a time-consuming task in itself. It seems that there is never a shortage of advertisers in the program from which the search engine pulls the Adsense ads. Also webmasters are less concerned by the lack of information search engines are providing and are more focused in making cash from these search engines.

Adsense has come a long way

The first reason why Adsense is essential for content sites is because it already has come a long way in understanding the needs of publishers and webmasters. Together with its continuous progression is the appearance of more advanced system that allows full ad customization. Webmasters are given the chance to choose from many different types of text ad formats to better complement their website and fit their webpage layout.

The different formatting enables the site owners the possibility of more click through from visitors who may or may not be aware of what they are clicking on. It can also appeal to the people visiting thus make them take that next step of looking up what it is all about. This way the people behind the Adsense will get their content read and making profit in the process.

Tracking Your Adsense

The second reason is the ability of the Adsense publishers to track not only how their sites are progressing but also the earnings based on the webmaster-defined channels. The recent improvements in the search engines gives webmasters the capability to monitor how their ads are performing using customizable reports that has the capacity to detail page impressions, clicks and click-through rates. Webmasters and publishers can now track specific ad formats, colors and pages within a website. Trends are also easily spotted.

With the real-time reporting at hand, the effectiveness of the changes made will be assessed quickly. There would be time to sort out the contents that people are making the most clicks on. The ever-changing demands would be met while generating cash for the webmasters and publishers. The more flexible tools are also allowing webmasters to group web pages by URL, domain, ad type or category, which will provide them some accurate insight on which pages, ads and domains are performing best.

Advertising Benefits With Adsense

The last and final reason is that the advertisers have realized the benefits associated having their ads served on targeted websites. Thus increasing the possibility that a prospective web surfer will have an interest in their product and services. All because of the content and its constant maintenance. As opposed to those who are no using Adsense in their sites, they are given the option of having other people do their content for them, giving them the benefit of having successful and money-generating web sites.

Adsense is all about targeted content, the more targeted your content is, the more target the search engines’ ads will be. There are some web masters and publishers who are focused more on their site contents and how best to maintain them rather than the cash that the ads will generate for them. This is the part where the effectiveness is working its best.

There was a time when people were not yet aware of the money to be achieved from advertisements. The cash generated only came into existence when the webmasters and publishers realized how they can make Adsense be that generator. In those days, the content were the most important factors that is taken quite seriously. It still is. With the allure of money, of course.

Author:  Anne Ahira Marketing Guru of My 1st Internet Guru. Anne offers a plethora of inside marketing information and step by step guides to make your online ventures more successful.

Google AdWords is a Highly competitive pay per click (PPC) search engine, it’s now more important than ever to ensure that your PPC campaigns are optimized to their utmost potential. All of us want to achieve maximum return on investment (ROI) for the keywords or phrases that are most relevant to our businesses, and are most likely to provide our sites with targeted traffic.

I will go over the costly mistakes that most business owners make when using adwords.

1. Creating a long list of less than targeted keywords
2. Failing to identify unique aspects of your product or service
3. A lack of keywords in your ad text
4. Directing users solely to your home page
5. Creating single ad groups
6. Utilizing single campaigns
7. Using broad match only
8. Failing to optimize ad serving for your ads
9. failing to track results
10. Entering the content network without modifying bids

1. Creating a Long List of Poorly Targeted Keywords

When you first set out to create your AdWords campaign, it’s important not to go “keyword crazy” — resist the temptation to create long lists of irrelevant, generic keywords. For example, if you ran an automotive dealership then, it wouldn’t be in your best interests to target the keyword “truck.” The cost per click (CPC) for such a generic keyword would be incredibly high when compared to a more descriptive and relevant keyword, such as “T-Z783 Extended Cab.”

Similarly, the keyphrase “tail light covers” would not produce conversions if you strictly conducted automotive sales only. The phrase may bring visitors to your site, but if they don’t find what they’re looking for when they get there, they’ll leave just as quickly as they arrived.

It’s important to identify your specific niche, and to market directly to users who want the products and services that you offer. Don’t trick yourself into thinking that broader is better. With AdWords, that’s just not true.

2. Failing to Identify Unique Aspects of your Product or Service

Before you implement your AdWords campaign, you must understand exactly what it is that makes your organization stand out from the competition. By identifying your unique products, services, or offerings, you’ll see clearly how you can rise above your competitors and zone in on the keywords or phrases that are unique to your business.

I’d recommend that you perform an analysis of your competition. Have a look and see what they’re doing, and which phrases they’re using. After you’ve conducted a competition analysis, and you understand what makes your products or services unique, you’ll be able to come up with a strategy that will topple your competitors.

3. A Lack of Keywords in your Ad Text

When you’re creating descriptive ad copy, it’s imperative that you manage to inject your keywords in to your title and description while maintaining a delicate balance between clarity and relevance. Your ad copy should be tailored in such a way that as visitors read it, they understand exactly what they can expect when they click on your ad.

4. Directing Users Solely to your Homepage Few

site owners take the time to decide which destination URL should be applied to each ad. Instead, they point all ads in a campaign to the site’s homepage, then wonder why they’re not getting decent conversions.

If you’ve spent time compiling a list of relevant keywords that describe the unique aspects of your offering, why on earth would you send everyone to your homepage in the hopes that they’ll navigate through the site to find what they’re looking for?

Why not send them straight to the page that contains exactly what was described to them in the ad copy? Referring back to our example, if, as the automotive dealership owner, you’d created an ad that contained the keyword “T-Z783 Extended Cab,” which URL would you send prospects to? Instead of sending them to www.auto-motive-dealership.com, you’d send them straight to www.auto-motive-dealership.com/T-Z783_Extended_Cab.html, of course!

5. Creating Single Ad Groups

If you categorize ads that target related keywords into a common AdWords ad group, you’ll establish a high level of control over your entire campaign.

Let’s image that you own a sporting goods store. You might start by grouping all the ads you’d targeted towards hockey skates into a single ad group. You’d then create another ad-group which would contain ads that targeted hockey sticks, another that contained ads for hockey gloves, and so on.

Organizing your ad group structure in this manner gives you the ability to create in-depth reports on each ad-group, and to make real changes that have a significant impact on those ads’ performance over time.

6. Utilizing Single Ad Campaigns

Once you have your AdWords ads sorted into easily identified ad groups, you can move on to the next step: creating campaigns.

In the example above, we created ad groups that contain ads relating to separate products: hockey skates, sticks, gloves, and so on. Now, it’s time to create a container entitled “hockey equipment” to hold all of the ad groups in the campaign. Then, you can repeat the process of creating ad groups for tennis — one group for shoes, one for racquets, and so on — and drop all the groups into a single campaign called “tennis equipment.”

Having highly organized campaigns is the key to determining which ads are creating the optimal conversions. Don’t simply put all your ads into the one campaign — split them into separate campaigns to make tracking and amending the ad groups easy.

7. Using Broad Match Only

Unless you take advantage of the phrase matching options that AdWords makes available, chances are that you’re missing out on potential customers and creating a higher CPC for yourself.

As the name suggests, broad matches are usually less targeted than exact and phrase matches. Broad matching is the default option under which your ads will appear for expanded matches such as plurals or relevant keyword variations.

When you utilize phrase matching, your ad will appear for your chosen search terms in the order that you specify, and sometimes for other terms, too. Exact matching is by far the most targeted option to use, so don’t neglect it! You ad will appear for the exact keyword you specified. The negative keyword option is also a great tool — it allows you to specify the keywords for which you don’t want the ads to appear. Here’s a quick example of how these targeting options work:

Broad match: Default option: blue widget Phrase match: Surround the keyword in quotes: “blue widget” Exact match: Surround the keyword in square brackets: [blue widget] Negative match: Place a negative character before the keyword: -blue widget Take the time to test these different matching techniques, and to tweak your selections to improve your conversions. Broad matching is not necessarily the best — or only — option!

8. Failing to Optimize Ad Serving for your Ads

When you take advantage of the AdWords ad serving service, you’ll ensure that your most popular ads are displayed more often.

The AdWords platform will give more weight to the ads with the highest click through rates (CTRs), and will display them more often than ads with lower (CTRs) in the same ad group.

9. Failing to Track Results

In order to have any idea about your AdWords campaign’s performance, you must be able to identify which keywords work and which do not. Google AdWords supplies a vast array of very useful tracking tools. Google has also built into the AdWords interface Google Analytics — a marvellous web analytics tool that provides in-depth reporting on all aspects of your campaign’s performance.

I cannot stress enough the importance of creating goals for your AdWords campaign, then comparing your actual performance against these goals so that you can gauge your success.

10. Entering the Content Network without Modifying Bids

The AdWords platform has recently given advertisers the ability to set different bids for the content network than for the search network.

If you don’t set different bids on the content network for your keywords, you’ll be paying more than you should be for each click. Lower the prices on certain keywords, and you’ll notice that the number of clickthroughs you’ll receive will remain the same as at the higher bid.

Author:  Leighton James is an Online Money Making Machine. He Has Offered To Let You In His NEW Google Adwords SECRET. Don’t Miss This Revolutionary Opportunity http://www.Online-Residuals.com

Has Google Trimmed the Fat in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)?

All indications at this point would suggest so. In case you haven’t noticed, roughly over the past month, Google search results have been a little leaner than usual. Terms that were once in the hundreds of millions for competing pages are now showing results of two to three million results. Despite the algorithm shift, this restructuring has not impacted the pecking order, only weeded out and consolidated a bloated index for terms that may or may not have been as competitive as we suspected.

What the end result of this speculated shift will be still remains to be seen, is this the first step in personalization for search results whereby we will see more and more relevant 3-d search results that incorporate video, social media, Google maps and all of the other interesting platforms that are edging there way into the standard search results.

If we know one thing, it’s that change is a constant with search engines and search technology. How this impacts search engine optimization will depend on two factors, the first factor how susceptible is this platform to user based input? (such as link building, the flow of page rank and passing of link juice, networking, blogging, etc.) in reference to rankings. The second factor is, how can the SEO community adapt or will it even need to.

On a side note, will this mean different or new and unique penalties for link building (if you exceed a percentage platform of the total volume of searches) since the threshold has been lowered? For example, if a company had been link building for years to corner the market on a specific term, with the new revised ceiling being lowered, would that eject them from the rankings for such a term?

Could this in fact have been the reason to clear the clutter as a measure to minimize the affects of what they consider Search Engine Manipulation as opposed to Search engine optimization? At this point it is mere speculation (no reason to proclaim the end of the world for SEO), but as always when the changes subside, we will be able to conduct a thorough analysis to determine the impact of traditional methods and how they interact with the adjustment to the ranking and relevance component of Google’s search engine algorithm.

Does anyone really care about how many competing pages other than the ones optimizing the term?

Honestly, if you are an end user and you type a query in a search box, what is to say that the number of competing pages is even a consideration. A number 1 position is a number one position no matter how many ones or zeros are behind it, and regardless of the other pages, as long as the result is the most relevant, then people click it.

Perhaps on one level from the standpoint of ego gratification one may surmise that if the keyword or key phrase has 75,000,000 pages competing for it, well then it must be important, right? Unfortunately this concept may in fact be on it’s way out. Who knows if it was a ploy to dampen the SEO effect such as when paid links took a hit and lost the ability to pass rank, now, as it seems, keywords that have been abused or were once uber competitive how now been checked and put in their place.

Look at the term Search Engine Optimization for example, once a mighty over 100,000,000 strong, has now been consolidated to a mere 2,950,000 results. Or what about the short and sweet version SEO for example, once a term that had over 180,000,000 pages competing for it, now a mere 23,000,000. A restructuring on the relevance factor, perhaps a spring cleaning a bit early for automated scraper sites and other automated anomalies just lightening the load.

At this point, it looks like the SERPs may have lost a zero or two at the end of the total number of results. This could be them simply trimming the fat from the top 1000 pages to a more manageable number. While the reason is elusive, one thing is certain, I can assure you that most SEO firms are paying particular attention to this phenomenon scouring the SERPs for insight into this recent search behavior. All I can say is, buckle your seat belts and prepare for an interesting ride as the data centers, buck and toss millions of pages to the wayside in the largest housecleaning a search index has ever seen, courtesy of the Big G.

Diversification can insulate your business, blog or website against dependency on one marketing channel alone

The whole concept and analogy of putting your eggs in one basket comes to mind and surprisingly Yahoo and MSN are upping the ante with their new and improved search engine algorithms. Who knows at this point what the shake down will be, with viral marketing and social media garnering the attention of the masses, search engines which used to dominate the entire traffic equation are also taking on a less important role in the grand scheme of things. Traffic comes in many shapes and sizes, finding the right marketing channel and the right delivery method to find the highest conversion for your business model is now the bottom line.

Author:  Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

Making money with adsense can be a very powerful way to earn income online. If you own a website that gets traffic then as long as you place the adsense in an optimal manner you can increase your online income almost instantly. Of course if you do not own a site yet then consider creating one and learning how to optimize it for the search engines.

The main objective with adsense is to have good click through rates which will maximize your income. The main key with increasing click through rates is to make sure your ads blend in as much as possible with your site content and also the correct placement of ads is important. The link color of the ads is important as if the links on your site are red then you will want the links in the ads to also be red.

Also make sure that the url color is either black or grey as this will make the headline more noticeable. You want visitors to notice the headline of your ads because they are usually well written by most adwords advertisers since their goal is to get more clicks.

It is also a good idea to place some ads above the fold on your site. Above the fold means the section on your site that is visible without scrolling down. Make sure to place ads towards the center of the page as this area gets noticed the most. So consider having article content to the right or left of the page with adsense units in the middle. This can be accomplished easily by making the ad units like the 336×280 or 250×250 wrap around the content.

By placing ads right in the main content of your site you increase the chances of your ads getting noticed and clicked on. It is also important to keep in mind that the niche you are in must have lots of adwords advertisers in order to draw relevant ads that also pay well. The more advertisers there are the higher the bidding will get so on average you will get paid more per click.

There are certain ad units that tend not to perform well. The banner format has a record of poor performance so try to avoid that if possible. Also make sure that your ads do not have borders otherwise your visitors may ignore them as they will obviously look like ads. Be sure to make use of the channels feature in your adsense account. This will allow you to track your ads and learn what is working well and what is not.

Also you can experiment with the new Youtube adsense units as they could be profitable. However this feature is new so it is only through testing that you will know whether or not it is worth adding to your site. Try to use smaller text size on your site that is similar to the text size of the adsense units as this will help to blend your ads in better with the rest of your site.

When you are adding ads directly in the content be sure to not squeeze your content excessively as this may turn off a lot of visitors and people will simply leave your site and never come back. One of the goals of your site should be to build repeat visitors as these visitors can make you great adsense income and also affiliate income if you choose to add affiliate products to your site. Get your site optimized for adsense and maximize your online income from this powerful program.

Author:  Jitender Zaman is an online researcher, author and a regular contributor to a site that shows people how to make money online. Be sure to visit and also learn about affiliate marketing as way to increase your income.

I recently received another ‘please help’ email from a gentleman named Ian who runs an adventure company in Tanzania. Ian was concerned about the effect of a variety of issues including indexing and link dampening, and was desperate for help. Unfortunately, he had read some fairly misleading articles in the past, so he had a somewhat mixed up understanding of the factors at play. Because I suspect he’s not alone in his concern and confusion, I decided to publish the details of our discussion.

Ian’s email consisted of several questions. I’ve listed each separately below, followed by my response.

Q: When I search for the number of backlinks to my site using “link:www.betheladventure.co.uk”, I see only 23 results. It appears that only 23 of our backlinks have survived Google’s dampening link filter. Is there a time delay before they are credited to a site? ”

A: Firstly, I think you may have the dampening link filter a little confused. According to the dampening link filter theory, your links are found and recognized by Google, you just don’t get the full benefit from them until a given period of time has elapsed. The dampening link filter (if it exists) doesn’t stop links from appearing in Google’s results when you search for them. (The only reason your backlinks might not appear in a Google search is if Google hasn’t yet indexed the pages containing the links.) Also, don’t worry too much about things like the dampening link filter. For a start, it’s far from established / accepted fact. Many well regarded SEO experts don’t believe in it at all. Furthermore, even if it does exist, it only affects those businesses with the budget to generate the huge numbers (hundreds or thousands probably) of links reputedly required to trigger it. If your number of backlinks suddenly increases by 20, that’s no problem.

And secondly, don’t believe everything Google tells you. By searching for “link:www.betheladventure.co.uk”, you generally only see a small percentage of actual links to your site. The best way to search for links is to search for just the URL “www.bethaladventure.co.uk” , then on the page that displays next, select “Find web pages that contain the term “www.bethaladventure.co.uk” “. When you do it this way, you’ll see all the pages that contain your URL. In most cases, the URL will be an active link (or at least it should be, and you should ask them to make it so). When you do this search, you’ll see that your site has about 169 links, not 23.

Q: Another question is about indexed pages (using site:www.betheladventure.co.uk). I understand this is a record of pages that have been changed. I had 32, it went down to 28 and now this morning it is down to 26. Do they only keep the pages for a month or is there more to the indexed pages than I realized?

A: The number of indexed pages is simply the number of pages on your website that Google ‘knows about’. Theoretically, the only time the age of a page comes into play is when the page is too young*, i.e. Google spiders haven’t visited it yet, or Google hasn’t updated its index. As to why the reported number of indexed pages is reducing, I suspect it’s just a temporary shift. The number of results in Google’s searches varies pretty much constantly.

*Actually, technically speaking, it has been suggested that Google is not capable of indexing all 11.5 billion pages currently believed to be online (and the 10 million more that are added every day), and that as it indexes new pages, old pages are pushed out of the index. (This is a very rough description of the theory - if it’s happening at all, it’s likely to be far more complicated than this.) If this is happening, it may explain why the reported number of indexed pages is reducing. Although I think it’s a long shot, a good way to deal with it is to maintain high quality content, to keep increasing it, to keep generating backlinks, and to generate a Google sitemap. To find out more about sitemaps, go to Googles site map.

I know there’s a lot of confusion surrounding these issues, so I hope you’ve found this exchange helpful.

Happy indexing!

Author:  Alexander de Albuquerque, for car insurance articles please visit us here. If, you are looking for good used bmw cars then please visit us here. Submitted by: online article submission

Pay per click advertising can be one of the best ways to drive traffic to your sites. Since the traffic is targeted there is also a good chance that it may convert into sales since the people are looking for what you are offering. The keywords that you use in your adwords account can have a big impact on the success of your adwords campaigns.

You need to make sure that you are using only the most targeted keywords in order to maximize your conversion rates. The google adwords system rewards accounts that are focused on creating high quality relevant ads so you need to focus on that. Create small ad groups that are focused on specific keywords. Add the keyword in the title if you can as this will help to improve the click through rates on your ads.

You can also check the quality score of a keyword in your adwords account by selecting it from the dropdown menu in the keywords section of your account. The landing page of your ads is also important. Make sure that it has enough content, it is okay to use a squeeze page as long you have described the product or service you are offering adequately on the page. Add some relevant keywords onto your landing pages as naturally as possible as this will help to improve the quality score of your ads.

Remember that if your account has a good quality score with Google then you will be charged less for clicks while ranking higher than the competition. Click through rate is important and you want it to be as high as possible. Having super targeted ad groups is one of the best ways to boost your click through rates.

Tracking the conversion rates of the keywords is very important because if you find that certain keywords are converting well then you will want to bid higher on those since they are making you money. Conversely you will find other keywords for which you may be paying a lot but it does not convert well at all so you will want to either reduce your bids or delete these keywords altogether. Google adwords offers a conversion tracking feature and all you need to do is add the code to certain pages of your site.

If you are an affiliate then you may want to consider asking your product merchant to install this code if possible. Many merchants will comply if you approach them the right way. Remember that the keyword on your ads is bolded in the search results so this helps to set your ad apart and attract clicks so make sure that your keyword is in the ad. Using simple ad headlines is often the best way to start, sometimes just using the keyword alone works best.

Using a simple headline such as ‘Looking for #keyword#’ can work very well since it is giving the visitor exactly what they want so they are very likely to click on it. The body of your ads should be benefits driven rather than product feature driven so make sure you are describing how the product you have can help the visitor. If you are an affiliate then you will need to create a landing page before you send people to the original sales page.

Consider a squeeze page because you will then be able to market to these same people in the future. A squeeze page is a simple single page that has the primary purpose of getting the visitor to fill out an opt in form to receive more information.

Most of your visitors will not buy the first time they visit your site so it is important to have a way to get back in touch with them several times in the future. An auto responder email newsletter series is a perfect way to do this so make sure you are also building a list while you are advertising your products and services on Google adwords.

Always watch your budget when it comes to advertising with adwords and do not get carried away and exceed it because adwords can get very expensive very quickly. Run test campaigns of around 100 clicks to determine whether or not you are profitable and make sure you are learning from each failed campaign by analyzing what could have gone wrong and how you can improve for the next campaign.

Author:  Jitender is a webmaster and operates several websites. Learn about the top work at home online business opportunities and be sure to visit our site at http://www.homebusinessmoney.org

The world’s most popular search engine just keeps chugging along - the little train that could (and did) make billions of dollars and dominate the Internet landscape.

Like a giant tree with a root system extending deep into the earth, Google seeks to expand and diversify far beyond mere online search.

In their quest, the little elves at Google never seem to sleep and toil endlessly to bring us new gadgets and gizmos intended to make our lives better, both online and offline.

These four latest free offerings from Google’s Labs http://Labs.Google.com - will help you do everything from organize your thoughts to find the local pizza restaurant’s phone number through your cell phone.

Google Code Search http://www.google.com/codesearch

This one should have the geeks salivating like Pavlov’s dog sniffing out a rump roast!

This new search tool at Google allows you to search for public source code, the lines and lines of code that make your nifty software programs actually function.

Instead of writing all the code themselves, programmers can find and grab huge chunks of code free for the taking.

This makes a great staring point not only for programmers who want a leg up on finishing projects, but also neat for would-be software entrepreneurs who want to surf for ideas.

Google Voice Local Search - http://labs.google.com/goog411/  

Ok, I’ll admit to some skepticism when I saw that Google would help me find the number for the local barbershop just by talking into my phone.

But Google actually surprised me when I dialed 1-800-GOOG-411.

The phone asked me to say the city and state I wanted to search, and then asked me if I wanted to search by business name or business category.

Once I found the business I wanted, Google went ahead and dialed the number for me.

I found this service no worse than the automated search from the phone company, and Google offers this service FREE.

Well worth a call if you find yourself paying some hefty 411 fees to the phone company or your wireless provider.

Google Reader - http://reader.google.com/

The jury is still debating whether my dear sweet mother will ever subscribe to an RSS feed (the syndication feeds from blogs, news services, and more), so I’m not sure how universal RSS will ever get.

However, Google does offer a free RSS reader online that enables you to easily subscribe to blogs, news feeds, and any other RSS feeds you like.

The readers let you organize your feeds, update, and view them all in one place.

Not as powerful as some readers you pay for, but very functional and hey, you can’t beat free!

Google Notebook - http://www.google.com/notebook/

Google Notebook is the most recent graduate of the Google Labs.

This handy program allows you to organize your notes and clippings as you travel the web.

Instead of just bookmarking a site in your favorites and trying to remember why you liked it, with Google Notebook, you can highlight what you want and click the “clip” button.

You can then organize your notes however you want and then search through your note text at any time.

You can even share your notes with others.

Google Notebook is available through your web browser after you download and install special extensions to help you clip items you find on the Web.

Author:  Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the creator of http://www.TheNetRe porter.com - a hard-hitting, no-holds-barred website that will teach you step-by-step and click-by-click how to really cash-in online. Discover what really works RIGHT NOW… plus the new twists on tried and true Internet Marketing techniques that create a profitable “real” business you can be proud of http://www.TheNetRe porter.com

The good people at Google have long maintained that there is a Chinese Wall between paid search results and organic results – that is, the department responsible for advertising is completely separate from the department responsible for organic search engine placement. The company insists that Google Adwords is a completely separate entity than the Google search engine, and never the twain shall meet. This all sounds very good, in theory. But do they live up to this ideal in practice?

“Chinese Wall - The ethical (not physical) barrier between different divisions of a financial (or other) institution to avoid conflict of interest…”
Investopedia.com

“While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results.”
Google’s Webmaster Help Center FAQ

“NO pay for inclusion, and a complete separation of the search index part from the money part.”
Google Chief Engineer Craig Neville-Manning, Search Engine Strategies 2004

Perhaps one of the most helpful analytical tools you can use on your site. Google Analytics will give you a wealth of information about your site’s traffic. Where it comes from, how long it stays on your site, where it goes on your site, how well your content converts… invaluable information every webmaster should have in their possession. ( www.google.com/analytics )

You don’t hear Google talking much about Chinese Walls these days. This is certainly in part because they have had great difficulty gaining traction in the literal and very competitive Chinese market (headlines such as “Google Hits Chinese Wall” or even “Google Advance Halted at Great Wall of China” were commonplace). But might there be other, more nefarious reasons? Is there a reason why we hear less and less from Google about the virtual wall that separates paid search results from organic search engine placement?

What Is Google Really Doing for Its Big Spenders?

It has long been rumored that Google will offer technical assistance in achieving better organic search engine placement to those who spend more for paid search results. I know for certain that these rumors are true in at least two instances. In fact, I actually have the minutes from one of these technical assistance meetings after the company met with Google engineers. While the identity of these two companies is irrelevant, suffice to say that they are companies that you have almost certainly heard of and that they spend millions of dollars on paid search words each year.

To be fair, based on the meeting minutes I have, the advice that the engineers gave to the company does not include anything groundbreaking. It is mostly common sense advice that a good search engine optimization firm already knows about organic search engine placement and other issues, and much of it is already covered in the publicly-available Google Webmaster Guidelines. This, however, is beside the point. Google has obviously decided that it must offer perks to its big paid search spenders to keep them happy (or rather, happy enough to not pull their advertising). Clearly, one of these perks is access to Google engineers and the ability to glean information about organic search engine placement, a luxury that smaller advertisers do not enjoy.

Organic Search Engine Placement for Sale – The New Google Reality?

From a business perspective, this makes perfect sense, of course. Big-dollar advertisers make up the bulk of Google’s revenue for paid search, and any intelligent business will take whatever steps they deem necessary to hold on to their most valuable customers. This is why larger advertisers already have a designated account representative from Google. I am willing to bet that this perk was not Google’s idea. Rather, it almost certainly stemmed from the sense of entitlement that those spending large sums on paid search felt and the fact that technical help with their organic search engine placement is what they demanded.

Unfortunately, this reality leaves an advertiser with a small budget for paid search at a disadvantage. If Google is willing to offer this secret perk to larger advertisers now, what might they do in the future? Offer price breaks to larger paid search spenders? Increase the minimum monthly spend to squeeze out smaller companies and please the larger ones? It certainly has the potential to become a slippery slope, and I am interested to see where it goes next.

One final point – since Google is willing to give advice about organic search engine placement to companies that spend a great deal of money on Google advertising, is the phrase “While Google never sells better ranking in our search results…” truly accurate? I suppose this is open for interpretation. It may be technically true, but offering advice regarding organic search engine placement straight from the horse’s mouth in exchange for millions of dollars in money for paid search results isn’t far from selling rankings, in my opinion.

Conclusion

Please don’t get me wrong – I still believe that Google is the best search engine out there, I greatly admire the way that they are continually reinventing themselves, and I think they are still the target for those seeking the most benefit from organic search engine placement. They have the folks in Redmond constantly guessing and always three steps behind, and I love how they have started from humble beginnings to take on one of the biggest corporations in the world (and consistently win). I simply believe that they have played the underdog, anti-corporate card for too long, and that even if it has not outlived its usefulness, it has outlived its truthfulness. Google is now a huge multinational corporation that answers to its shareholders. To pretend anything otherwise is silly, but it seems that, for now at least, the charade will continue.

Google’s overriding principle, one that they have been happy to espouse to the media, has long been “Don’t Be Evil.” Whether they still adhere to this principle since they have become a public company is another question that is open for interpretation. If you are a smaller advertiser and feel that Google’s favoritism toward larger paid search customers regarding organic search engine placement is evil, it probably seems as though the “Don’t Be Evil” principle no longer applies. You may conclude that the principles of “Don’t Be Evil” and “Keep Shareholders Happy” are mutually incompatible, and that the latter has gained the upper hand.

Author:  Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld.  Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.  Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Download Medium Blue’s latest exclusive whitepaper, “Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix,” for more insight.

So it finally happened! Google caught everyone that is buying and selling links and dropped their PageRank. The world is over and Google has taken over the internet. The time has come for all SEO’s to hang up their SEO shoes and move on to PPC, right? Or is it?

I have been trying my best to follow the myriad of hoopla going on on message forums and blogs in addition to follow the trends and patterns of sites that I follow in order to draw some educated conclusions on what actually happened and how it will effect websites and the SEO industry. I have composed a series of questions that average Joe Webmaster is asking right now.

What happened?

Good question! I’m glad I asked. Back in early summer (of 2007), Google, through Matt Cutts and other employees publicly declared war on paid links. Specifically, they announced that according to their guidelines, website owners or webmasters cannot sell PageRank for the purposes of improving the organic ranking of other sites. This irked many people on the web who proclaimed that they are advertising to monetize their sites and Google cannot tell them what to do. Conversely, Google requested that such “advertisers” either declare their outbound ad links as paid (sponsored, supported, what have you), edit them with a nofollow attribute, make them JavaScript, or some form of other means of not passing PageRank such as a redirect.

In the meantime, Google was busy promoting their “report paid links” feature and collecting data from Webmasters and SEO’s who have been busy ratting out their competitors (each other).

A few weeks back, new broke that Google has devalued many directories that accept payment for links but offer no real value. They proclaimed that directories with a true editorial review were untouched, while those that simply sell links to anyone and everyone have been devalued.

Last week, news broke that many high profile sites (forbes.com, washingtonpost.com, daily.stanford.edu, searchenginerountable.com, searchenginejournal.com, statscounter.com and many notable bloggers) have had their (toolbar) PageRank value reduced. Some lost 2 points, others lost more.

This week, many others have reported some PageRank fluctuations. Many lost PageRank while some gained, yet others stayed the same—and the panic began.

What did Google really do?

The following is my opinion of what Google did. Over the last few months, I have found Google to be dramatically editing its main ranking algorithm. Search results have been unsteady at best with 2, 3, 4 page shifts from day to day for no apparent reason. Changes like this can usually be attributed to datacenter variances, but I do not believe that was the case. The results were too similar across multiple IP’s.

In case you don’t know, the Google Toolbar PageRank value is only updated every so often. In fact, until this recent one in October, the last one was in May, 2007. That means that the visible PageRank can be one value while the actual PageRank that Google uses is usually different and one that is much more granular than a 0-10 scale. So all of these changes have happened a while ago (and no one was in a panic) but once the visible PageRank started to show, everyone freaked. Why?

Google claims to not perform manual index adjustments, but it has been pretty well documented that they do. I believe they manually “adjusted” some of the more prominent sellers by docking them some PageRank, and thus potentially lowering their income from paid links since so many people buy links according to PageRank. Additionally, I think they used a combination of some algorithmic magic, paid link reports, and manual checks from employing half of China to detect some of the sellers and dock them some PageRank. I do not think buyers were affected.

Additionally, I believe an algorithm tweak has occurred that has devalued and reduced the PageRank of sites that participate in extensive reciprocal linking. I have seen this firsthand on sites that I frequent observe.

So to get back to why you lost PageRank: because the total PageRank on the internet was reduced and this caused a rain down effect on the rest of the sites that those sites link to. Its sort of like 6 degrees of separation: every indexed site is somehow linked to every other site. So when many sites had their PageRank reduced due to selling links and reciprocal linking, this reduction of total PageRank effected every site they are linking to down the line. Less PageRank for them means less PageRank for you—simple as that.

I don’t buy or sell links. Why did I lose my PageRank?

This has been one of the major underlying facets I’ve seen all over the internet this week. Everyone that lost PR thinks they were wrongfully tagged as buying or selling links and there is mass panic. I can bet that Google was flooded with reinclusion requests this week. What is there to reinclude? People have been literally freaking out over the loss of a PageRank point. They come from far and wide asking how to fix it before their house gets repossessed.

What if I sell links—what will happen?

It really depends how you sell them. Is selling links evil? No, in my opinion, it is not evil. I believe it is a form of advertising. Google asks that you declare them as paid links or apply an attribute that will not allow the passing of PageRank. The question everyone wants to know is what will happen if they sell links yet do not declare them as paid? Its hard to say, but it seems that Google has decreased the PageRank of some of them. Also, some sites that do declare their links as paid have also lost PageRank.

What if I buy links—what will happen?

There is a good chance that if they are good links, your positions in search engines will improve! Will you be hurt in any way? Probably not, but I would avoid buying links from sellers that clearly state that their links are all sponsored. I would insure that the link buying is progressive and natural using a variety of natural-sounding anchor texts from a variety of sites over a progressive amount of time. Many notable people in the industry such as Rand Fishkin and Jim Boykin have blatantly proclaimed that they have bought links for their clients in front of a panel of Google Engineers at conferences.

How can Google detect paid links?

They won’t say, nor will they confirm that they can. They have simply said that they may take action against sites that they believe to be selling links. One way I believe it is possible to detect un-proclaimed paid links is to analyze the outbound link neighborhoods. If a blog site has 5 posts on its homepage that are linking to sites about credit counseling, herbal Viagra, online bingo games, SEO India, and mortgages, its pretty easy to tell that those are sponsored reviews. If I can tell by looking at a site for 5 seconds, I’m pretty sure Google has the technical prowess to do this algorithmically.

Does it really matter?

No. I don’t think it does one bit unless you are a major link seller and you base your mortgage payments on that little green bar. In which case, I think it may be a good time for you to develop a new business model because this particular one may be coming to an end.

I do not believe PageRank to be a big ranking factor at all. In fact, I believe its main purpose is public relations (get it, PR?) and being able to get a major industry reaction with such actions. I believe PageRank plays a roll in denoting the importance of a page in order to allocate crawling resources. So in my opinion, PageRank is only important if you sell links or have a huge site with the need to efficiently distribute PageRank across your 450,000 pages.

It has gotten to the point of an obsession. Words like “doomsday” have been thrown around. To add to the hysteria, PageRank fluctuations can occur depending on the datacenter the user has hit. So people reporting a drop from PR5 to PR4 have been frantically removing links and putting nofollow attributes on their paid links to come back in an hour, hit a different datacenter and report a PR5 again. This does nothing but perpetuate the rumor of Google being able to detect all paid links. What is essentially happening is Google is getting all of these Webmasters to admit to selling links by tagging them as nofollow!

I bet Matt Cutts and everyone else are sitting back and having a good old laugh over all this. I know I am