Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

There are two different  advertising options which Google offers that you can use to earn money; AdWords and AdSense.

AdWords works to sell your own product or service; you are responsible for creating ads to be shown next to search results or on relevant websites, and paying a small fee each time someone clicks on your ad. The goal there is to convert enough of those clicks to sales to make a profit.

AdSense is the flip side of the coin – you build a blog or website, and allow Google to place other people’s AdWords ads strategically.  You get a portion of the fee the advertisers pay Google to show their ads.

Some webmasters do both – play the game of AdWords to drive traffic to their site, then reinforce the message with content built around AdSense, hoping that their outlay will be less then the revenue. Others concentrate on selling their own product or service using AdWords as one facet of their marketing plan, and still another faction specializes in what are known as ‘AdSense sites’ – which are built purely to take advantage of niche advertisers.

AdWords allows you to write relevant ads to be displayed next to search results that match your keywords. This is a good method for getting noticed, especially when you are new and haven’t managed to hit the top page of organic search yet. You can get an ad on the front page even if you haven’t managed to rank there yet.

Your ads will be shown next to relevant search results, as well as on content networks. Even Gmail users now see ads that pick up on keywords in their emails and show as a discreet banner running along the top of their inbox.  The relevance is determined by Google, and you can also direct the placement of your ads more specifically by using tools which Google provides as part of the program.

Basically, with Google AdWords, your SEO is in your placement and in the actual writing of the ads themselves, as well as research for the best keywords and a careful handling of budget so that your cost per click stays affordable and your ROI is high!

Google AdSense means makingyour site part of the content network so that ads are shown on your site. You receive a portion of the cost per click the advertiser is paying! You can make some very good money if they have paid a high premium for clicks on their ad, so look at the tools Google provides for this system as well and see what advertisers are paying to estimate your possible revenue share.

The SEO involved here is all about having a worthy site, one that is attractive and relevant to the ads showing that have these high values. If you can attract high quality advertisers, you will make more money.

You can also make money with AdSense by becoming an affiliate. The means that certain advertisers will commit to using your site heavily for ads, and you receive a commission every time they make a sale at your site. This requires commitment and a high conversion rate, or advertisers will drop you.

You should always use links to strengthen your site and make it more attractive to Google and advertisers alike. Links from informational content on the web can be a good way to drive that customer traffic to your site!

Do plan on taking advantage of Google’s advertising programs to monetize your site – even if you only make enough on AdSense to pay for your annual hosting you will at least be making your site pay for itself!

When conducting SEO, you must target the most effective keywords that are relevant to your site. When your site needs a keyword upgrade, there are a few things you should do to prevent your web-pages from becoming even less efficient.

First, make sure it’s a keyword issue, and not broken links, weak content, or lack of promotion. Keywords that under-perform are sometimes affected by other factors, so it is important to look at your website as a whole.

Since reaching the first page of the SERPS is hard, if you have managed it you really may want to consider long and hard before switching your keywords and having to start over.

Use a good web analytics program to understand different issues which could be negatively impacting any single page’s performance. This will give you additional insight as to the habits of the consumers who visit your site who are drawn in by targeted keywords. You can look at how they see your site compared with those who arrive by other means such as paid search.

Once you have familiarized yourself with your consumer base, you can start to isolate the best possibilities for enhancing your site’s user engagement. You need a solid balance between keyword optimization and good polished content

Look for keywords that are over or under-performing from a visitor / conversion point of view. Sometimes a tweak of the page is all that is needed, or even lifting a high performing word out and giving it its own page.

Look where your customers go after a brief time on a ‘low performing’ page. If they follow a pattern of eventually converting, perhaps the page is doing its job after all. If they back out and take another route consistently, consider restructuring your page flow.

Run tests. A landing page test, split A/B or A/B/C can bring to light hidden weaknesses and help you figure out how to strengthen your call to action. Usability tests and focus groups are a good way to get information directly from consumers, and Google’s Website Optimizer can also help by showing two different groups of visitors different versions of your landing page – this immediately shows you which one is more successful at engaging visitors.

Finding a productive niche depends on two factors – a product or service, and finding the right audience to target.

A niche is simply a corner of the market where there is a shortage of supply versus demand. A good way to track down highly searched topics is by using a program to find out what people are searching for. Google has several tools that are helpful in this area. When you add modifiers like how, buy, fix and online to your niche keywords, you will find out what people need and how they are looking for it.

You want the niche you choose to be ripe for monetizing, so you either need strong affiliates or else an advertising base. Once you have found a site or two with good commission rates, you can check how much actual search there is for your keywords.  A high number of results in Google indicates a high demand. You can use the Adwords tool to generate similar terms and figure out how to use long tail keywords in addition to your major ones.

There should be at least 500 different possibilities for optimization, with additional spin-offs.  The more options you have for optimization, the greater chance you have to end up on the front page of the SERPs for one or more of your keyword phrases.

You can also use Google tools to determine potential pay-per-click amounts from advertisers. If the quantity of search and the level of the payout are both large, you have found a potentially profitable niche.

Next, do keyword research in earnest. Develop strong content and a linking campaign. Figure out who your best customers are (hint, the will already be looking for your product / service with checkbook in hand) and target them effectively. Soon your niche site will be up and business will be booming!

Google Webmaster Tools is available free to all webmasters who have registered a site with Google. The tools can be used to monitor your site’s efficiency, check for errors, show you what needs repair and help you optimize for best usability and traffic.

First on the list is Google Webmaster’s error report – this will show errors like non-followed URLs, broken links, un-crawled areas of your site, etc. This can help you see which links are not working or that point to pages you have retiresd, and also shows you what pages are not being indexed.

The site defaults function lets you tell Google whether you want your page shown with the www or without. It also enables you to use geographic targeting, and activate image labeler so your images will show up in image searches.

You can obtain a list of URLs with duplicate title tags or duplicate meta descriptions, as well as find out if some of the ones you have are too short or too long.

You can find top search queries in a number of locations, but having this available in Google Webmaster Tools is just another plus. You can see what people are clicking on, and your ranking for each search term, as well as breaking it down by type of search (web, image, mobile) or by country.

You can manage sitelinks if you are lucky enough to get them – you may not be able to add pages on a whim, but you can ask that ones Google selects be excluded if you have the need.

With JavaScript embedding capabilities, Google can juice up your 404’s with a search box and maybe keep visitors from bouncing away from your site. Google can also try to guess what the user was looking for based on what Google has indexed in your site.

These and even more features of Google Webmaster Tools are being added daily, so check out the options you have to improve your site even more!

There is no excuse not to maximize the value you get out of your web analytics. Still, most people barely scratch the surface of their web analytics tools. If you look at your own web analytics data you know how well you are doing right now. You have to compare these numbers to others taken over time to have a clear picture, and then you have to compare them to other sites in your category!

By enabling benchmarking in Google Analytics, you can see the metrics for competing sites. These benchmarks let you see areas of opportunity for you to beat out these competitors. Benchmarks are available for Visits, Bounce Rates, Page Views, Average Time on Site, Page Views Per Visit and Percent of New Visits. You can also choose the category of your web based business by drilling vertically: Computers & Electronics -> Internet Software -> Content Management.

Internal site search data is where you find out what your visitors REALLY want, based on the queries they type in the search engine. This can help you understand visitor intent and identify new opportunities to improve landing pages, cross-promote products, and adjust your marketing and advertising strategy.

Hiring a web analysts is fine, but they will tend to focus on referrers and campaigns – when they say ’search’ they mean paid search. Organic search analysis is usually passed over or shuffled off on a newbie, or given the bare minimum of attention. This is a mistake. Organic search is free, has great ROI over the long term, and can actually serve as the foundation of a great paid search strategy. Don’t forget landing pages – analyzing and optimizing these can make all the difference. Your first impression may always be your last, so make it count.

Analyzing things like straight ROI on ad campaigns is important. So is raw number of visitors, etc, but the more time you spend learning how to use your analytics tools, the more you will know about your site and the more targeted you can become when planning campaigns and marketing strategies.

If you notice one area of your site has a lower amount of return than another, some webmasters might scrap the whole section and try something else. With analytics, you can pinpoint where what money that does come in is trickling from, pare away the deadwood, and build around that live core for a well optimized traffic attracting site.

Don’t ignore analytics. They can be your very best friend.

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