Sunday, September 21, 2008

Contests on Your Site

Freebies from contests or from drawings keep people coming
back. Everyone wants something free. But in addition, it
can also bring people in. Employ this marketing technique
that you now use for your current visitors and customers to
your search engine optimization program.
Have a contest that lasts for a few months. Give away a
prize related to the products or service your site offers. For
example, if you’re an accounting site that sells software,
offer a free software package for the winner. Then, change
your keywords (key phrases) to reflect free accounting
software. I think everyone searches for free products and
services from time to time, if not frequently. Don’t you?
Why not lure more traffic in by giving away something free
yourself?

Sales and Specials:

If you’re selling something from your site, which you
probably are, you have sales and specials from time to time.
Why not update your tags to reflect this? Sales and specials
should not only be available to your current customers and
visitors, but used to also bring new ones in. Updating your
tags to reflect this is a free form of advertising and gives
you another way to rank in the search engines.
Give away free trials too, if you can afford to do so.
Companies that offer free trials of their software are doing
it, convinced that you will buy it once you try it, but it also
attracts search engine customers looking for something free.
The more your site comes up in the search engines, the
more successful you’re going to be.

Opt-in Mailing List:

Creating a chance for your customers and visitors to stay up
to date with site changes, sales, specials, and contests is a
great way to increase traffic to your site. Visitors who do
not buy anything can sign up, and this provides you with a
way to keep them coming back to your site. You could also
create a survey that they receive when they sign up. Just
be sure they know this and that the survey is optional.
Getting visitor feedback about their experiences on your site
can be invaluable. By doing this, you’ll learn what the
majority want and be able to keep your site in tune with
your visitors’ needs.
There are several software programs that you can pay for
which will help you set up and organize a mailing list. You
can also do it yourself for free by creating simple HTML
forms on your site. The results can be stored in a database
or emailed directly to you. Visit http://www.htmlbasix.com
for a free e-mail form html code.
You can also use Yahoo groups as the site below has done.
This gives your visitors a chance to interact, and it’s a way
for a Webmaster to keep them updated.

More Than One Site

If you have more than one site, link them together so your
sites share traffic. Some Webmasters believe that having
more than one domain for their single site increases their
search engine ranking, but they are wrong. Crawlers usually
only index information once, and so that just may be a
waste of your time and money.
However, if you do have more than one complete site, by
linking them together, you can increase traffic to both, and
by doing that, raise your ranking. There isn’t any magical
formula to increase your ranking, so if it seems easy and too
good to be true, like in life, it probably is.

Google Site Maps:

Site maps are not only a way to let your customers know
exactly is what on your site and where, it also helps the
Google spiders index your site. By going to
http://www.google.com, you can find out how to create a
site map. They will ask you to upload a blank file to your
site for verification purposes. After that, you will let Google
know exactly where your site map is and your site will be
indexed accordingly.
Google is Webmaster and search engine optimization
friendly in addition to being one of the most popular search engines. Be sure to take advantage of every tool they offer
you to increase your ranking with them.

Update Regularly

Updating your site with fresh, new content not only keeps
the visitors and customers you have coming back, it also
gives you a chance to rank higher in the search engines.
During updates, you should not only update content, but
also your keywords (key phrases), description, and title.
Sometimes as sites grow, they expand their subject matter
and products and transform. This should be reflected in
every aspect of your pages, not just the parts the public
views, so your traffic (visitors and customers) increase as
your site grows. Remember, more traffic not only means
more business for you. It also means more people can click
on your AdSense ads, which makes money for you.

Appropriate Page Names:

Search engines index pages, which means your page could
be pulled up in a search by the name. If you have a page
about antique sofas, title the page antique sofas or be even
more exact than that, if there’s a certain type of sofa on that
page. This makes your page more searchable and can give
you more targeted traffic.

Marketing:

How does marketing your site help your advertising
revenue? It’s simple. By marketing your products or
service and bringing people to your site for those products
or services, you are increasing the number of visitors. The
ads on your pages are targeted for your content and what
your site offers, so when you bring in targeted visitors
through your marketing campaigns, those visitors are likely
to click through your ads.
Marketing is a trial and error procedure. Certain methods
work well for some sites, and not so well for others. Monitor
your site stats and traffic logs with each new marketing
campaign you try. See what works well for you, and
permanently implement the programs that bring you more
traffic as well as higher CTR or click through rates.

Page Title:

Let’s take a step back to page architecture for a minute.
While whether you build your site using CSS or frames
doesn’t have an impact on your site’s success, other factors
do.
A lot of webmasters use the title tag in each of their pages
to name their website or company so that it appears at the
top of the visitor’s browser. It looks good, but it does
nothing for the site’s success. Use your title tag to give a
brief description of what your site offers.
A potential new customer is not going to type the name of
your site into a search engine, but they will type in the products or services you offer. For example, Joe’s Place
sells used car parts online. So does Albert’s Virtual Garage.
Joe’s Place has “Your online stop for foreign and domestic
used car parts” as his title. Albert’s simply has “Welcome to
Albert’s Garage” When someone types “used car parts” into
a search engine, who are they more likely to find? Joe’s
Place, of course.

Keyword Rich Content

Implement as many keywords as you can into your content.
Crawlers search content as well, and the more popular
keywords you can work in, the better. Remember that you
are going to have a better CTR for AdSense if you have
more visitors. To have more visitors, you must have quality,
optimized content in order to gain, then maintain a good
search engine ranking.

Keywords:

Meta Tag keywords are placed in the header of your
webpages and represent the content of that page using
single words or brief phrases. The words or phrases used
are ones search engine crawlers will pick up when they index
your site and also the ones someone using a search engine
might type in to find your site.
It’s obvious to say that you should use Meta tag keywords
that are relevant to your site’s content. Don’t add any
keywords that have nothing to do with your site. Crawlers
may be essentially robots, but they do surf content as well,
and you can be banned from search engines.
List your products or services, any other applicable terms,
and even well known competitors if you want. It’s important
to have good keywords (or key phrases). There is software
out there that helps you pick keywords and allows you to
maximize your keywords so that the ones you use are theones most frequently used by search engines, just research
before you buy.

Keyword Generators:

The best way to select keywords is to choose ones that are
already searched for frequently. There's no need to pay for
a keyword generator unless you want to. Overture will give
you the top 25 keywords that were typed into search
engines for the previous month. Just enter a term related to
your page. Bookmark this site for whenever you create a
new page:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion

Descriptions:

Meta tag site descriptions are not read by Google crawlers
because they generate their own descriptions for the page,
but other search engines still use them. The best way to
come up with your site description is to use the first one or
two sentences of text on the page. It’s worth your time to
use this tag because it gives you some control with various
crawlers.

Geo Targeting:

If you offer a product or service to a certain city or
geographical area, you can specify that in your keywords
and description. Doing this may be very crucial in drawing
in targeted traffic from search engines. However, avoid just
naming small areas because that limits the customers that
can find you. If you’re a northern California chiropractor,
don’t just list the county or city your business is in. Always
aim for the larger audience to get the maximum results from
search engines.

Robot Tags:

Robot tags let you specify what pages on your site are
indexed. Robot tags go in your header, but you can also
create a text file. The text file will be the first thing they
“read” when they’re on your site. By using the text file, you
can specify which pages not to index and insure only the
content you want in the search engines will appear. To
create a robot.txt file, go to
http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool-robots.txt-generator.htm

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Have the Right Amount of Content



At the same time, don’t put too little on a page. Having one
paragraph on a page makes it look like your site has nothing
to offer, and the customer has little to gain by venturing to
other pages. Address the topic of the page and cover it well.
It’s crucial to successful ad revenue to organize your pages
well. If you have ads ¾ of the way down the page, but
you’ve bored the customer before he got halfway down the
page, then you’ve lost ad revenue. For the same reason, if
you don’t have enough information and the customer
doesn’t click through to other pages where there are ads,
again, you’ve lost revenue.
Think of your website as a book. There always has to be
enough to make them turn the page, but not so much that
they know how the story ends after reading the first
paragraph.
This site below doesn’t have enough content on the page to
support Google AdSense. Half the page is blank. The
solution here would be to move the ads up into the content
or move them to another page. To a visitor, the site looks
like it’s missing something it needs. Besides that, the ads
really stand out as just that: ads.

Free Content for Websites
There are sites that will provide you with free content for
your site, including articles, polls, quizzes, etc. You can use
those that relate to your site’s content in exchange for a link
back. Articles and quizzes can draw more visitors to your
site, but remember the content must be quality. If you wrap
up a big box for a Christmas present for someone, but fill
the box with garbage, they’re not going to be impressed.
It’s the same way with content.
Remember that the more quality content you have, the
more your visitors are going to trust that the ads you display
are quality, as well. And the more interesting content you
have, the more keywords you’ll use. It’ll make your site
more prominent in the search engines. All this translates to
more visitors and a higher CTR with AdSense.
http://www.freshcontent.net and http://www.pollhead.com
are two of many sites that offer free content to Webmasters.

Use the Best Software and Tools

Let’s start with the basic design of your site. Don’t take
shortcuts or look for quicker ways to put it together that are
going to ultimately result in a poor site design or bad
content. Being an amateur is no excuse for poor quality.

Do your research. Stay on top of products and software that
will benefit you and your website. After all, if you walk into
a clothing store and all the clothes are hanging from
clotheslines, are you going to buy anything there? What
about if all the clothes are strewn all over the floor? Of
course not. You don’t want your visitors to experience a
similar experience and navigate away after seeing your site.

If you choose, you can use a free template for your site.
However, you want your site to look professional, so look at
some related sites before you decide.
There is also software that can help you design your own
professional site with little or no HTML skills. Programs like
Microsoft FrontPage make it easy. If you aren’t going to hire
someone to do your site, consider using a professional
template or software. Putting your best effort into doing it
without any help is admirable, but if you fail in creating a
good site, your efforts won’t be rewarded with returning
visitors and a high CTR.
Take the time to do it right the first time. If you don’t have
Microsoft FrontPage, you can always use a professional
template. By signing up for an http://www.bravenet.com
membership, you have access to free professional templates
as well as other useful resources.

Websites should have a clear, clean design with the focus
being on the information, product, or service you offer. Put
away those fancy backgrounds because they just distract
from the text.
The content on your site should stand out, not the
background. Any colors you use should be pleasing to the
eye and not clash. Take the time to visit some larger sites
on the Internet for different companies and corporations.
While you may be just one person or a small company, you
should display the same level of professionalism in your
design.
Stick with the traditional light or white background for text.
Other darker colors should be used for side columns and to
dress up the white, not to take over and distract the reader
from what you really want them to notice.
It’s important to remember that you’re bringing the visitor
to your site to read the content, not to be blinded by your
incredible use of color or the beautiful background. So,
focus on the content. Make it visible and make it the focus.
Site Content:
Your site’s content is very important to your search engine
ranking. If you’re an online florist, do not type online florist
repeatedly on your first page with the hopes of tricking the
search engines into giving your site a higher ranking. You’ll
just be banned. However, it’s very important to have
keywords placed in your legitimate text because spiders and
crawlers will pick those up.
Quality content can help you rank higher in the search
engines, but it also keeps visitors coming back. Site traffic
is not only essential to the site itself and the business it
represents, but also to your AdSense CTR. A certain
percentage of your traffic will ultimately click through your
ads. The more traffic you have, the more visitors that will
click through your ads.

Don’t Clutter Pages with Too Much Information

More content on a single page is not better in all cases.
When it comes to how much information you place, there
should be some basic rules in place. Don’t try to jam pack
too much on one page. Different topics should be on
different pages. You shouldn’t have any page so cluttered
with information that it’s hard to read any one thing.
If you have a lot of information that must be put on the
same page, make sure it keeps the readers attention or
gives them a way to easily return to the top, such as with
FAQ pages.

Preparing Your Site for Ads

How much traffic does your site receive per month? How
many are unique visitors and how many are returning?
What keywords are you using? How high does your site
rank in the search engines?
Being successful with AdSense goes hand in hand with
website success. The better your site is organized and the
higher you’re ranked, the more visitors you have. The more
professional of a job you do, the more you’re going to see
success with AdSense. There are ways to construct your
site and things you can do to bring more visitors and keep
those same ones returning. Also, there are things you can
do to make more visitors click through your AdSense ads.
Know your traffic stats and your search engine rankings.
Those are the numbers you want to improve and the first
steps to success with AdSense. It’s time to start your own
SEO campaign. You won’t see the results over night, but
you will see them.
If you don’t have traffic monitoring software on your site,
you can get a free one at
http://www.precisioncounter.com/

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

Couple Google AdSense with a good search engine
optimization program, or SEO, and what do you get? You
get a site with high click through rates and revenue from
AdSense. While every site should have some sort of SEO
strategy, it’s not essential to having a site. However, it’s
essential if you want your site to be successful with
AdSense. SEO brings targeted traffic to your site. AdSense
displays ads that will interest your targeted traffic.
Discussed below are tips and techniques designed to boost
your traffic and your click through rate (CTR).


As said before, click through rates with any ad program,
especially AdSense, depend on the number of visitors you
have to your site. The more visitors you have, the higher
the number of visitors who are going to click through an ad.
That is just common sense.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO involves your site’s page
architecture, content, links to your site, and other
determining factors that rank your site higher with the
search engines. Things like popular keywords and key
phrases help you gain higher rank as well. By doing all of
this and learning how to optimize your site, you are going to
increase targeted traffic to your site. Increased targeted
traffic means a higher CTR for you.

There are companies out there who will provide SEO
services to you and your site. They will optimize your
pages, build links, and get your site ranked higher in the
search engines. Prices for these services vary based upon
experience. If you’re going to hire someone to optimize
your site, check them out and ask many questions. It’s
recommended that you learn basic SEO on your own so that
you can easier spot a qualified company.
In addition to the tips listed below, you can download a free powerful e-book
on SEO by visiting this site:
http://www.rlrouse.com/SEO.html

About Google AdSense

If you’re new to Google AdSense, it’s important to first
realize how the program works and why it works so well. All
AdSense ads are targeted to your website’s niche. For
example, if a new computer site has AdSense ads on its
pages, the ads will have something to do with computers
and will be targeted to the information about computers
contained on the page.
Targeting ads toward a visitor’s interest raises the chance
that they will click through the ad. After all, not many
visitors looking for a new computer are going to care if an ad
is offering free poker chips.
You are paid per click, which means for each ad on your site
that is clicked through by a visitor, you will be paid a
specified amount. The more clicks, the more money you
make.
All of this is why AdSense is the most successful advertising
program on the Internet today. Websites that place
AdSense ads on their site enjoy revenue in the thousands of
dollars and higher per month. But, again, simply signing up
for the program and placing those ads on your site will not
guarantee success.
Here IS the official Google AdSense Program page:
https://www.google.com/adsense/