Website Optimization (SEO PPC) Tips & Tactics

One Line SiteLinks

2009-08-24T23:38:00.000-07:00

In my previous post on Google Site Links I explained the nature and the importance of Google Sitelinks on top of the Search Results for a popular search or a website.

In its latest update, Google Operating System blog noticed that some of the One line Sitelinks are now supporting links within the same page, that points the searcher down to a portion of the same page. That means Google Sitelinks are now Supporting HTML Anchor texts. For instance, a search for [Raja Ravi Varma] in Google returns a Wikipedia result at the top. The result has the classic one line Sitelinks, but instead of the Sitelinks hyperlinking to different pages, they hyperlink to the same page, but point down to the page to a specific section.

Normally, Google's "One Line" Sitelinks points links to different web pages within a website. For instance, Search engine query on Google Search shows one line sitelinks for top two results (Dogpile and Altavista), pointing to different pages within those websites.

IMO, Yahoo’s quick links have been doing this for a while now. But, search for [Raja Ravi Varma], Yahoo takes the different set of Anchor texts within the page when compared to the Google Search Engine.

To sum-up the topic, one line site links is not new, but the anchors feature seems to be new from a Google search page perspective.

Importance of NoFollow Tags

2009-08-19T23:05:00.000-07:00

Website SEO with Link Building Efforts

While optimizing Websites, SEO experts believe in building links with good neighbourhood & niche related websites as very important, and the links will be of no use and moreover they look spammy in the eyes of Search Engine Spiders if the links pointed to their sites with a No-Follow Attribute. There are 3 types of Website Links - Internal linking within a website, External Incoming links, and External Outgoing links. I would like to give you a clear picture on the External Outgoing links and the importance of NoFollow tags.

External Outgoing links

These are the links that are pointed to the external (related) websites. Though these are not considered as important in a SEO standpoint for a website, because of link juice dissipation. But, these are considered by the Search Engine Algorithms when they are less in number and related to the context (or the topic of a web page).

External links are categorised in two ways (Direct links & Links with NoFollow Tags) - Direct linking from a website will have citations directly linking to a website and that is considered (or followed) by search engine spiders, giving value to those links. Whereas, No-Follow links from a website are the links to external website(s), that cannot be theoritically followed by the Search Engines.

NoFollow Tags and its importance:

No-Follow links on a website are the links to external website(s) with a tag rel="nofollow". This will allow a website to link to external sites without losing its valuable link juice. That means the anchor text links with NoFollow tags will allow a website or a webpage to retain its quality in an SEO perspective.

In early 2005, Google announced that hyperlinks with nofollow attribute would "not" influence the link target's PageRank (in addition, the Yahoo and Bing search engines also respect this attribute), allowing to retain the value of a website on which they are used. For instance: Wikipedia.org.

However, contradictions in category (2) are more difficult to, Matt Cutts in his recent video answers two related questions about the Nofollow links and whether Google considers NoFollow tags as its ranking factors or not.

Question – Do you feel that the widespread and blanket use of Nofollow tags is devaluing Google’s search algorithms? Examples such as Wikipedia where are links are nofollow. Does Wikipedia mean nothing to Google algorithms? (by Vince Samios UK)
Question – Does Google take into account quality factors from nofollowed links when the links come from well established authority websites such as Wikipedia? (by Jonaths , UK)

Matt Cutts answers to them saying:

Nofollow links are actually a very small percentage of the entire web.
Wikipedia links wont directly help you in any rank boost on the SERPs.
There are lot of factors that help determine whether a site or person linking using the nofollow tag (From Wikipedia or otherwise) carries “trust” or not. If they are trusted sources, then the nofollow tag could be ignored.
Basically the nofollow tag is a tool to keep away spammers.

Check out Matt's video:

I have demonstrated a NoFollow Checker Tool in my previous topic - SEO Tools for "SEO aspirants" to check whether or not a website points External Links with "No-Follow Tags". This tool will allow to check whether or not a website or web pages points links to the external sites with Nofollow.

SEO Tools - Latest

2009-07-06T09:59:00.001-07:00

Use the right SEO Tools for better SEO analysis and better search engine optimization (SEO) strategies for Top rankings on Search Engines. Here are the two SEO Tools that I developed recently and that gained popularity. 1. Google Snippet Optimization Tool and 2. No-Follow Checker Tool.

Google Snippet Builder Tool: This tool is used to optimize your Titles, Metatags - Meta Description tags for a web page. Ideally they should fit into the limit of the snippet that Google displays on the SERPs, it means that a web page should contain 10 words on Title, 25 Words on Description and the size of 25Kb should not be exceeded for any given webpage. Well, what if you exceed? Simple, it will be shown as "..." at the end of Title or Description or both.

So, if you are finding it difficult to remember these while creating Titles and Meta Tags for your Web Pages, then follow and use this Google Snippet Optimizer/Builder Tool.

NoFollow Links Checker Tool: As I already mentioned in my previous post on How to optimize websites, the Backlinks are one of the most important factors that many of the Search Engines consider to weigh a website.

Further more, here is a new tool that I developed and you can use this tool to check the websites that offer backlinks without a NoFollow Tag to any website. This however makes the link value (Link Juice) flow from site A to Site B and will be effective to gain links from such kind of websites.

If you want to know about a website, whether or not it offers links without a Nofollow tag, then try this Nofollow links Checker Tool.

Rubik Cube for Branding

2009-06-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

Well whats special on my blog for now? Lets say, Rubiks Cube for Branding!
Seriously, Rubik's cube can bolster brand building efforts through Rubik's Cube, apart from other marketing strategies like - SEO, Pay-Per-Click campaigns, and Google base among others.

However, this post is dedicated to Rubik the inventor of the famous Cube, which can be used as brand promotion efforts.

Rubix Cube
Yes, you are right, the Rubik's Cube could be the best sought after promotional product for brand building efforts and it offers new challenges to your customers, whilst appearing easier than the 3x3 Cube.

History of Rubix Cube: As per wikipedia post, Rubik's Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the "Magic Cube", the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toys in 1980 and won the "German Game of the Year" special award for Best Puzzle that year.

As of January 2009, 350 million cubes have sold worldwide making it the world's top-selling puzzle game. It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy. In a classic Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces is covered by 9 stickers, among six solid colors.

A pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colors. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be a solid color. Similar puzzles have now been produced with various numbers of stickers, not all of them by Rubik.

The most interesting thing is that The original 3×3 cube celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2005.

Building brand with Rubik's Cube is by selling them in online stores like these with Brand images on the cube, obviously with 8 different promotional sides.

Check this Video of World Record for fixing Rubiks Cube in 9.77 Seconds:

Get Perfection With Domain Change

2009-06-11T03:17:00.000-07:00

Change as per your requirement :)
But tell Google about your domain change
Normally, when website owners change their domain names as per their company's ongoing requirements, most of the webmasters and website owners face a headache to get along with the new domain name and its age in terms of Google Page Rank. Now it is a good news for everyone who are interested in changing their domain name.

Google has announced a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools named change of address. This feature allows webmasters to notify Google when they move domain names.
Further more, Google also states that one should make sure that their original site is not a subdomain (for example, http://newsite.example.com).

Finally, Google posted a help document on moving your domain to aid webmasters with this process.

Enhanced Search Query Performance reports

2009-05-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

Inside AdWords: Enhanced Search Query Performance reports: "more granular insight into the queries that trigger advertisers ads." What does that mean?

The search query report will no longer show unknown keywords or additional queries lumped into one report that aren’t available. But, the advertisers can still use the highest volume queries, but even these additional smaller queries can give ideas for new keywords.

Google with New Skin - Better Search Experience

2009-05-14T05:31:00.000-07:00

Better Google Search Experience:

Google Search Options, Rich Snippets and Google Squared
Google Searchology event 2009 highlights a break through in an other new algorithmic update video by Google. and brought in new features that really explore search from a broad and entirely new perspective.

Google's earlier Searchology event was two years ago with a launch of Universal Search, a feature that blended results of different types (web pages, images, videos, books, etc.) on the SERPs. Since then Universal Search has grown quite a bit, adding new types of results, expanding to new countries, and triggering on ten times as many queries as it did when we launched it.

Google Search Options:

Google has now announced in its official blog that it has come up with a new feature having wide range of information on the web and quickly connect people to just the precious data as found on the Internet, they need at that moment. This helps users find more useful information, and do more useful things with it.

Google seeks web publishers help with microformats or RDFa standards to mark the HTML and bring this structured data to the surface. This will help people better understand the information you have on your page so they can spend more time there and less on Google.

Rich Snippets:

Google will be rolling this feature out gradually to ensure that the quality of Google's search results stays high. Webmaster who are further interested in participating, can visit the rich snippets help page to learn more. Also, Google's official blog states that "The Search Options panel also gives the ability to view results in new ways. One view gives more information about each result, including images as well as text, while others let you explore and iterate search in different ways."

Google Squared:
Finally, during the event, Google showed a preview of a new tool that we're calling Google Squared. Unlike a normal search engine, Google Squared doesn't find webpages about the topic — instead, it automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet. This will beup to users later this month on Google Labs.

Here is the Video:Stay tuned!

SEO for Firefox Extention

2009-04-29T03:52:00.000-07:00

How does SEO for Firefox Extention work?
Learn how to use the SEO for Firefox extension an awesome tool and perform competitive research.

Download the SEO for Firefox Extension and use the data to compile from lists for all websites that are currently ranking higher than your website and enhance your websites accordingly.

Here is the video if you need more info on how to do it.

Cheers!

Wikimedia 2009 Application for Sponsorship

2009-04-20T22:34:00.000-07:00

Wikimedia's International Conference
Wikimedia Foundation, the official organizer of Wikimania 2009 Buenos Aires, is offering a limited number of scholarships to help attendees defray the cost of attending Wikimania 2009.

Wikimedia 2009 Sponsorship Application
Here is the application for sponsorship for attendees of Wikimania 2009, Wikimedia's international conference. This is not a scholarship for university study.

Attendees can click on the link and apply for sponsorship and avail a chance to attend the conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina This is for a limited number of scholarships to help attendees defray the cost of attending Wikimania 2009.

Who is eligible?

Any active contributor to a Wikimedia project or any active volunteer is eligible.

What expenses are covered

Expenses to attend Wikimania 2009 Buenos Aires that are eligible for the scholarship award:

Travel costs to and from Buenos Aires.

Registration fee for Wikimania 2009 (includes access to all sessions, lunch on meeting days and access to the party)

What expenses are not covered

Expenses to attend Wikimania 2009 Buenos Aires that NOT eligible for the scholarship award:

Accommodations (hotel)

Daily allowance for meals or incidental expenses

Local transportation

Timeline

April 8, 2009: Scholarship applications made available.
April 30, 2009: Deadline for submission of applications (at 23:59:59 UTC).
May 15, 2009: Notification of scholarship awards.
May 22, 2009: Deadline to accept award.
May 30, 2009: Notification to those on waiting list of scholarship awards.

Disbursement of Scholarships

Transportation costs will be paid for directly by the Wikimedia Foundation through a travel agent. After awards are given, coordination will be handled by a member of the Scholarship Review Committee.

Wikimedia Help

The Scholarship Committee may be reached by leaving comments on the talk page of this page, or by emailing wikimania-scholarships@wikimedia.org.

Cheers for your contributions on Wikimedia. Lets enjoy!

Two new improvements to Google Organic SERPs

2009-03-31T05:05:00.000-07:00

Google rolled out two new improvements to Google SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages) with tweaks on its unbeatable Algorithms for a better search experience for its users with Related terms and Longer snippets.

The first offers an expanded list of useful related searches and the second is the addition of longer search result descriptions both of which help guide users more effectively to the information they need.

More and better search refinements is the ability to better understand associations and concepts called as "semantics" a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page).

Longer snippets while users type longer queries on the search box will fetch you the results starting with a dark blue title and is followed by a few lines of text is called as a "snippet", which together gives an idea of what each page is about. This gives more clarity on the context, this snippet shows how the words of a query appear on the page by highlighting them in bold.

When user enters a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give them enough information and context. In these situations, Google increases the number of lines in the snippet to provide more information and show more of the words users type in the context of the page. Exciting! Huh!

What else does a user need other than these. Do post your feedback on my blog.

Happy Searching!

Google Maps Street View

2009-03-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

Google Street View is an amazing interface officially launched by Google during early December 2008 for curious people out there who are interested to know whats the color of their car, people moving around and the type of houses around, among others.

Google has currently mapped UK version of its Street View service, which allows users to browse a selection of pictures taken along city streets. This interface brings Street View to more people in more places. Every time Google adds imagery for a new city or town, they are not just benefiting its Users, who now can preview their driving route or check for parking meters outside their dentist's office etc., but anyone traveling to those places or teaching about it or simply curious to see more of the world will benefit from this Street View.

So people can enjoy looking at those street, and particularly, for the state administrators who inspire and have a plan to keep their areas neat and clean.

Adwords Placement Targeting Beta

2009-03-09T22:51:00.000-07:00

Adwords Placement Targeting Placements, like keywords, are a way to determine where ads can appear. Placement targeting lets AdWords advertisers choose individual spots in the Google content network where advertisers would like to see their ads displayed.

As in Google Answers, few things to know about placement targeting:

A site must be part of the Goo gle Network in order to be available for placement targeting.

The AdWords Placement Tool can help you find placements for your ad as you create a new campaign or ad group.

As with all AdWords advertising, you'll compete for space with other advertisers. If you choose very prominent and popular placements, you'll need a higher price to win the ad position.

How to create placements?

You can add placements to an existing ad group at any time by clicking the Placements tab on the main page of the ad group. You can also begin with placements when you create a new campaign or ad group.

Learn how to add placements to an existi ng ad group.

Learn how to begin a new campaign with placements.

Learn how to begin a new ad group with placements.

Learn more about placements and the content network.

Tips and Tactics on Placement Targeting:

We can use reports from Google Ad Planner to make life easier, Google introduced a research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers. This tool can be used to check out what all websites publish Text ads and Video ads and others like banners. Then extract the repport that targets your business. Then...

Run a placement performance report from adwords report central and get the actual number of websites that drive traffic on Content Network. Also, from this report you should pick the websites that incurr less in Cost per conversions (after sorted according less cost per conversions).

Align the above two reports for better placement targeting.

Google Adwords Placement Targeting Beta

Having explained the traditional process to leverage the websites of publishers to better target for placements, the latest is a Google placement targeting interface beta! Advertisers should be able to use this new interface in the near future.

Greatest benefits to this is that we can see top-level content network performance without having to run a report, and export the reports.

This is a new feature at Google Placement Targeting Beta Interface. The beta might have gone into a larger roll out phase, I am not sure, but I was able to get the screen shots from the SEM pro.

However, we shall have to wait to see how it works when they roll this out but it sounds like you are now able to identify poor performing content partners running the ads.

Please let me know if anyone of you came across the advancement of this new Google Placement Targeting Interface Bata.

Search Cloud-Keyword Research

2009-03-09T22:29:00.000-07:00

Search Cloudlet is a new Firefox Plug in very useful keyword research for anything and everything one searches on Google and Yahoo Search Engines.

This new plug from GetCloudlet.com is easy to install and explained in video as how useful it is seeing overall theme relation of keywords, and also for keyword generation. While hardly ground-breaking it may prove to be useful.

Search Cloudlet is an easy-to-use Firefox add-on that inserts context-aware tag clouds into a traditional Google and Yahoo search interface to help users navigate more efficiently through search results. It provides a tag cloud from related searches offers this search cloud feature.

Tag Cloud
One of the most interesting features provided by Search Cloudlet is Tag Cloud for search results. Now there is no need to look through your results list to understand what it's all about. Tag Cloud will show you all the keywords relevant to your search results. And you can easily narrow your search by clicking keywords on the cloud and adding them to your query. It's very simple!

Once you like it please provide your valuable feedback to them for improving this extension.

Google Friend Connect Social Bar for Networking

2009-03-02T22:27:00.000-08:00

Google Social Networking Bar from Google Friend Connect will bolster the networks among the colleagues and friends who visit you sites. Here is the insight on how to set up one for your website or a blog.

You can indeed grow traffic by adding social features to your site. It means that more people engaging more deeply with your website and with each other.

Choose engaging social features from a catalog of gadgets by Google and the OpenSocial developer community.

Your users can easily invite friends from social networks and contact lists to visit and join your site.

Just copy and paste a few snippets of code into your site, and Friend Connect does the rest.

Here you can watch video on how to setup a Friend Connect to your website:

More info at the new Social Web Blog where Google has announced the new social bar feature.

Adam Lasnik Google Search Evangelist

2009-03-02T20:09:00.000-08:00

Adam Lasnik is a well known Search Evangelist at Google, Mountain View, California. He made it up to Chennai SearchCamp Event on Sunday, 1st of March 2009 a day after Google Conference in Bangalore.

I was able to catch up with him to discuss related to Search Engines guidelines, webmaster tools, duplicate content problems, dynamic URLs, Site links among others.
Adam was accompanied by Google India Head, Vivek. Hespoke about Local search and the progress of Google's Bus that was launched for awareness for the Rural folks in Tamil Nadu.

It was an overall, awesome event with many more Internet & Search Marketing Gurus, SEO and SEM evangelists among many more Subject matter experts (SMEs) from many parts of Indian cities.

There were presentations on Search Marketing to Internet Marketing to Brand awareness among others including general SEO, SEM web analytics tips and techniques.

SearchCamp Event 09 is one of the successful events.

Internet Marketing - SEO SEM Industry Event

2009-02-07T13:11:00.000-08:00

The Big event on Internet Marketing / SEO/ PPC Spend among other important marketers is scheduled for the 28th February & 1st March 2009, at the Main Auditorium, Tidel Park, Chennai. The event starts at 8 a.m.

This it to discuss on the current trends on search marketing is one of the most if not THE most accountable forms of advertising your business today.

So what are you doing about capturing search traffic for your business?
Do you rank for the keywords that are mission critical to your business?
Have you optimised your local listings for maps and mobile search?
Have you optimised your corporate videos for search?
Do you optimise your corporate blog?
Have you trained your technical staff in good SEO practice?
We could keep asking questions, the one you need to ask yourself is this - Are you happy with your return on investment from search marketing?
If not, then you need to attend SearchCamp 2009, India’s leading search marketing Conference.

Who will attend this Search Camp Event?
Entrepreneurs
Marketing Managers
Agency based Search Engine Marketers
In-house search marketers
Brand managers
Online Media Planners
Paid search advertising planners & buyers
Organic search optimisation specialists
Web technology professionals
Webmasters
Web Designers
Who is organizing?
SearchCamp is organized by The Knowledge Foundation, the same group behind events such as Proto.in, WikiCamp.in and Blogcamp.

In this pic, it is me at the right side with an Yellow T-Shirt, along with my Industry friends corner during the previous search camp event.

Event Details - Day 1 of SearchCamp will focus on Organic Search, and Day 2 on Paid Search. Following are the broad areas of content that will be covered during this edition of SearchCamp. Exact sessions and names of speakers will be posted soon on over here.
Organic SEO
Keyword Research
Onpage Optimization
Converting SEO Traffic
Technical Issues for Developers
Copywriting
Brand Building
Link Building
Local Search Tactics
Paid Search
PPC Keywords & Bids
Landing Page Strategies
Automated Bid Management
APIs
Tracking Conversions
Social Media Marketing
Hot Trends
Online Reputation Management
Web Analytics
SEM Careers
Participants
Add your name in the participants list.
Cost Rs.500 per person. It's a door donation to meet the expenses towards venue, logistics and lunch.

Google Is What We Still Trust?

2009-02-04T01:42:00.000-08:00

Official Google Blog States: "This site may harm your computer" on every search result between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST on Jan, 31st 2009: "Google Says its a human error, as the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs." However, these instances if continued, then people may lose trust on Google Search.

It wasn't a full-day breakdown; it was 40 minutes rolled out during an hour-long window. During that time, any Google search triggered the warning "This site may harm your computer" for every result. That day, five of the top 25 listings in Google Hot Trends were related to the glitch, including numbers one and three.

In Google Blog Search, there were 5,523 references to "this site may harm your computer" and "Google" from Saturday through Monday afternoon, when this column was being written. Combining that search with other terms, 2,189 included "error" (40%), 1,022 included "glitch," 430 included "bug," 88 included "meltdown," 27 included "blunder," 8 included "tragedy," and 5 included "catastrophe." As a control, 7 included "ice cream" and none included "emu" (as for the former, Google also scans other content on the page such as article roundups and comments, so some false positives tend to appear), also includes Wikipedia. Google Trends gives a wide gamut of websites that covers this topic.

However, I am sure that none of the other Search Engines can beat the Super power in Search. It is well said on Mediapost article that

Google is Global
There are few unifying global forces with greater appeal than Google. ComScore reports that in December 2008, Google sites reached 77% of the world's online audience, or 776 million people. The day's not far off when there will be more Googlers than there will be Indians or Chinese. To that point, if there's a catastrophe in Delhi, it might take time for the effects to ripple out to the eastern state of Assam, but when there's a catastrophe in Mountain View, the whole world can feel the impact at once.

Google Rolls-out a Bus in Rural Tamil Nadu

On the other hand, Google Rolls-out a Bus in Rural Tamil Nadu, a Southern state of India. This is a mobile campaign aimed to reach out to people in Tier 2 and Tier 3 Towns with a knowledge base and exposure.

This effort will cover 15 towns in the next 45 days in Tamil Nadu. According to the Head of Google, DR. Prasad Ram, in addition to the basics of Internet, the campaign also provides an awareness with its other products like Google Maps, Social networking, email and Search among others.
Also, Google has recently launched a new feature on Google Maps to explore under waters. Google Earth already enabled users to zoom into streets level and later came up with Exploring galexies in Sky and this new launch will become more successful with Underwater explorers.

Website Visitor's Site Experience and Optimizing Aspects

2009-01-30T15:43:00.000-08:00

Risk-taking drives innovation; recklessness drives over a cliff! This proverb applies to the Webmaster and SEOs who are inclined towards ranking a website on Search Engines rather than looking at it in the Site Visitor's perspective.

Google Webmaster Guidelines states that the site should have a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link. Under quality guidelines - basic principles, it says: Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."

If you think you have done so, in the past, please revert the website / webpages and then know these specific and most important Quality guidelines:

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

If you determine that your site doesn't meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and then submit your site for reconsideration.

Sometimes, it happens when webmasters / SEOs play tricks that are intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb Google States is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

Adwords Dynamic AdCopy

2008-11-19T18:03:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon a discussion yesterday at Google Groups, a topic on dynamic ad copy and keywords for the Campaigns that are run on Google Adwords.
To start with, we can observe the way we can use the special on a Adcopy and keywords for an adgroup.

Creating a dynamic ad copy in adwords:
To display the search phrase as the headline, enter this: {KeyWord:Alternate Text} where "Alternate Text" is an alternate headline to be shown if the search phrase is too long.
If your ad headline is defined as {KeyWord:Blue Widgets $45} and you have a broad-match bid for the word "widgets" and no negative keywords, then someone who searches for "Free Blue Widgets" will see an ad with the headline "Free Widgets" (the alternate ad text "Blue Widgets $45" would only be seen when the search phrase is longer than 25 characters).

Similarly, if you have a broad-match bid for the phrase "widgets" and someone types "buy red widget" they will see "Buy Red Widget" as the ad headline, and if you only sell blue widgets, you're not likely to convert that visitor into a customer.

If I am searching for "free ssl certificates" and I see an ad headline that says "Free SSL Certificates" then I am definitely very likely to click on that adcopy, but if you do not actually offer free ssl certificates, then I will be disappointed. In fact, probably enough that even when I am ready to buy a book of SSL Certificates, I probably will harbor a grudge against you for deceiving me earlier.

Turning Clicks to customers, is a topic covered by Google Adwords Blog on how to write adcopies to make people who are actively looking for the very thing we've got to offer.

Creating dynamic keywords
Capitalistion of where you type {KeyWord:... changes the caps in your ad copy, where:
Keyword - will show - Free ssl certificates
KeyWord - will show - Free SSL Certificates, and
keyword - will show - free ssl certificates

However, one must use this Dynamic Adcopy Keywords technique with greatest possible care. Good idea is to use it with adgroups containing exact and phrase match, that too when you are sure of pre/suffixs of the Keywords.

Google Adwords Quality Score Improvement

2008-11-11T22:18:00.000-08:00

Google made the Quality Score calculation better than before:

The ability to understand Quality Score and how it affects an Adwords account and any business is the most important aspects to consider while managing Google AdWords from an Adgroup to its campaign level.

More delimited Quality Score calculation: Google's new quality score algorithm to take ad position into account. So while one ad in the top position might have a higher CTR, an ad in the seventh position with a lower CTR should not impact the quality score as much as it did in the past. This should allow all the ads to "compete fairly," as Google said and thus make for a more relevant ad space in Google.

With the new algorithm, ad 2 will not be held back by ad 1's lack of quality and will be placed above the organic results on the yellow region above the search results. Earlier Google Algo was like, if a ad at position ONE did not meet a threshold but ad at position TWO did meet that threshold, then ad TWO would not be taken to the top spot.

Google Teams says that the positions are particularly valuable to advertisers because they are prominently positioned on the page. Given their prominence, it’s especially important that these ads be high quality so Google says that it will therefore place extra emphasis on quality when determining which ads to show in this location.

High quality ads on Yellow Region of the search results: According Google Team, to appear above the search results, ads must meet a certain quality threshold. Google will allow an ad that meets the quality threshold to appear above the search results even if it has to jump over other ads to do so. In the past, if the ad with the highest Ad Rank did not meet the quality threshold, they may not have shown any ads above the search results. For instance, suppose the ad in position ONE on the right side of the page doesn’t have a high enough Quality Score to appear above the search results, but the ad in position TWO does. It’s now possible for the number TWO ad to jump over the number ONE ad and appear above the yellow region above the search results. This change ensures that quality plays an even more important role in determining the ads that show in those prominent positions.

In my Opinion, this is the best the advertisers gets benefited and Google encourages them in this way to buy more and effectively manage Adwords Campaigns.

End of Major Brands

2008-10-06T04:12:00.000-07:00

Well said that over confidence ends up nowhere! Major brands venture into small companies and new start-ups to save their taxes in America. However, the economic slowdown had a great impact on all the privitized banks in the USA.

One of my relatives, who is preparing for his daughter's wedding complains that he cannot withdraw more than few 100 $s from his ATM using his debit card in Virginia, and he has to wait for a week to draw more.

George W. Bush said "A deadline is coming. American taxpayers who would not let their money be used to subsidize their own companies — Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch — will not have their tax dollars used to subsidize your endless dithering over which Iraqi community dominates Kirkuk.... Look in the eyes of Americans who are seeing their savings wiped out, their companies disappear, their homes foreclosed. We are a different country today. After a decade of the world being afraid of too much American power, it is now going to be treated to a world of too little American power, as we turn inward to get our house back in order."
A version of this article appeared in print on September 24, 2008, on page A27 of the New York edition.

Open Social 0.7

2008-10-04T07:15:00.000-07:00

The web is more interesting when you can build your applications that easily interact with your friends and colleagues. But with the trend towards more social applications also comes a growing list of website specific APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that developers must learn.

While your do this you should also know if you really need that interface on your website. OpenSocial defines a common API for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds.

Many sites, one API
A common API means you have less to learn to build for multiple websites. OpenSocial is currently being developed by a broad set of members of the web community.

Metrics:

The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the API and host 3rd party social applications. Like your website Goals - highest level is before you plan your business model make sure you have a pleasure model. There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING. Set your targets carefully. We should know whom we are targeting, based on number of active users, contact rates, invitation conversion rate and User Retention rate.

Learn more about this Opensocial directly from Google code.

Google Chrome - Web Browser

2008-09-16T18:01:00.000-07:00

Google Chrome is a new open source browser (built with open source code) that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and is easily based on WebKit rendering.

Google is said to be aimed at Microsoft's market with the release of its new Web browser, Chrome. Obviously, Microsoft should be very afraid: Chrome lives up to its hype by rethinking the Web browser in clever and convenient ways that make using the Web a more organic experience than you'd get with either Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 or Mozilla's Firefox 3.

Initially, Google Chrome is available for download for Windows Vista and XP, Google plans to expand its Chrome offerings to the Mac and Linux platforms as well. The company doesn't offer any timeline for these versions, though. (For additional PCWorld.com coverage of Google's new browser, see "Chrome vs. the World" and "Google's Chrome: 7 Reasons for It and 7 Reasons Against It.")

Despite some beta issues, Google's streamlined and speedy browser offers strong integrated search and an intriguing alternative to Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Google has produced an excellent browser that is friendly enough to handle average browsing activities without complicating the tasks, but at the same time is powerful enough to meet the needs of more-advanced users. The search functionality of the Omnibar is one of many innovations that caught my attention. PC World has chosen to rate this beta version of Chrome because of Google's history of leaving products and services in long-term beta and in an ongoing state of evolution. In the past there has been some speculation that Google would develop its own operating system, but I think that Chrome's launch makes one thing is clear: The Web browser is Google's operating system.

Top SEM Spenders Manage Adwords Campaigns

2008-08-11T22:43:00.000-07:00

Find out the best tips to manage pay-per-click marketing campaigns on Google Adwords for new advertisers to manage with ease:

Basic Steps:
Pay-per-click marketing search engines facilitate advertisers to gain desired conversions. Major Pay-Per-Click programs that an advertiser can choose are from " Google Adwords," "Yahoo Search Marketing," "Microsoft adCenter" and "Miva Pay-Per-Click" among others. Advertisers can bid for target keywords, and gain conversions through their websites.

Understand Google Adwords:
Writing good ads is one of the most important parts of your campaign.
First Line (Title)
This is where advertisers should emotionally appeal to their website visitors by revealing the most powerful benefit of their product or service. For example, describe how much the users can save if they decide to book discounted flight tickets with you.
Second Line (Ad Copy)
You should use the second line of text to appeal to a visitor's logical side when presenting an additional benefit of your product or service. For example, explain how your particular weight loss product will enable individuals to live longer, feel healthier and wear more current styles. Present the logical reasons visitors should choose your product.
Display URL
Many PPC advertisers fail to recognize the importance of the display URL when they write their PPC ads. This is a common mistake that can be avoided. Consider the display URL as an actual part of your ad, and use this worthful space as a "call to action" component. For instance, use more enticing URL such as "BestTravel.com/InstantBookings", rather than using "besttravel.com". Capitalising each word in the URL will improve readability and include your keyword, if possible. Advertisers can also create a landing page containing a descriptive name. One has to take time and be careful while creating an effective display URL, this attracts more attention to ads and generate a more number of clicks to the website.

Although every campaign is different, I have found general trends through testing the ways that usually work. The overall formula I like to use when writing ad copy is as follows:

Title and Line 2: Repeating the search term, starting the pre-sell
Line 3: Reassuring the customer, showing authority, and bonus selling points if space.
Display URL: Providing confidence in next step.

As always, its easiest to see with an example. Let’s use the example of a shoe offer like shoebuy or zappos. This ad would be for a search hitting the keyword “running shoes“. Here is a sample ad:

Ad copy ads may look simple but there is a lot going on there. So let’s break it down into 8 simple steps.
1. The search term is repeated in 2 different places on the ad, strengthening the search, increasing quality score, and bolding that text for increased CTR.
2. Saving money. Everyone wants to save money, so in 2 places on the ad we have show they will save money. On line 1, the word “discount” and on line 2 the phrase “on sale”.
3. Urgency. The word “now” on line 2 evokes a sense of urgency.
4. Numbers and percentages. People scanning a page always stop on numbers. On line 3 we use “100%” which draws the eyes to the ad and increases CTR.
5. Reassurance and final selling points. On line 3 we provide buyer reassurance with the guarantee and the bonus point about free shipping.
6. The word free. If there is anything about the offer that is free, its a good thing to put in the ad. “Free” jumps out at people.
7. Sentence case. Capitalizing the first letter of every word usually leads to higher CTR.
8. Display URL. This is a simple display URL but effective because it further reinforces the search term and lets the person know the domain is related to what they want. Not overly hyphenated or too long. Also I capitalize each word in the domain if its multiple words.
Even though this ad doesn’t have a call to action like “click now for coupon” it should still lead to a good CTR. Once the searcher gets to your landing page, you can then close the deal with a clear call to action. I like more descriptive and informative ad copies, which usually work well.

In addition, an advertiser can get more serious clicks which keeps expenses down and leads to overall better conversion rates, using the above techniques. At any rate this is just one of the techniques that usually works great for me, there are tons of other ways to write adcopy ads on Google Adwords for different situations.

Managing Google Adwords Accounts further effectively:
Further more, advertisers can learn about few ways of managing Google Adwords effectively. While running campaign(s) on Adwords, advertisers can reduce their bidding for keywords by improving their "Quality Score". Effectiveness of Adwords Campaigns can be brought in by following Three Simple Steps:

First, an advertiser should create separate Ad group for each product or service that is offered to the users by targeting niche related keywords that have more conversion rate, using keyword suggestion tools available online, like Google AdWords: Keyword Tool, Free Keyword Suggestion Tool From Wordtracker, Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool and Keyword Discovery Tool.

Second, the bid amount for targeted keywords that can end up in conversions should be kept "HIGH". The initial bid amount can be 15 cents to 20 cents (for example). With this an advertiser can gain a good quality score and once a good quality score is increased, the CTR for keywords will improve (5%-10% is ideal) by further improving the relevancy of the adcopies and considering right landing pages, the bid for the keywords will come down. The position of an advertiser on Sponsored listings are normally calculated by the following formula.

Max CPC * Quality Score = The position on Sponsored Listings.

Google will charge for the minimum bid required to activate the keywords and will place the advertisers on top by considering their Quality Scores. This will bring the bid amount to less than 7 cents, but still holds an higher position. The keywords which have lesser conversion rate can be opted for bids that are less than 5 cents initially and can further bring it down to 2 cents when the Quality score is improved.

Third, the advertisers should create Adcopies that convey the maximum information possible for conversions to happen. Also, separate ad groups for each products and their Adcopies can have targeted keyword phrases in it with an "EXACT MATCH" option. This will improve the CTR of keywords in the campaign.

Here is a quick list from a source that claims the Top Search Engine Marketing (SEM) spenders (advertisers) who run their campaigns to promote their brands online:

Rank # Domain Name - Budget Spent $$ /week
A. Instantssl.com - SSL - $35,000
B. Trustfax.com - Free Fax - $12,000
1 google.com - $434,872.65
2 expedia.com - $381,312.69
3 geico.com - $337,578.15
4 hotels.com - $306,009.85
5 orbitz.com - $284,344.73
6 aol.com - $265,422.83
7 dell.com - $262,413.89
8 progressive.com - $251,978.39
9 cheaptickets.com - $198,884.02
10 mapquest.com - $172,539.00
11 cash4gold.com - $164,512.61
12 freecreditreport.com - $160,155.09
13 newbuicksforless.com - $157,116.98
14 rent.com - $155,434.55
15 bhphotovideo.com - $147,526.63
16 esurance.com - $143,825.66
17 carolinainsurancequotes.com - $143,428.37
18 nationwide.com - $139,938.40
19 search-schools.com - $138,707.04
20 checkngo.com - $134,237.19
21 paramountequity.com - $133,427.67
22 circuitcity.com - $132,379.20
23 amexnetwork.com - $127,435.95
24 hp.com - $121,090.47
25 live.com - $118,980.70
26 att.com - $117,114.22
27 bookingbuddy.com - $113,823.34
28 travelocity.com - $113,752.29
29 lendingtree.com - $113,396.52
30 hotwire.com - $110,145.67
31 fidelity.com - $109,103.13
32 ebay.com - $103,078.90
33 allstate.com - $98,572.41
34 ushud.com - $95,075.23
35 softwaresurplus.com - $92,725.24
36 shopsickkids.com - $92,462.48
37 bankofamerica.com - $91,977.22
38 uline.com - $91,919.08
39 victoriassecret.com - $91,581.69
40 rental-living.com - $91,213.24
41 glam.com - $90,566.21
42 jobing.com - $89,017.84
43 amazon.com - $83,310.69
44 stubhub.com - $83,072.83
45 lowes.com - $81,848.27
46 zappos.com - $79,791.99
47 sears.com - $78,645.68
48 target.com - $78,091.31
49 top-10-web-hosting.com
$77,592.92
50 countrywide.com
$75,611.42
51 brianwendt.com
$74,769.19
52 lucilepackardfoundation.org - $74,736.30
53 bresaqo.com - $73,936.99
54 educationdegreesource.com - $73,764.92
55 campusbooksale.com - $72,221.00
56 super8.com - $71,271.15
57 bmwdelawarevalley.com - $69,824.66
58 myjbrealty.com - $69,398.17
59 creditsolutions.com - $68,099.02
60 mortgageratesexperts.com - $67,265.95
61 memphistravel.com - $65,733.43
62 cscshosting.com - $65,461.58
63 intercontinental.com - $64,914.64
64 homedepot.com - $64,872.20
65 scottrade.com - $64,779.16
66 macys.com - $64,366.46
67 nextag.com - $63,693.28
68 truecredit.com - $63,160.79
69 jobslocal.org - $62,799.07
70 theoneupcashsystem.com - $62,029.09
71 stuff4sell.com - $61,766.18
72 walmart.com - $60,115.06
73 usdirectory.com - $59,079.15
74 nordstrom.com - $59,014.77
75 youtube.com - $58,173.97
76 mycashnow.com - $58,136.51
77 palmbeachplacevillas.com - $57,735.14
78 yahoo.com - $57,267.65
79 nassauparadiseisland.com - $57,238.64
80 dealnews.com - $56,878.68
81 wegiveloans.com - $56,708.18
82 alaskausa.org - $56,437.17
83 travelzoo.com - $55,965.59
84 holidayinn.com - $55,942.83
85 pronto.com - $55,414.38
86 directstartv.com - $55,249.44
87 tigerdirect.com - $55,090.09
88 gamefly.com - $54,849.47
89 booking.com - $54,778.49
90 greaterdaytonahomefinder.com - $54,252.71
91 getinstantgreen.com - $54,141.58
92 brocade.com - $54,035.92
93 jcpenney.com - $53,197.12
94 creditcards.com - $52,974.05
95 publicstorage.com - $51,557.23
96 priceline.com - $51,489.05
97 icompared.net - $51,124.52
98 beachcamera.com - $51,050.74
99 barracudanetworks.com - $50,755.73
100 creditreport.com - $50,732.20

Further more, few Advanced Tips to Manage Adwords:

Dynamic Ad copies can be created by using the following string

{keyword: keyword that is in the ad group}.
For example if we have the following keywords in an Ad group like: Travel, cheap travel or flight booking and an adcopy which says,
{Keyword: Travel}Instant booking. User Reviews. Upto 25% cash back. Book Now!

When a prospect queries ‘Cheap Travel’, the adcopy will show ‘Cheap Travel’ as the title. The advantage of using this Dynamic URL Technique is that CTR will be improved and this will result in improving the Quality score required for bringing down the bid amount. The same keyword with a bid amount of 40 cents is most probable to come down to 10 or 15 cents.

Advertisers should create additional Ad copies which can be a combination of Text and Images. The Ads can be set to ‘rotate and show.’ This will help the advertisers to eliminate the ads that are not performing well and further improve their CTR.

By setting up the right landing page can improve our quality score.

Advertisers can opt for either Content network or Search network or both to run their campaigns. Bid amount can be separated for Content network and search network, and Advertisers can bid minimum for content network.

Exact match and Phrase match will give targeted traffic.

Advertisers can separate Ad groups for each of these keywords, as there is a scope of improving the CTR higher than broadly matched keywords.

Most importantly, advertisers should consider enabling the ad scheduling if required and monitor the time period the clicks are more and increase the bidding for keywords which has high conversion rate and adjust it accordingly.

Google has come up by listing Quality score adjacent to the keywords column, will help advertisers decide whether to delete the keywords or optimise the adcopies in the adgroups (Quality Score is usually termed as ‘Great’, ‘OK’ and ‘Poor’).

Considering the above points and more by constantly tracking and with timely analysis on the performance of keywords using proper analytics tools, the effectiveness of PPC campaigns can be enhanced.
In my next post I shall be writing about the Costly keywords and the ways to use such words on content to make money online.

Good PPC References: Formula of a winning PPC ad

Article Marketing - Google Knol Overview

2008-08-04T22:24:00.000-07:00

Used for Article Marketing is the present trend in the gamut of Internet Marketing. Recently, on 23rd July 2008, Google officially released beta version of Google Knol which is a Peer-reviewed encyclopedia from Google, wherein the articles are written by named contributors.

Here on my blog I will be covering the points related to this project which aims to include user-written articles on a range of different topics. Well, Google might have come with this initiative to delist the authoritative websites like Wikipedia and Webopedia among others on its SERPs.

As everyone know that Knoll means the sound of a bell rung slowly to announce the end of something. This might be the reason behing naming of this Beta Project, a unit of knowledge, which may be observed as truth for Internet users who use Google as it is the best general-purpose search engine on the Web. Article Marketing is the present trend for many marketers on the Internet who are using to promote their brands by writing Articles through content writers and submitting them into different Article directories and Ezines.

However, Google Knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic. Knol makes it easy for Internet users to write and share their knowledge with the other Internet users around the world. The Knol interface used with just a Google account, a name and a desire to write and they take care of the rest. Users can control and specify the level of collaboration they want with the community.
Knol's respect for authorship will be a huge boon for Google to differentiate it from competitors such as Wikipedia and Squidoo, Saffo said.

"It can be like digg and can be like blogger too. The difference on knol and the Wiki is that THERE IS THE POWER OF AUTHORSHIP IN KNOL BUT IN WIKIPEDIA NONE. So who would like to work for hours inputing data in Wikipedia if you are not creditted with your efforts?
I think the smartest thing to do for Google would be to work with wikipedia and use the existing information to compile an even larger database."

Community can be created to connect with other expert authors in their area of interest to share and grow knowledge. Visibility of an author is for sure, as it values and promote authorship. Great content will be visible on popular search engines. Sharing users knowledge on the Internet through this new interface must be rewarding for everyone. Further learn about Google Knol overiew from their official website if required.

Knol Off to a Quick Start
One day after Knol publicly launched Wil Reynolds noticed that a Knol page was already ranking. Danny Sullivan did a further test showing that 33% of his test set of Knol pages were ranking in the first page of search results. Danny was also surprised that his Knol was ranking #28 after 1 day. After citing it on his blog now that Knol page ranks #1 in Google!

An Opinion that Google Knol May Rival Wikipedia...