This post is mainly for those who are new to Google Adwords and those who would like to know more about the different search types used in Adwords campaigns. As we all know that Google Adwords is a paid tool is mainly used for running pay per click (PPC) advertising campaign to drive more relevant traffic to a website. Google Adwords are helpful for those who want instant flow of traffic and cannot wait for the site to get organic traffic.
Extensive and clever keyword research is necessary for getting better results from your Adwords campaign. While selecting keywords for your PPC campaign, there are mainly 4 types of keyword categories that you would come upon. These different keyword types are mainly based on the requirement of the site, the keywords competitiveness etc. Here i would like to shed some brief intro on the 4 keyword types that you would be using while managing your Google Adwords campaign.
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Solving Duplicate File Issue with Search Engines
Oct 13 2009
Posted by George as Google, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, search engine marketing, seo
Duplicate content have always been an obstacles for webmasters while going for search engine optimization. Many of the webmasters got their site penalized by the search engines for using duplicate content in their website. The main case of duplicate content arises when multiple URLs on the same domain pointed to the same content. This issue mainly arises in dynamic and CMS driven sites and the webmasters really live with the fear of being penalized by the search engines. The case arises when more than a single URL on the same website points to the same content under certain conditions. Consider pages in a CMS driven web site http://www.yoursite.com/products.php?item=woodchairs&category=chairs and http://www.yoursite.com/product.php?item=woodchairs&trackingid=3254&sessionid=7184 which points to the same content at http://www.yoursite.com/products.php?item=woodchairs
Link Exchange and Things to Take Care
Sep 24 2009
Posted by George as Google, Online Marketing, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, link exchange, reciprocal linking, search engine marketing, seo
Reciprocal linking is practiced by a vast number of SEO / webmasters around the globe for a long time. This helped to get better ranking and backlinks for the websites in the initial stages, but as time progress reciprocal linking was started being used in the most unethical way and gradually search engine (especially Google) started cutting down on many sites which offered reciprocal linking services in an aggressive way. Many of the link exchange sites got penalized by Google in a really bad way. As per my experience, since then the link exchange stuff does not seem to work and many webmasters stopped wasting their valuable time on link exchange. But that doesn’t mean that reciprocal links have lost all its value. + READ MORE
New Way to Run Local Ads in Google Adwords
Jul 31 2009
Posted by George as Google, Online Marketing, Search Engine, search engine marketing
We need to have local business ads as a separate ad unit in Google Adwords in Order to run local Ads. Now Google is ready to come up with the local extension feature which helps the users to create local ads by dynamically attaching your business address to ads. This feature also helps to add the extensions to your existing text ads. Business owners can set up this extension by linking the Adwords campaign with Local Business Center (LBC) and others have to manually enter the address into Adwords. The address along with the ads would be shown based on the relevancy of the search. If there is not relevant address based on the search, then no address would be displayed on the ads.
With the coming of location extensions, the local business ads would no more be a separate ad format. The local extension feature also gives more variety to your audience targeting. The local extension feature helps to reach the local customers in a more effective way and showing them relevant information. In short the feature helps in promoting the business brand, products, services, and associates your business with a specific location of interest to the user. This is applicable whether the ad appears in Google Search, Content Networks, Google Map and Google earth.
The steps for adding or editing the ad’s address extensions are given below.
1) Log into your Adwords account.
2) Select the campaign which you wish to edit.
3) Click on the Settings tab.
4) In the settings area go to Audience – > Locations and select one of the options shown under Show relevant addresses with your ads.”
a) Business Owners
b) Non Business Owners.
5) Then Click Save.
Hope this becomes useful for who needs to adding/editing their address extensions.
Does Just Getting Backlinks Guarantee Better Results on Google?
Jul 19 2009
Posted by George as Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, search engine marketing, seo
We all know that getting backlinks to our site plays a major role in getting better search engine placements. Most webmasters try to get as many inbound links as possible to ensure better search engine ranking for their site. This is a good ploy, but at times a website with more back links than its competitor may be ranking lower for the same keyword when compared with its competitor. This is a general scenario most webmaster faces and this issue should be deeply looked into. There are various reasons why a website with more inbound links than its competitor is losing the battle in the search engine rankings with its competitor for the same keywords. Just getting many backlinks alone does not aumatically make your site keywords rank highly.
As we all know that Google determines the ranking of websites in search results based on various metrics such as onpage and offpage factors.
On page factors are those which are visible on your website by making changes in the HTML code. On the other hand offpage factors are those factors that are not visible on your website but are done by working on external sites. So both offpage and onpage factors plays an important role in your search engine results. Offpage factors inlcudes link building activities such as article submissions, directory submissions, promoting the site through forums, blogs, social media sites etc. There are are certain parameters to keep in mind while getting backlinks for your site.
1) Try to get better backlinks, i.e quality backlinks from sites which are relevant to your site content.
2) Avoids links from link farms, low grade directories and other spammy sites.
3) Try to get links from pages with better page ranks, ie, 3 and above.
4) Add compelling content on your site and prompt other webmasters to link back to you.
5) Try to get your major keywords included in the anchor text of your inbound links.
These are the basic offpage factors needed for you to have an edge over your competitors in search engine results. Try these things and I am pretty sure that the results would be there at the doorstep for you.
10 Blog Directories You Should Submit Your Blog To
Jul 18 2009
Posted by George as Blogging, Online Marketing, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, search engine marketing
When you plan to set up a blog, there would be many factors that come to your mind. First the blog should be neat, the content should be compelling and the most importantly the blog should drive traffic. More traffic means more readers, followers and other extra income. So usually we try to make the blog as Search Engine friendly as possible and add all the available SEO plugins. Also we try to take care while deciding on the keywords, to get more traffic. Apart from this we also try to get links from other sites, which are very much related to our blog in terms of content. Another way to promote your blog is to submit your blog to various blog directories, which contains list of the blogs and are arranged according to the theme of the blogs. These directories make it easier for other to find blogs related to their interest and helps us in getting targeted visitors. There are various blog directories available, but I would like to list 10 of them which I have found useful.
1) Bloggeries – Bloggeries is a good blog directory which accepts blogs and has various sub categories. It also has features such as forums, listing of the most viewed blog, latest blogs etc.
2) Blogged.com – This is a free directory and shows the postings of the blogs as a News feeder format. This has various features such as following others, starting discussion etc.
3) Blog Explosion – Blog Explosion is another free blog directory which helps in getting traffic to your site. Once you submit your site, it would take up to 7 days to get your site approved or rejected.
4) Super Blog Directory – This is another blog directory with useful features such as the latest submitted links and blogs, most popular blogs, top rated blogs etc.
5) Bloggapedia – Bloggapedia is another free blog directory with a good layout and helps to see the most popular searches in the directory.
6) Bloggernity – Another blog directory which is free and worth for blog submission. Offers features such as forums, blog search etc.
7) Blog Universe – Blog Universe is another unique blog directory which is used to submitted video and podcast blogs.
8 ) Blogcatalog – This blog directory serves as a social community for bloggers and helps in searching, connecting with other bloggers, promoting your own blog etc.
9) Blog Hub – Another important blog directory with features such as new blogger list, hot topics etc.
10) Spill Bean – Spill Bean is another attractive and simple blog directory which helps you to submit your blog for free.
There might be other blog directories which I have missed, but these 10 directories seems to be more important to me. Hope you have enjoyed reading this.
SEO Client Issues and Solutions
Jul 18 2009
Posted by George as Google, Online Marketing, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, search engine marketing, seo
SEO is one of the most difficult profession as far as client handling is concerned. Many of the clients are not aware about what works behind the SEO works and what is needed for a better search engine results. So the sales team or business development team have a tough time tackling some really difficult queries and demands raised by the clients. Even SEO professionals have also go through these tough situations. The pressure mounts over the sales and SEO team for these questions raised by the clients due to their unawareness on SEO.
A large number of clients thinks that SEO is a one time technology works, similar to software development. They think that once SEO is done their site is guaranteed for top search engine results. They are now aware that SEO project needs patience and ongoing maintenance work and is not a guaranteed one. No companies in the world can guarantee search engine ranking in any search engines. The only thing that can be done by the SEO is to make to make the website more SEO friendly, doing good keyword research, implementing keywords onto the site and then waiting for the results. One cannot be sure whether the site is going to get the top search engine ranking. If the website doesn’t perform well in the search engine, the SEO work has to be redone. So it goes on and on and needs ultimate patience and maintenance.
Even if the site starts coming on the top of the search engines, the work is not done. The SEO work should be continued to maintain the rankings, which is one of the most tedious job.
Some of the major issues faced from the client side are
1) They need guaranteed top listings for their keywords.
2) They are not ready to make design changes to their website to make it SEO friendly.
3) When a keyword drops a 1 or 2 positions after a Google update, they start complaining over this.
4) They want only flash files on all the pages and expect better SERP.
5) They are not ready to make the site rich with content related to their main keywords.
6) They have a small site and have 25 keywords. They need top ranking for all the 25 keywords.
The above list contains only few, but there are still more.
After looking at the above list, the one thing that comes to mind is what we can do from our side to sort out these issues. The SEO companies can do various things which helps in removing most of these issues and making the project smooth. Some of the things that I have implemented are listed below.
1) Educate the clients about the basics of SEO.
2) Make them aware of the search engine algorithm.
3) Encourage them to update and add fresh contents.
4) Inform them about the latest search engine updates.
5) Send them monthly reports and explain the reason behind the fall / increase in rankings.
6) Avoid giving information on all the things that we have done in the SEO project.
These things have worked for me to a great extent and I hope that this would work for you also.
5 Google Market Research Tools That I Use.
Jul 08 2009
Posted by George as Google, Online Marketing, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, search engine marketing, seo
Google is one of the major platform for online marketing as it is the most used search engine worldwide with high efficiency and accuracy. Google is the main stage for all the online marketing and market research activities for online professionals, webmasters, SEOs etc. The main part of Google is that they offer various tools for market research which makes the job much easier and flexible. These market research tools by Google helps you to stay afloat and updated with the ever changing internet trends. So in order to become a successful online marketing professional one must make the habit of using these online research tools in the proper way. So I would like to tell you something about the main 5 market research tools offered by Google, that I use for my online marketing campaigns.
1) Google Suggest
Google Suggest is another tool by Google which is mainly used for keyword research. Earlier it was run as a separate tool by Google, but there days all the functions of Google Suggest is integrated with Google Search. So for this, you just need to go to Google.com and start typing your keywords in the text box. Google will then start to show related and most possible list of Keywords as a drop down. The more specific keywords you type the more specific list it would be showing. This tool has proved very much helpful for me in conducting successful keyword researches.
2) Google Trends
Google Trends is another useful tool which helps us to compare the popularity of keywords or phrases over a particular time and also over a certain geographical area. You can see the results based on a particular Country, City and Language. Google Trends shows the results for the last 5 years, thus enabling you to check the consistency of a particular keyword or phrase. This tool also helps to compare the search volume of multiple keywords by simply separating the keywords with a comma in the search box. Google Trends can also be used to know the seasonal popularity of certain keywords and can also be used to know the seasonal trends of a particular keywords or phrases. The tool also shows the main news stories for a particular keyword in the last 5 years. This tool has helped me a lot in making the marketing research and keyword trending analysis for my clients.
3) Google Alerts
Google Alert tool is a free service offered by the search engine giant Google and is used for getting notified about the latest news, web pages and other market updates related to their keywords, via email. This tool helps you in keeping up to date with the market changes and is very much easy to use. Google provides 6 types of alerts such as News, Blogs, Comprehensive, Web, Video and Groups. To activate the Google alert, just go to Google Alerts and enter the keyword or a group of keywords separated by OR. Then select the alert Type, How often you need to get the alerts and the email address to which these alerts need to be mailed. Then submit the Create button and you have created a Google Alerts for those keywords. This tool also helps to keep an eye on your competitors.
4) Google Insights for Search
The Google Insights for Search is another important tool for doing online market research and helps in getting various facts and figures for our online marketing campaign. It can be used to select the proper advertising message, when we have a few keywords in our hand. Just enter the keywords and select the keyword which shows more interest over the time period. Google Insights for Search can also be used to examine and find the best seasonal keywords. The tool also helps you to make research over various geographical locations, suitable to introducing your product. You would be able to get informative data such as hottest rising keywords, search volume trends, keyword comparison, the Country, State or City where a keyword is popular etc.
5) Google Adwords Keyword Tool
The Adwords Keyword Tool is another important keyword tool offered by Google and is very useful for your SEO and SEM campaigns. Just enter your keyword or phrases into the box provided and you would get information related to that keyword such as its advertiser competition, local search volume, global monthly search volume, estimated average CPC etc. You can enter more than one keyword or phrases at a time. This tool also helps to get you keywords related to your website content by entering your website URL into the box provided. This is the major tool that is used by SEO professionals for doing keyword research for their website.
And there is one major tool that is not included in the list and that is the Google Search Tool. This is nothing but the same tool that we use to search on the net, i.e www.google.com. This is a great tool and can provide insight into many aspect of online marketing. Hope you have enjoyed this post and I would be back with some more in the coming days.
