Very new ideas for the old internet

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool

If you want to run an effective Google Adwords campaign, you’ll find it necessary to learn to use the Google Adwords keyword tool. This handy little tool allows you to select keywords and establish how much you are willing to pay per click for ads that appear on web pages and search engine results pages that contain the identified keywords.

Choosing the right keywords is very important to your success in operating an Adwords campaign. You want to reach an audience that is likely to want and need your product or service so that, once they arrive at your website, they will convert to a sale or lead. Having people click on your ad does nothing but cost you money unless you maintain a high conversion rate.

When choosing the keyword or keywords that you want to target, keep in mind the keywords that your website is based upon. Those are, at least in part, the keywords you will want to select for advertising. However, you may have keywords on your website that are much broader than those that you want to use for your Adwords campaign. Whereas a person selling classic car parts online might use “auto parts” as a keyword on their website, it would certainly be a very bad choice for an Adword keyword. Driving traffic that are seeking auto parts for late model cars will simply leave the website as soon as they see what is offered and, since you choose the keyword, the click would still cost you money. Instead, focus on keywords that are very directly related to what you offer such as, in the case here, “classic car parts”, for example. That way, only those people searching for and visiting websites related to classic cars and parts for those cars will see your Adwords campaign.

The Google Adwords keyword tool allows you to add and remove keywords at any time you choose. You aren’t tied to using keywords that aren’t working for you for any specific length of time. If you find a keyword you have selected is working very poorly, go to the keyword tool and remove that keyword from your campaign. You might replace it with a better keyword, or simply drop the keyword and not replace it at all.

The greatest thing about Google Adwords is the flexibility. You can change anything about your campaign at any time you want. Keywords that prove effective can be changed to a higher price per click while those that offer little traffic can be changed or removed. Find keywords that drive traffic that converts and stick with those keywords.

A great alternative , even better than the google adwords tool is the new keyword elite which has more options and will give you the exact adwords pricing for each keyword and per search engine as well as competition, adsense high paying keywords and so on.

Link Popularity and Search Engines

Link popularity has become increasingly important among the search engines. Because link popularity goes hand in hand with search engine optimization, it is important for any company with a web presence to build a link development strategy.

Many online marketing specialists believe that link popularity is simply obtaining as many links as possible. However, the quality of the link holds more “weight” than the quantity of links. You will get better results in the search engines if you have link popularity from sites that have considerable traffic.

To develop popularity for your web site, you should submit your site to the most visited directories. Yahoo (of course), LookSmart, About.com, and Open Directory are examples of major directories. Also, to further develop link popularity, you should consider sites/directories that are very industry specific, such as healthatoz.com for a health-related site.

Even more important, it can help your search engine ranking if your site is reviewed by a directory that is associated with a search engine. To be accepted into a major directory, we recommend that your site have content that can show credibility in your field. A tips page, links page, or a “how-to” page can showcase your credibility on your product or service.

For example, we can almost always tell when a new client site is added to Yahoo by looking at an Google ranking. Oftentimes, we will obtain a top 30 ranking for a client, then suddenly the site will move to a #1 position. Sure enough, when we go into Yahoo, we will see that the client site has been added. That’s one of the reasons that we think a listing in Yahoo is essential.

Obtaining links from other web sites is not enough to obtain long-term results on both the search engines and directories. People have to actually click on those links to your web site and browse your web site. AND they need to return to your web site when they see the quality content, products, and/or services that you offer, i.e. the usability of your web site. That is the definition of “popularity” according to the major search engines and directories. Other terms for it are “click” popularity or “click-through” popularity.

Therefore, both link popularity and click-through popularity are essential for obtaining optimal search engine placement.

Remember, a search engine position is not permanent since the search engine companies change their algorithms all of the time. Being listed in directories and other sites can significantly drive traffic and sales, particularly if your site is listed in specialized directories (health, financial, and travel, for example).

To check your link popularity in some search engines:

For AltaVista, in the search query field, type in:

link:domainname.com

For Inktomi’s services, in the search query field, type in:

Linkdomain:domainname.com

For FAST Search, in the search query field, type in your domain name:

link.all:www.domainname.com

For Google, in the search query field, type in your domain name:

link:www.domainname.com

Link development serves multiple purposes. It can drive traffic and sales to your web site and it can also help your search engine rankings.

Why Google Sitemaps is a Win-Win Situation for Webmasters

The process of informing search engines about new pages in your website or about new websites in your care can be quite a time consuming task. The submissions process is just way too much trouble for its own good that even the search engines have realized that it is a path not worth pursuing and completely stopped using this method a long time ago.

There have been many innovations presented since then as a way of simplifying the submission process and eliminate most of the drudgery that has been associated with this task. With the development Google Sitemaps, the process has indeed been a big help to many webmasters and business owners. In fact, many people contend that Google Sitemaps is probably the most important development on the internet since the RSS, blogs and ping.

RSS, blog and ping had actually been used by webmasters as tools in informing search engines about new additions to their websites even though this function was not the primary purpose of the aforementioned innovations. Of course, Google Sitemaps is so much faster and easier to use compared to the said systems and this is the reason why it has risen in popularity and is now acknowledged as the most effective way of updating a website to search engines. In fact, this new innovation of using sitemaps for the search engine submission process has become a very vital part of operating a website and a webmaster can ignore it at his own risk.

There may still be some sceptics who may still not believe that a sitemap method of submitting new web pages or new content to a website is very effective. One reason why using the sitemap method like Google Sitemaps is that the technology was developed from the ground up with solely one primary goal, which is to alert and direct the Google search engine spiders to the web pages that you have specified. All the other methods are considered as indirect and submissions to search engines are not their primary purpose either.

Clearly, using Google sitemaps provides a win-win situation for webmasters and online business owners.

First, Google sitemaps limits the huge waste of the resources needed to crawl web site that have not changed. The technology allows webmasters to inform Google which pages have changed or if there are new content added to a website and then direct Google’s spiders directly to those pertinent pages.

Google Sitemaps also radically speeds up the process of discovery and addition of pages to Google’s web site index. This can only be achieved if you use the technology and nothing else.

Google Sitemaps offers a level of usability that is different from conventional sitemaps because it offers a directory of all the web pages in the web site that the webmaster or online business owner wants the search engine to visit.

Without the assistance of sitemaps like Google’s, it may become hard for a web page to be found by the search engine crawlers. There is even a chance that the page may not be found at all.