Website Optimization (SEO PPC) Tips & Tactics

Google's Android Technology in Embedded

2011-11-27T22:52:00.001-08:00

$35 World's Cheapest Tablet PC

2011-10-13T04:32:00.001-07:00

World's Cheapest Tablet PC at $35 is a device that was earlier slated to be a laptop, but it changed its form over the three years it was being created.

The tablet will be assembled in India and the government will waive duties to help minimise the cost of production. One lakh tablets have been ordered initially and about a million pieces will be produced in the next stage if the pilot works well.

The low internal memory, at 256MB, may make the tablet slow in accessing the already slow speeds of internet in Indian colleges. Only about half the 25,000 colleges have been linked to the internet under the government's National Mission of Education. Out of these, less than 15% of the colleges have broadband with speeds of at least 512 kbps.

Earlier, the government had invited an expression of interest from Indian companies, but the tender was issued afresh as earlier vendors were not being able to deliver at the price point which the government wanted.

This world's cheapest tablet computer, which will be unwrapped on Wednesday, will go on sale in India starting December, the maker of the device has said.

Created for use by students, the tablet will first be made available to colleges at Rs 1,750 a piece.

Why Display Advertising NOT Effective

2011-10-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

As it was said in the topic "Search is the high school prom king and queen that gets all the attention, but display is the workhorse without which the internet economy would collapse. Search is still 60% of where your online ad dollars are spent, but it's not where 60% of your time gets spent! Display runs everywhere, it reaches more people, it achieves basic brand metrics better than search, and it is more effective at creating customer behavior than search."
There is a need for how marketers should be using display to drive growth and understand the product theme before starting a display campaign like for instance, here are a few display campaigns that failed to attract the Website Visitors. Here are some of the display campaigns look and feel...

But, but, how to control the websites where we buy media from... Love to hear your views. Happy Advertising!

SEO Tips for Joomla Websites

2011-09-27T01:12:00.000-07:00

It is always good to have a Joomla or Drupal or any other CMS website rather than just a PHP or ASP or just html for that matter.

This will not only give greater user experience in terms of managing the content of a website but also promotes websites in an SEO perspective and improves the ranks on Search Engines providing a quick page rank to the website.

So, do try your hands on building your website on CMS and also promoting it through simple SEO Tools and techniques.

Here are Top 10 tips to SEO Joomla or any CMS based website:

Whenever you are deciding the title of your article, you need to keep in mind that this tittle will be in the tittle tag of Joomla and moreover in in-site links. So it is very important to choose the title of article very carefully, keeping the trends of search engine in mind.
Use anchor text in your article as inbound links using the keywords which you want to be in ranked in search engine ranking results.
Try to get more and more external sites links to web page of your website. But always keep the quality in order to increase the page-rank of web page of your website. For that, create quality content web page with help of Joomla to get bound links.
It is better if the age of site is more, so keep extending your domain registration because registration of spam sites is not done for longer period and having higher age of your website increases trust on website and helps increasing page rank also.
Never forget the link popularity within the website. Use in-site links to navigate from your one webpage to another. You can use site map for that in your home page. If there are so many web pages in your website, then that will also increase your page rank.
This is good if you get so many inbound links from other website to your web page but you need to assure that you are getting qualitative inbound links. Qualitative links means links from external website having high page rank and link from related field also.
Keywords of your content are very useful. It can increase the page rank of your web page. For that, write the quality content and then find out the keyword density in your content. From keyword density, pick up top two or three words and add them to the meta keywords.
Smaller sites usually have higher ranking in Google but generally, size of file is not responsible for ranking in search engines. Always optimize the images you have in your website.
When you are working in Joomla and want your website to be search engine friendly, make use of clean URL with few parameters.
There comes error pages like 404 or file not found, in your screen. It happens when connection does not build up with the destined server and displays 404 error. Mostly people forget about this error page. Error pages should always be utilized by placing text links to site pages.

These are few tips for working with a CMS website and put your website in the higher ranking of search engine. Utilize these tips to get your website in higher ranking in search engines and increase your page rank also.

Google Doodle - Jim Henson

2011-09-23T23:17:00.000-07:00

Today, I stumbled upon Google Doodle that lets users to try their Hand at Digital Puppetry.

This doodle marks Jim Henson's Anniversary.

This is an interactive Doodle, Search giant Google today (on Saturday) is paying tribute to the late puppeteer James Maury "Jim" Henson, creator of the world-famous Muppets.

Visitors to Google's homepage (www.google.com) on Saturday will see six Muppets side by side, each able to interact at the click of a mouse.

Google Plus Beta

2011-07-05T19:15:00.001-07:00

One more new coin - Google+ (Google plus) recently launched by Google is on its way to lead the Social Media race that may even be a Facebook killer.

What are you waiting for? If you're eager to begin trying out Google+ and can't find someone with a spare invitation, you can sign up to request a Google+ account. Or, request any of your friends who are already there. Enjoy!

However, today I got invited by my friend who is also excited about this new Social Networking app from Google. We figured out that Google is trying to become Facebook killer, but what is the need of having one more Orkut (a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc). How is it different from Orkut?

Lets think and see if this is going to be a successful one or not. In my next post I shall jot down some differences by comparing these two Apples from Google.

Google Engage Program

2011-05-17T09:41:00.000-07:00

Applying and join the Google Engage program?

Simply fill out the form and tell Google about your business and the services you offer. A Google representative will review your application and contact you by phone or email within 10 - 15 business days with further details.

Google Page Rank Update - Jan 2011

2011-02-09T04:18:00.000-08:00

First Google Page Rank update of 2011 is observed on january 20th 2011. This has given many marketers and SEOs a gerk through increase and decrease in their website page ranks.

Well what is a Page Rank?

Pagerank is about whether you are in Google’s main index, or not in A higher pagerank won’t rank about a low PR page just on PR. The only good thing about a lot of Google Pagerank, is you can get a lot more pages into Google – that’s it. It does not improve rank – it only allows a page to rank, and MORE pages to rank.

GoGoLeave GooGle?

2010-11-30T23:11:00.000-08:00

Google Dominence Going to Last How Long?

With nearly 14 billion online searches every month and social media sites that rival populations of large countries, there’s unlimited opportunity for businesses and Google aswell. But I wonder to the fate of Google from the buzz happening on its Search Tools and its business.

With the recent chargesheet filed by European union, as it has fined a total 1.68 billion euros ($2.4 billion) for antitrust infringements in Europe. if guilty, Google is liable to pay a fine of 10% of its global turnover. It has slapped a record 1.06 billion euros in fine on Intel in the past for abuse of market dominance. REUTERS

EU regulators opened a formal investigation into Google on Tuesday, putting pressure on the world’s top Internet search engine to offer concessions to settle antitrust complaints and avert a lengthy battle like Microsoft.

The move by the European Commission came more than nine months after British price comparison site Foundem and French legal search engine ejustice.fr alleged Google’s search algorithm demoted their sites in Web search results because they were rivals. Microsoftowned Ciao, from Bing, also filed a complaint with the European Commission about Google’s standard terms and conditions. “The (European) Commission will investigate whether Google has abused a dominant market position in online search by allegedly lowering the ranking of unpaid search results of competing services,” the EU executive said in a statement.

But Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said it was premature to say there was a problem with Google’s business practices. “I want to be very clear that this does not mean that there is definitely a problem—it is far too early to say that,” he told a European Parliamentary hearing. Google said it would cooperate with the regulator. “There is always going to be room for improvement, so we will be working with the Commission to address any concerns,” a Google spokesman said.

However, Google defended its formula for ranking websites and said it had stopped using exclusive contracts almost two years ago. “We built Google for users, not websites, and the nature of ranking is that some websites will be unhappy with where they rank,” the spokesman said.

“Those sites have complained and even sued us over the years, but in all cases there were compelling reasons why their sites were ranked poorly by our algorithms.” The Commission said it would also look into allegations that Google sets exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their websites, as well as on computer and software vendors, with the aim of shutting out competing search tools.

Furthermore, an advertizing company Aimclear recently cameup with a case-study on Google's Keyword Search tool, showing its bad performance.

This shows that Google is either making big changes its business being more commercial than before or focussing on other major issues that are not user friendly as it used to be.

Ads not Showing up on Sponsored Listings

2010-10-01T00:12:00.000-07:00

I feel that Google is occupied with too many things!

Here is a case study that I want to share with my fellow Adwords Advertisers. Moreover with the Adwords Team to enhance their Auto reply below that may turn out to be helpful for the advertisers:

Dear Advertiser,
Thank you for writing to us about your ad's visibility.
Your ad's visibility depends on your budget, the bid you set for your keywords, the number of other advertisers who choose the same keywords, and many other factors. The best way to tell if your ad is running is to check the impression and click statistics in your AdWords account.
Here are some other common reasons why your ad may not be appearing, along with ways to address them:
Ad approval status/disapproved ad: All ads must comply with our advertising policies and will need to be reviewed before they can run on the Google Network. Ads that do not meet our policies won't run. View all AdWords Advertising Policies at http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide_toc.cs&path=policy.
Ad Rank: Your ad's position may not be high enough for it to show on certain sites in the Google Network. The number of ads appearing on pages in the Google Network is often limited, so only the highest ranked Google AdWords ads will be shown on any given page. Your ad's position on Display Network site is based on its Display Network bid and its past performance on those and on similar sites. If you haven't entered a Display Network bid amount, our system will use an automatic bid based on an average of your default and keyword-level ad group CPC bids. Learn more about Display Network bids at https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=50129&topic=15888&?utm_id=au.
Partner requirements: Some sites in the Google Network may restrict advertising or keywords based on their own policies regarding content and editorial standards. These restrictions (not influenced by Google) may prevent your ad from showing on certain sites. At this time, we're unable to disclose details about the guidelines of individual sites.
Payment declined: Please visit your Billing Summary page to see if your payment has been declined. In this scenario, your ads won't run until we receive a new payment.
For a free tutorial on common reasons why you may be unable to see your ad, visit http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/go/courses?hl=en-US&utm_source=usft4.
If you have additional questions on this topic, please reply to this email. We'll get back to you within three business days. For other issues, please contact us through http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/request.py.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team

Simple and short! But I wish to add one more case which will be very useful for the advertisers, avoiding panic and waste of time. Here is what I like to share:

Please check your negative keywords list.

Another case where the Ads do not show-up are when there is a low search volume for a given keyword. I wonder how in this world can other competitors rank when there is a Low Search count for some keywords. Check it for example: computer on module linux is one such a keyword. But the ad preview tool shows all our competitors in the sponsored listings.

Football and Octopus

2010-07-12T02:44:00.000-07:00

There is no wonder that Octopus (cephalopod) having a soft oval body with eight long tentacles can never imagine kicking a Football. But it is evident that Paul- The Octopus can predict the winners of the football matches very well as it is proved in this FIFA 2010 Season.

The matches were played in ten stadiums in nine host cities around the country, with the final played at the Soccer City stadium in South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg.

It was a great fun watching FIFA Finals match yesterday. This is an oportunity for me to dedicate this article to the lovely Paul - The Octopus.

In the final, though it started with lots of fouls and frustation, the European champions and second-ranked team, Spain defeated third-time finalists the Netherlands 1–0 after extra time, with Andrés Iniesta’s goal giving Spain their first-ever world crown in the FIFA world cup 2010.

This 2010 finals have amplified international public awareness of the vuvuzela, a long horn blown by fans throughout matches. However, many World Cup competitors have criticised and complained about the noise caused by the vuvuzela horns I loved watching the fans blowing them.

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...

Install WordPress Template in 5-minutes

2008-07-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

Here are the steps to install the Wordpress Template.
Before you install the template onto your existing website, one should make sure that they Download the Latest WordPress Version from its website. Then

Unzip the package in an empty directory.
Open up wp-config-sample.php with a text editor like WordPad or similar and fill in your database connection details.
Save the file as wp-config.php
Upload everything.
Open /wp-admin/install.php in your browser. This should setup the tables needed for your blog. If there is an error, double check your wp-config.php file, and try again. If it fails again, please go to the support forums with as much data as you can gather.
Note the password given to you.
The install script should then send you to the login page. Sign in with the username admin and the password generated during the installation. You can then click on 'Profile' to change the password.
Cheers! have a Pint of Beer and Enjoy!

AdWords Cross-Channel Conversion Tracking Alternative

2008-07-02T02:06:00.000-07:00

Adwords Cross Channel tracking is one of the most important prerequisite to allowing advertisers to track their online ads, through channels like Yahoo Search Marketing, Miva and also Banner ads among others.
It is said that Google Adwords Cross-Channel Conversion Tracking will no more be available to the advertisers from August 25, 2008. As of that date, the feature and its related data will be removed from all accounts of the advertisers. If the advertisers would like to keep a copy of your cross-channel conversion data, then they can do so by keeping a record of it for themselves before the removal. Whereas the usual Google AdWords conversion tracking will not be affected by this change.
Alternative to cross-channel tracking, advertisers can use the free Google Analytics service to track all your online marketing efforts. Analytics offers the same functionality as cross-channel tracking, plus much more. It shows you how people find and explore your site, which keywords are really working, which ad text is the most effective, and where your visitors are dropping off during the conversion process. Click to start using Google Analytics.
If you already have an Analytics account and would like to track your non-AdWords online advertising campaigns, you'll need to tag your destination URLs with special variables.
Tagging online ads is an important prerequisite to allowing Google Analytics to show as which marketing activities are really paying off. Fortunately, the tagging process goes smoothly - once you understand how to differentiate your campaigns. Learn about all of the variables an advertiser can use to differentiate campaigns, by reading the five dimensions of campaign tracking.
Now, I should work a bit more to tag non-Google campaigns with Analytics and add new tracking code on the landing pages and shall maintain the flow of Cross channel conversion tracking.

Hillary and Obama's Online Race

2008-06-19T00:37:00.000-07:00

Before finding out the actual numbers with (Web Analytics - Case Study), that caused a spike on traffic generated to the Comodo website, let us know some interesting thing as what a print media released on the Online Spending between Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton.

They say that when consultants analysed what went wrong with Hillary's campaign, her online ad spending numbers shed some light. Through the entire 2007/2008 campaign, far less on online advertising than Obama's campaign has this year alone. Still, desparity, they did have something in common: both spent the bulk of their online ad budgets on Google Adwords. Hillary doled out around $292,000 to Google between Mar'07 nd Apr'08, most of which was spent this year. Meanwhile, Obama's campaign has spent thousands of online ad dollars through ad networks and Social Networking websites, but Clinton's filings did notname any such recipients.

Here is a discussion on Obama Campaign at Search Insider Summit, held in Dec'08

It also added finally that if political races are won by the biggest as spenders, the contrast between senator Obama's online ad spending and that of Clinton's could have people wondering whether more of jer ad budget should have neen spent online. My opinion on this context is that not online Online Ad spending fetched Obama with more votes but also with his Social network promotions.

Well, having said about Obama and Hillary's online race, I would like to enlighten you as what exactly made a spike on visitors traffic that increased on our website during a week between 26th Apr'08 - 3rd May'08.

Web Analytics - Case Study on Direct Traffic
What is Direct Traffic?
If you track your website stats, which I am sure most of you do, you’ll see a section of visitors that come directly to your website rather than from another referral websites or from a search engine. Direct traffic does not depend on shaky factors like search engine rankings or social media popularity. This traffic will likely be the most targeted traffic to a website / blog. Direct visitors are warm leads. Whether you are selling products or just attempting to grow your subscriber base, your direct visitors will be the most responsive to whatever you are offering. Because they have chosen to visit your site specifically, they probably value your opinions over others.

We had a press release published on our company's website promoting Comodo SSL certificate by saying that "Obama'08 website has deployed Comodo InstantSSL certificates to provide online contributors reassurance that their information is encrypted and secure". This gave a boost on online traffic to the Instantssl.com website. The factor which I had analysed here on Google Web Analytics was for Direct Traffic and what made the spike in people on the Internet visiting our website.

It is observed that the direct traffic to Instantssl website, most importantly is from the Bookmarking (in most cases people are already familiar with your website / blog and they are choosing to come back) that usually happens when users bookmark through their browser's favorites option or through the WIDGETS (small bookmarking icons) that we provided on our FORUMS, Blog, Support pages etc. Also, it can be through offline promotional efforts through Print media (News paper, Magazines etc.) where people will remember the URL of a website and then type into their web browsers.

Social Media Network

2008-06-18T23:37:00.000-07:00

What is a Social Networking?
Social Media Network or simply Social Networking is the place on the Internet where people get together and communicate remotely with each other on their interests, hobbies, passions etc., through social media websites. It is all about the psychology of existing needs and desires, and finding a way to speak to the users using Social Media. When it comes to social media marketing, the concept that holds true is attracting attention and traffic as well (while you intend to promote your websites).

What are social media websites?
Networks on the Social Media is formed by the people through different means. Some of which are Bookmarking the web pages by simply clicking and adding (obviously after signing-up with their services) from a website. By reading a post on Delicious, Blinklist, Furl, Propeller, Digg, Stumbleupon, Technorati, Facebook, Konnects, Twitter and Scribd are few among the ocean of Social Networking Websites and commenting on the posts that interests you.

About Social Networking Widgets:
You can see Social Networking Widget (social media websites IMAGE icons) below, this will appear at the bottom of every article on this Search Marketing blog to allow users to click and bookmark or connect to the relevant content on a Social Media Website.

Finally, there is also a simple way to publish your content to the social networking websites is through RSS feeds on to the Feed sites such as Twitter feed among others as in the previous link (feed sites).

Rules for Email Marketing Strategy

2008-06-17T03:08:00.000-07:00

Extremely compelling content scores non-search traffic well before the main website ranks high in the search engines due to the resulting links.

While exercising on Email Marketing which is indeed a powerful marketing strategy, make sure you follow certain procedures to get the maximum out of your campaigns. To create a large ripple you'll need to create quality content with the images specific to your market. This will help you fish for customers with a large net, as opposed to one single hook.

Jeanniey Mullen, contributes for ClickZ articles on email marketing and who’s also the founder and exec chairwoman of the EEC (Email Experience Council) states that:

“Email marketing currently generates an estimated return on investment of $48.29 for every dollar spent on it, according to the Direct Marketing Association we conservatively estimate that if all marketers optimized their emails for image blocking, email’s ROI would jump to $52.69. Not paying attention to rendering impacts revenue directly.”

According to a survey by the EEC and reported by The DMA, most retail email marketers (57%) are still sending image-only or heavy image-based email campaigns to their subscribers. Interesting considering the fact that image-based campaigns are known to trigger higher spam scores and reduce open rates based on their large size and, of course, don’t get seen if images are turned ‘off’ in the email client.

Points to follow:
Marketers need to include more HTML in their emails by including the following:
* Headlines
* Section heads
* Product names, prices and other text companying product images
* Text in banners
* Lists (upcoming releases, etc.)
* Menu and navigation bar text
* Call-to-action buttons
* Promotion codes and instructions on how to apply them

Rules of thumb:
* Take the extra effort to create an email campaign that has the right balance of HTML text to images. Keep to the mantra that if images are turned to ‘off’, the recipient can still read your entire message and act accordingly.
* Keep links as text links. Calls-to-action are the key to any email campaign, so ensure these can be seen and clicked regardless of supporting (and blocked) images.
* Never assume that your recipients are savvy enough to add you to their safe list manually and promptly. Work for the lowest common denominator and make your email campaign work on every level.
* Work with your ESP who will work with your ISP to ensure deliverability of your campaign. This will at least give you more of a fighting chance to have your campaign get to the inbox, regardless of content or images.
* TEST TEST TEST. All email campaigns should go through some degree of testing. If you don’t have the time, consider purchasing a rendering service such as ReturnPath/SenderScore, which can mean the difference between an open or an unsubscribe. Just one sale made by a more compliant and spam filter- ready email campaign can pay for the ReturnPath license, so give it some thought.

Building Personas:
What are personas BTW?
Personas is a tactic in evaluating a customer base for both marketing efforts and product development. Personas are essentially imaginary friends, or clients, to be more precise. You invent entire back stories, personalities, quirks, and needs for all of them, then evaluate how each of them would likely react to your products or campaigns.

Follow these three rules:

Design for convenience, for that persona. 'Convenience' means different things to different people. For me, it means messages I can easily scan and delete or act on. For someone else, it might mean all the information they need, right in the e-mail.
Tailor every offer to that persona. Sending a 10% off deal to a persona who wants luxury at any cost won't get you much.
Refresh your memory. Every time you launch an e-mail campaign, review your personas. Otherwise you're going to drift into what I call 'coupon land', where every e-mail starts with '20% Limited Time offer!!!!' or some such. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad offer. Just make sure it'll work for your audience.

Because, the odds that someone would be downloading images from every e-mail, the moment they receive an e-mail with images will be Zero.

To sum-up, a marketer should need to be clearly knowing as to whom they are trying to build awareness. Is it within a certain group? Connecting with people you can learn from or who would be likely to become your clients? Do you want to talk to blogging moms, internet marketers, travelers, jobs, reviews or a survey?

Space Tour with Google

2008-06-13T04:53:00.000-07:00

Space Tourists are getting their own Ride. Space Adventures, a Virginian Company normally arranges a channel for the wealthy explorers to ride on Russian Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station.

It is appeared on news online and print media that Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google is going to occupy one of the two available seats on Space Adventures' 2011 flight. He made $5 milloin as an investment in the company serving as a deposit for his future travel.

A similar space ride happened with Mark Richard Shuttleworth. Shuttleworth gained worldwide fame on 25 April 2002 as a spaceflight participant aboard the Russian Soyuz TM-34 mission, paying approximately US$ 20 million.

These sought of pleaseure / research rides to the space should happen very often to explore the boundaries on space, and I wish I could make my own trip to space once in my life time to appear on the IHT News. Cheers!

Wikipedia Web Traffic Grows 8,000 Percent

2008-06-13T04:44:00.000-07:00

Nielsen Online released an interesting News about some traffic data of Wikipedia on May 14th. Despite the breathless headline on Nielsen’s press release (“Wikipedia U.S. Web Traffic Grows 8,000 Percent in Five Years”), growth of the U.S. audience has slowed quite a bit. Nielsen says Wikipedia had 55.8 million unique visitors in the U.S. in April 2008. That’s up 22% from a year earlier. For comparison, April 2007 was up 77% over the previous year. April 2006 was up 285% over April 2005. Clearly the U.S. audience for the user-generated reference site is maturing. Notable from Nielsen’s findings is the extent to which search engines, especially Google, drive visitors to Wikipedia. In April 2008, 61% of visitors from home and 66% of visitors from work to the en.wikipedia.org site were referred from Google.

It is not

Web Pages for Internet Users

2008-06-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

When your goal is to sell more do make users comfortable on your webpage(s) and say what you wanted to say withing first fold of your page. Web users normally hunt for precious content and get relaxed after they gain what they want from their search on the Internet. Users find information on a Website more or less in e following way.

F as in Fast, Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe. People read the web pages or a Search Results Page for that matter in this way.
Eyetracking study, recorded how 232 users looked at thousands of Web pages. It was observed that users' main reading behavior was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks. This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:

Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F's top bar.
Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F's lower bar.
Finally, users scan the content's left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F's stem.

After gaining gyan from these Heat Maps, make sure that you workout with the reasearch tips on how users read on the Web Page and how authors should write their Web pages, and give away useful and user friendly web pages. Also check you website's browser compatibility here.

MTD ClickCharge on YSM Financial Reports Tab

2008-05-26T00:24:00.000-07:00

What is MTD ClickCharge?

MTD ClickCharge means Monthly Transaction Details. In Financial Reports Description Table we can see:

Monthly Financial Reports Access to Invoices, Statements, and Activity Reports for your account for prior calendar months, which you can download in PDF and text formats, and...

Billing Transaction Detail Reports Historical billing transaction data for your account over the date range you select. The date range is restricted to the previous six calendar months. Displays one row per billing charge entry. We can see that MTD when we click on this link in the reports.

IMO, YSM is 100% waste medium and 100% waste source to pay for their sponsored clicks, because they are from irrelevant ones. When I made an effort to exclude all those irrelevant websites in the YSM campaign Admin section, then I see that there are no more than 5 clicks each day. However, YSM has come up with a click filter as its new report as per its Blog letting users know how many clicks are discarding the irrelevant clicks.

What I can’t understand is that why Yahoo! has been contrary to let its users opt out of content & search network altogether. If I want to advertise only on Yahoo! search site and not on any of its other network, I think that Yahoo! should let its users opt out of its extended network. That will help advertisers further to not pay for click fraud!

It is better to focus more on social media to promote the niche websites, rather than going for PPC from Yahoo!

Cross Channel Tracking with PPC Campaigns

2008-04-20T23:16:00.000-07:00

It takes 24 hours to travel from US to India. Similarly it takes 24 hours or more than that for Yahoo! Search Marketing to reflect the changes done on the interface, sucking the efforts of the advertisers. LOL.

This post is all about cross-channel tracking using AdWords interface, to track Yahoo! PPC Camapign performance.

Being in India I had setup an account a week ago, this took me the whole week to get used to the interface losing $300 by gaining 151 clicks and 0.66% conversion.

To track this campaign on Yahoo Search Marketing, I had to set up a cross-channel-tracking on Google Adwords and this was a nightmare because I was unaware whether we can get the conversions tracked by this interface and on top of it, I was been told by the AdWords representative as follows:

Tish B: Hello Narasimhan. Thanks for contacting Google Adwords. I'm happy to help you. narasimhan: i have some doubts on cross channel conversion tracking

Tish B: I understand you would like information on cross channel conversion tracking.

Tish B: Yes. Please go ahead.

narasimhan: i am running a campaign on yahoo search marketing

Tish B: Okay.

narasimhan: i have copied and pasted the code which was generated by Google tool on adwords

Tish B: Okay.

narasimhan: i was able to see the clicks in cross channel conversion tracking but not the conversions

narasimhan: why?

***Tish B: There it gets limited to tracking only clicks and not conversions.

narasimhan: okay fine

Tish B: You're welcome Narasimhan.

Tish B: Is there anything else that I can help you with?

narasimhan: no nothing else.

I was zapped!! when I saw the conversion rate this morning using the same AdWords cross-channel-tracking interface. Anyways, here is the

proof.

However, taking decisions while running any campaigns either it is Google Adwords, Yahoo PPC, MIVA among others, are difficult due to the time lag in reflecting changes. A Danish proverb says, "He who has a choice has a trouble." Every decision ever taken is borne out of choices. Successes as well as failures in the campaign management are the results of decisions. "Nothing is more dificult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide", Napoleon said. After all, decisions are the essence of management.

Moreover, there are many things that need to be worked upon by Yahoo to attract the advertisers to run PPC campaigns using their Yahoo Search Marketing Interface.

Finally, Google should train their Support team upto the mark, to help the advertisers like me to get the appropriate answers.

Happy reading!

Google Search Engine Listing

2008-03-14T04:25:00.000-07:00

What take it to get listed on Google Search Engine?

Well this is a very tough question but it can be answered by stating one of the most important factors that can affect the position of a website on Google Search Engine: With my SEO blog that took some time to get listed for competitive keywords (such as "New Website Tips" among others) on Google Search with the age of the posting as its main factor.

Cost-Effective Adwords PPC Campaigns

2008-02-25T23:37:00.000-08:00

PPC or Pay-Per-Click campaigns are offered by many Search Engines such as Miva, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter and Google Adwords among others.

Any of these or all these types of interfaces are used to promote businesses by getting more traffic (web users) to the business websites to make a sale or fill up a form etc.

Here on my blog I would discuss about my favorite - PPC Campaign Management - Google Adwords. Before that setting up a campaign is one of the major tasks to run a campaign and manage Adwords using effective techniques that will eventually gives good return on investment to the businesses owning websites.

What are the Steps to run and manage Adwords in a cost-effective manner, and also find out the Steps to fight click fraud.

First, Steps to effectively manage Adwords:

1. Create *separate ad group* for each product.
2. Target *right keywords* that have more conversion power.
3. Create *Ad copies* to convey the maximum information possible to convert the prospects into customers.
4. When we separate the ad groups for each product, then the ad copies can be well written with the keyword phrases in it to improve *CTR* of keywords.
5. We can opt either for *Content network* or *Search network* or both. Bid amount can be separated for Content network and search network, and we can bid minimal in content network
6. Google will take only the minimum bid required to activate the keywords and will place us in the top because of the *Quality Score*. This concept may also bring our bid amount to less than 7 cents, by still holding a higher position. The positions of adcopies on the sponsored listings are calculated using the formula:
Position on sponsored listings = Max CPC * Quality Score
7. *CTR*, *Relevancy* of the ad copy to the keyword queried, *Historical keyword performance* and by setting up the *Right landing page* we can improve our quality score.
8. Now that Google has started listing Quality score adjacent to the keyword column, this will be helpful to decide whether to delete the keywords or optimize the ad copies in the ad group. Google lists the Quality Score as '*Great*', '*OK*' and '*Poor*.'
9. Bid the keywords with lesser *conversion rate* as in less than 5 cents initially and can bring down to less than 2 cents.
10. *Product price* can be mentioned in the ad copies for users to know our product price which in turn will increase CTR.
11. *Dynamic Ad copies* can be created by using the syntax. {Keyword: keyword that is in the ad group}. This will help us when a prospect queries 'Free SSL', the ad copy will reflect 'Free SSL' on its title.
(/The advantage of using this technique is that *CTR* will be improved and this will in turn improve the Quality score required for minimizing the bidding. The same keyword which is bid for around 40 cents would come down to 10 or 15 cents/.)
12. *Exact match* and *Phrase match* can give us targeted traffic. We can create separate Ad group for these keywords, then the scope of improving the CTR will be higher than broad matched keywords.
13. We can enable the *ad scheduling* to monitor at what time period the clicks are more and increase the bidding for keywords which has high conversion rate.
14. By constantly tracking and analyzing the performance of keywords by generating reports using *Google analytics*, the efficiency and effectiveness of PPC campaigns can be improved further.

Secondly, Steps to fight click fraud:

I had a chat with Adwords representative today, Q & A's are as follows:

Narasimhan:"How accuratly do I get the click enabling Content network? Or please describe me as how can you assure that there will not be click fraud when I enable Content network?" Then comes the Google representative's turn which was a quick response though:

Adwords representative (AR): Hello Narsimhan. Thanks for contacting Google AdWords. How may I help you today?
AR: Would you mind waiting a moment while I pull up your account?
Narasimhan: sure np
AR: Thanks for waiting.
AR: I have your account in front of me.
Narsimhan: ok great
AR: Would you like to explain to me what your problem is?
Narsimhan: In one of my campaigns I got 549 clicks and 459,525 impressions and on 1 conversion using Content Network. Whereas, on Search Network...
Narsimhan: for the same campaign, 775 clicks out of 45,893 impressions with 34 conversions.
AR: OK.
Narsimhan: Now tell me how can I trust and enable Content Network on other campaigns?
AR: Are you concerned about click fraud, Narsimhan?
Narsimhan: Yes you are right AR
Narsimhan: Tell me how accurately you justify this?
AR: Sure, give me a moment and I will be back with relevant information on this for you.
Narsimhan: Thank you AR I will be waiting for your response on this context.
AR: The security of Google AdWords advertisers is important to Google, and we have dedicated a number of resources to protect your account against invalid activity.
AR: Some of the Click Fraud Detection techniques are -
AR: 1. Detection and filtering techniques
AR: 2. Advanced monitoring techniques
AR: 3. The Google Team
AR: You can read on each of these techniques in detail at this link below.
AR: How Does Google Detect Invalid Click.
Narsimhan: I read that already but my numbers speak... What is your justification AR please tell me.
AR: If you are still not convinced about this you can request for an invalid clicks investigation with us.
Narsimhan: 549 clicks gave me 1 conversion and 775 clicks gave me 34 conversions.
AR: I understand.
AR: However, sometimes the click behavior is unpredictable.
AR: In case you wish to start an investigation with us, please use this link below.
AR: Investigate Invalid Clicks.
Narsimhan: That is ok Runa. I will observe it for some more time and request for investigation. Thanks for now. Have a nice time.
AR: Does that help?
AR: It was a pleasure to help you.
AR: You have a great day too.
AR: It was a pleasure chatting with you. If you have any more questions, please feel free to visit Google Adwords Help Center. You can also print this chat transcript for your record blah... blah...

Tips to Optimize New Website

2008-02-21T23:13:00.000-08:00

Top 10 Tips to Optimize New Website & 6 Tips for Back-linking! As it is said that "Necessity is the mother of all inventions", one of my clients wanted my advice as what are the points to be considered while optimizing a new website for Search Engines. So, even though I know what points will make a new website completely optimized, here is a list of guidelines that can be called as SEO tips for new web sites or what ever the users want to call it.

Below are the points that can be followed while starting an Optimizing process for a new website:

Keyword Research: First and foremost, we need to see what the Keywords are that need to be targeted and related to niche of a website. Here we can use online tools such as Digitalpoint keyword Suggestion Tool.

Site Categories: Categories of the site need to be made according to the avenues of its business. For example: There can be categories such as Products, Services, Support, Faqs etc.

Web site Directory Structure: Target specific keywords for pages on directory structure. Specific KWs here need to be generic words such as Medical Billing, Medical Transcription etc.

File names: The File names need to be inclined towards the targeted keywords. As mentioned above the targeted KWs for example, should be generic keywords.

Titles, Metatags - Meta Description, Meta Keywords tags: Ideally, there should be 10 words on Title, 25 Words on Description and the size of 25Kb should not be exceeded for any given webpage.

If you are unable to remember these while creating Titles and Meta Tags for your Web Page, then use this Google Snippet Optimizer/Builder Tool.

The Title and Metatags should start with Keywords and need to have key phrases in them. For instance, Medical Billing in India, Medical Transcription in India, Medical Billing in Chennai, Medical Transcription in Chennai etc., the file name can be given as /medical-billing-chennai.html etc.

Sitemaps: There are two types of Sitemaps that should be used for any new website. These are Sitemap.html within a website and the other one is Google Sitemap as Sitemap.xml in xml format. The xml based sitemap can be generated using any of the available online sitemap generating tool. Sitemap.html page will have only links with all the inner pages of a website. These two are to make the pages saturated on the search engine databases called as Search Engine Saturation.

Body Content: This is the main factor that a website needs to have to convert visitors to sale or to just make a better site stickiness for the users. Here, we need to use any of the online LSI tools, like the one that I use from Quintura LSI Tool to make a copy of a web page more relevant to the website. Quintura search engine works the way people search and its LSI tool evaluates latent semantic terms.
Each page should have atleast 3 text links (anchored texts) to the inner pages that are relevant to the context of a page.
Navigation should be consistent and run through the site's pages. Most important pages need to be linked from the index page that includes the Sitemap.html.

Positioning Body Content on a web page: Here, it is better to understand a little bit about how a search engine spider sees a web page while scanning it. Search engines read pages like we do, from top to bottom. It also assumes that the content near the top of the page is more important than the content at the bottom of the page. The text at the top of a page receives more weight than the text at the bottom. Hence it is better to shift the unnecessary code such as the navigation links as on Side bar menu etc., to the bottom of the page.

While Coding Web Pages: While coding WebPages for a website, calling external CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) can be used to minimize the amount of code on WebPages and is beneficial website optimization process. Also, CSS should use a different style sheet for mobile visitors, not a different site. Such style sheets are not particularly difficult to construct, they were covered that Matt Cutts reviewed on Dev Articles.

Back Links: Last but not the least! this is one of the most important factors that many of the Search Engines consider to weigh a website. Following are a Top 6 Handy tips for increasing backlinks for new web sites. You should check for websites that offer backlinks without a NoFollow Tag to your website. This makes the link value (Link Juice) flow from site A to Site B. If you want to know about a website, whether or not it offers links without a Nofollow tag, then try this Nofollow Checker Tool.

1. Submit your site to Web Directories: This is a pretty monotonous process that can get you several hundred backlinks if you have the time. An alternative would be to hire a manual directory submitter. Here’s a list of web directories you can use. You can also find some blog directories here.

2. Offering your Expertise: As most of the entrepreneurs have a specific skill set such as Medical Billing techniques, Translation, web design, copywriting, SEO etc., they can write to an established website and offer to optimise their website in return for a listing on their webpage. This offers excellent branding when it is picked up by a website with a good traffic to their site.

3. Submit Press Releases to PR sites: A basic press release about your website’s launch can be released to several PR websites, who will distribute it to various online news outlets. A good way to get a free link that I recommend is to submit industry related articles at PRWeb and PRLeap. There are many more that were been collected can be accessed from my website that is created to Build Brands where the list will be uploaded soon.

4. Social Bookmarking, Polling or Voting Websites: Many social polling websites like Technorati or Digg are often crawled by search engines each day and their links do help to get any website indexed easily. These Voting sites combines social bookmarking, blogging and RSS where the users decide which story gets on the front page by voting. 3spots is one of the biggest lists of social voting and bookmarking websites can be use for more information.

5. Signature on Forums: Forums in business niche can be started and contributions to their discussions can be done. Insert a link to the homepage or some inner pages of your site to those forums postings.

6. Blogs: Use the popular Blogs that you have or set up a new blog on different blog networks like Wordpress.com, Blogger, typepad etc., post good content each day and Link to specific WebPages on your website with related text links on the page. Also, you can comment on the other's Blogs and do some Guest postings on the PRs that are blog postings.

Useful Links: 10 SEO Tips and tags, h1, bolds, keywords, content items fixed (Highrankings Forum).

So, have you decided to optimize your new website? Then Go ahead and do it. Do you have any clarifications? Then Email Me.

Cheers! Narasimhan

SEO Myths Vs Reality

2008-02-18T04:50:00.000-08:00

Jill Whalen is a pioneer in search engine optimization. Nicknamed the First Lady of Search, Jill founded the site HighRankings.com in 1995.

In her presentation for Webstock, Jill diffused some of the most common SEO myths, including:

1) PPC ads will help organic rankings. Wrong.

2) PPC ads will hurt organic rankings. Wrong again!

3) you must have a keyword-rich domain. Nope.

4) you must have keyword-rich page URLs. No need.

5) heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.). Not at all.

6) the keywords in your meta keywords tag need to be included in your page content. It is actually better to use the keyword tag to include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you don't have in the visible text on your pages.

7) using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings. No.

8 ) page copy must be a certain # of words. Jill actually made up the 250 word limit a few years ago and it's stuck, but there is really no set limit to please search engines.

9) that you need to bold/italicize your target keywords within the page. No point.

10) that you must use a specific keyword density. No. Jill says that keyword density tools are ridiculous!

11) that you must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page. Waste! Instead, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related, so that your copy reads better than repeating one phrase over and over.

12) that you need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You don't generally need to optimize for these - engines will find them on their own.

13) duplicate content will get your site penalized. There is not a penalty as such, but engines will filter out duplicates in lieu of the original copy (or what they think is the original).

14) your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not true. Google doesn't even validate!

15) your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly, graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.

16) you can't use Flash. It's fine to use Flash, as long as it is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site.

17) certain design techniques are black hat. For example, Javascript code is legitimate, not just used by black hats.

18) that Google's link: command is accurate. It's not a useful tool. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead.

19) that reciprocal links won't count. From the right site, reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.

20) that pages are ranked in PageRank order in search results. They're not. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so ignore it.

21) you must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good GG rankings. It's just not true. Jill says the Yahoo Directory is not worth the money these days.

22) that you need to submit URLs to engines. Provided you have a link to your site, you will be indexed.

23) that you need a Google Sitemap. This is not needed for the average site. It won't change your site rank.

24) that you need to update your site frequently. Not necessary.

25) frequent spidering helps rankings. Not true!

26) that you need multiple sites. Won't help in the engines and creates more maintenance work.

27) that you need doorway pages. That's so 1995!

28) that a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic/sales. The good rankings need to be for keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for.

29) that an SEO company can place pages in certain positions. Not possible, unless they're using PPC or sponsored spots.

30) that your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company. Rubbish!

31) that they have a "proprietary method" of SEO. They're lying.

32) that they have a "special relationship" with Google. They're still lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO companies that Jill is aware of.

33) that they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work. Run away!

So we should keep these myths top of mind while designing and optimizing our websites.It is said that Jill's presentation was by far the best. It was concise but covered all the important aspects and it was delivered confidently. I even learned a few things. Also said that the audience clearly enjoyed it as they paid close attention and a few attendees approached Jill after the session to ask questions and say thanks, always a good sign. Great stuff!

SEO Chennai

2008-02-11T23:48:00.000-08:00

Search Engine Optimization is a process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or "organic" or in an "algorithmic" way.

This is a marketing strategy to drive traffic to website(s) and is found in practice since ages. Here in Chennai, there are many companies who invested millions of dollars either in their in-house Search Engine Optimization efforts or as outsourcing.

Chennai SEO
At 30's being an SEO in Chennai, I feel that I am one of the early trend setters to adopt such a marketing strategy to promote my clients websites. It is been a long journey of 4.5 years since mid of 2004. As it is said that search serves two purposes such as Research and Response.

View Larger Map
Research covers any type of information gathering. Regardless of the research topic, searchers typically know or have a general idea of what their intent is. Whereas, response comes from a stimulus.

Most searchers today see an ad on TV and then search for those products online. Understanding the necessity of offline stimulus to grow online response is why Google among many others has introduced offline advertising platforms in print, radio and television.

To conclude, the popular brands are becoming increasingly Internet savvy these days.

Internet Marketing Trends

2007-12-27T23:03:00.000-08:00

The most important Internet Marketing trends together with the fact that I can count the days left in 2007 on one hand, caused me to get deeply thoughtful. There is something about the turning of a calendar that causes one to clean up our inventory of lessons learned from the past year & half to till date and start goal setting for new year 2008.

That is why the New Year brings the inevitable "Best of" and "Top 5" lists, the year-end review and new-year preview. I have a chance to put the Search Marketing Trends in this context and say thank you for a few things that I have been blessed with in the past year, thanks to the Internet.

1. Meeting Passionate people at Search Camp Conference in Chennai:
Thanks for the organizers of Search Camp for allowing me to meet people who believe they can change the world of Internet Marketing. I have been extremely fortunate to add many of these people to my circle of acquaintances.

2. Universal Search:
Google rolled out universal search in May 16 2007 will offer users a more integrated and comprehensive way to search for and view information online. The company also introduced an updated homepage design and several new navigation features that make it faster and easier for users to find the information they are looking for.

3. Ad Spending in USA:
All statistics point to Google as the search engine people use the most. Not only is it by far the most-used search engine. That paid search's share is barely growing obscures the enormous sums going to this advertising format. US spending on search advertising will rise by more than $3.2 billion from 2006-2008 alone. Source: Industry Stats & Data by eMarketer. For more information, visit http://www.emarketer.com/Iab.aspx.

4. The Best way to Optimize Websites:
How to optimize a website in one of my previous posts on my blog is the top most way to achieve high rankings on Google and other search engines.

5. New Version of Google Analytics:
Google unveiled the new version of Google Analytics May 08, 2007 that presents data more clearly and in context, so one can look at a single report to gain insights rather than having to pull up several reports to understand what action to take.

There will be many more Search Marketing companies in South-Asia and particularly in India popping up with latest Internet Marketing trends and Search Strategies luring clients world wide is what I anticipate to be hot in '08.

Keywords to Optimize Websites

2007-12-15T20:02:00.000-08:00

It is nice to see that I have a very good post on my blog to help users to Optimize Websites. Following are top 10 list of keywords that makes my blog rank on Google SERPs:

seo new website - 53rd "I wonder how users go till such a position and click on the listings!"
lsi tool - 20th "This position is ok"
new website optimizer - 14th "hmmm, even this is fine"
new website tips - 13th "Great!"
search engine marketer chennai - 2nd "Good and preferred Position on Google SERPs"
how can optimize the new website? - 2nd
new website seo tips - 7th "keyword is not bad"
optimize a new site - 4th "not bad either"
optimize new website - 1st "Good enough to be listed for such a tough keyword"
tips for optimizing website - 5th "also a tough keyword there"

among others, driving in traffic around 70% visits per month to my SEO blog.

Search and Media Marketing Trends

2007-12-06T17:55:00.000-08:00

On SearchCamp Event there were many presentations on SEO, SEM and Internet Marketing Trends and the industry future among others by the Gurus of the industry.

The highlighted presentation Topics are as follows:

1. Measuring the success of a SEO campaign - Prabuddha S. Raychaudhuri, CEO, SEOguru Technologies, Calcutta

One of the main points for the success are Traffic Generation and Conversion. Goal conversion can be enhanced through the following webpage building techniques:

Build database of Newsletter Sign ups

Track the Transaction particulars

Request for price quotes

Tracking Online sales increase

2. Recent developments in Keyword Marketing - Geroge Tai, Obamboo Inc, Taiwan

In Taiwan trade and marketing depends upon real an traditional media like the magazines, catalogs - print media rather than the Virtual media like Internet Marketing.

If SEO and the traditional media goes hand-in-hand in Taiwan it will work wonders.

The Companies in that contry are 5 years behind India.

Keyword rankings are without boundaries and targetes. Building trust is important in Taiwan which makes client pay you upfront. Henceforth, Taiwanese market need to build search industry image to market their products. But as of now using Google as marketing engine is not much in Taiwan.

3. The future of search engine marketing - 8 predictions for 2008 - Mahesh Murthy, Founder & CEO, Pinstorm, Bombay can be reached at mahesh@pinstorm.com # 9892249969. He was also a speaker on of the Search Engine Strategies Conferences.

MegaTrends in Search Marketing Industry happening with ADVERTISERS, ARTS and AGENCIES

It won't be just about Google, it won't be just about Search in the future. Marketers don't allow evil monopoly. Cross-engine Search Engine Marketing management systems will thrive.

Marketers will learn to sell online using Search Marketing Techniques from Google, Yahoo, MSN (GYM), Miva, Baidu (Search Engine used in China), Naver (Search Engine used in Korea), Yandex (Search Engine used in Russia), Sensis (Search Engine used in Australia). Prediction is that SERPs ranking formula will be broken whereas, Brand Marketing will be maintained.

Pay per organic click will move to Pay per performance. Hotels and Airlines industries will move to Cost per acquisition model. Better than Google Click Fraud, there will be long term acquisition tracking systems.

Easy or extremely difficult to sell the products online or convert the online users anyhow and charge more from client.

Then in Pay-Per-Performance deal margins of commission model will come into picture rather than imediate CPA and it is worth the customer life-time value.

In Commission Model, you do not describe the techniques to the client and there is a greater chance for clients to run away without paying you.

In Cost Per Acquisation (CPA) Model you describe the techniques to the client and there is no chance for client to run away without paying you because the cleints rely on your inputs and cannot take away the data which will be password protected by which they cannot work on their own. This is also called as Black Box Model.

Major Search Engines send Junk traffic to the sites that spend millions of dollars on Sponsored listings. These search engines do not disclose them though they claim that they are working on it.

In Commission systems pay more to gain more, whereas, in CPA system, pay less and gain less and in Retailer system there will be no incentive marketing.

It will be democratised advertising agencies with multi-lingual websites. The model changes India as a Central online Marketing Hub and fully staffed in all the regions of the country.

Organic Search Engine Placement Advice from Google

2007-12-06T04:40:00.000-08:00

It is on air that Google is going to give away advices to Optimize Website as per Google Guidelines to rank on Google's Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

As per a recent article, Google has already crossed an invisible line by offering free advice about organic search engine placement to its biggest pay-per-click spenders.

If this sought of advice comes into picture then the big players will gain more and more from the Organic Search rankings of their websites.

In Google's Webmaster Help Center it is clearly stated that the Companies that offer SEO services may be unethical and have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts.

Having said that, if Google is going to offer advices for the SEO community then there will not be any Search Engine Optimizers working for the major companies and may be settling down with the small and medimum size companies.

Web Page Redirections

2007-11-21T01:33:00.000-08:00

You create a webpage with good content having your products or services on it and run for years. After your business grows online with different online advertising efforts, you would be interested to grow your business further and will have a plan to improve the pages on your website.

Eventually, you will need to know that the old pages that are already cached by Search Engines such as Google among others has a value over the new coming webpages. For this reason, there are two different was to redirect the old web pages to the new ones.

1. By Permanent 301 Redirection:
Permanent 301 Redirection method is more advisable one than the meta redirect. This can be easily done through .htaccess on the Apache server whereas on IIS server it is a different process altogether.

Here are the most common Redirects:

URLs ending in /index.php or /index.html to the root of a website (/). Then this is the code:

RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ .*/index.html\
HTTPRewriteRule ^(.*)index.html$ /$1 [R=301,L]

The most common code for non www to www is:

RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.RewriteRule (.*)
http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

2. By using Meta Redirect: This method is implemented by using the following tag on the header portion of a page that is set for redirection:

meta equiv="refresh" content = "0; url=/new-page.html"

My favourite icon - Aaron Wall on his SEOBook blog replied to a post saying that "If people are dumb enough to not test their redirects after setting them up, and then not notice they redirected their site to another, then they deserve to fail IMHO.
It is smart to use oneself as an example from a branding standpoint, which is why we did it here".

Search Engine Robots

2007-11-20T00:41:00.000-08:00

Search Engines employ Robots that are virtual crawlers to spider the web, the IP addresses of the Search Engines and their robots/crawlers names they send out to visit your site are as follows:

Yahoo Slurp Yahoo
MSN Robot MSN
Googlebot Google
Inktomi Slurp Inktomi
Ask Jeeves/Teoma Ask Jeeves
Scooter Alta Vista
Wget Webwombat
ArchitextSpider Excite
Internet Explorer Crawler IE
Northern Light Gulliver Northernlight
Lycos_Spider_(T-Rex) Lycos

These are among many other web crawlers that will index the websites and give out the information on their Search Engine Results Page when searched by the users. Among all of the above crawlers Google crawler must be the smartest one. Because of its latest and ever changing techniques to crawl and index the websites around the world.

Search Marketing Expo - SMX West

2007-11-15T00:43:00.000-08:00

SEO SEM Event Santa Clara - February 26-28, 2008

Today morning when I stepped into my Chennai office I got a SMX West Brochure from Sweden by post.

Search Marketing Expo - SMX West is said to be to the "must-attend" interactive and search engine marketing event on the West coast, delivering superior value to conference delegates and exhibit hall attendees alike.It organizes all search topics such as organic search, paid search, link building, local search, mobile search, social networking, and much more!

Who Should Attend?

Chief Marketing Officers
In-house search marketers
Brand managers
Paid search advertising planners and buyers
Organic search optimization specialists
Web technology professionals

This will be worth attending event to explore the latest and future trends in the search industry.

Ad Spending and Calculate ROI

2007-11-13T18:14:00.000-08:00

How much of investment is right for the businesses to spend on their Advertisements?

This is always a question mark for the advertisers. Well, there is a limit considering the capacity of a business, their products, their revenue, their profits, their geographical location etc.

Before getting deeper into this I would like chalk down a few facts related to Shares of Media Across Major Channels. It reveals the fact that after the fairly underwhelming ad growth of 2006, perhaps the least sensational way to describe 2007 would be to say that it was a year of transition.

To start with, a business that plans to invest on any of the media listed above should know their target audience.

Further more, it is better to know how to calculate ROI (return on investement) as it is probably the most important calculation one needs to make to ensure the long-term viability of their business. To track with proficiency the amount of dollars being invested into gaining sales and how much ROI those dollars put back into the business.

Most of the ad spenders beleive that "calculating an accurate return on investment is not an easy thing to do."

Here is the basic formula to calculate the return on investment (ROI):

ROI = [(Payback - Investment)/Investment)] x 100

Wherein, payback is the total amount of money earned from investment by a given company. Whereas, the investment is in terms of "resources" such as cash money, human resources or time among others.

ROI calculations should be done on both monthly and yearly basis.

Web Analytics Introduction

2007-11-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

Trinad Rao on the Day 2 event at SearchCamp gave a quick introduction on Web Analytics in General, along with a few simple A/B Test suggestions.

Watch his video below:

You may be wondering as what metrics need to be tracked on Web Analytics and what can be ignored to make a financial decisions among others. First, people should not make mistakes by ignoring analytics completely and continue making decisions based on their intutions. Instead, it is essential to try not to analyze everything. Understand your web site business goals, create logical visitor groups, and determine conversions. Target your reporting to these actualities. Do not attempt to respond to every single data point.

It is also a good thing to look at the big picture and understand all of pertinent facets on your site, instead of just focusing on single data types such as Unique Visitors or Return Visitors.

Web analytics work well in determining where converting traffic is coming from, detecting behavior patterns, and understanding what is not working. But, there are many factors that can negatively impact the accuracy of the actual dollar volume of sales. So be careful while using Web analytics.

Search Marketing IQ or Interview Questions

2007-11-04T20:24:00.000-08:00

Following are a few questions and their answers that were asked and answered in the Searchcamp on its second day. This was the most interesting session on that day.

Q1 What is the most common word used by Matt Cutts?
A. Link Baiting

Q2. What is HD-DVD Code
A. This is revolted by a user of Digg.

Q3. What is a Highly paid keyword on Adwords?
A. Mesothelioma is the Asbestos related keyword that has an highest bid price of $80.

Q4. Florida Update Google PR and Backlink was done on which Date? I won a T-Shirt for answering this!
A. 3rd Dec, 2003

Q5. What is Google OneBox?
A. OneBox Search Module from allows users to search business intelligence to identify the most relevant BI. Also it gives an instant result on top of Google’s organic search result. For example, when you enter weather ny, Google shows you the current New York weather update.

Q6. Who is an initial investor for Google?
A. Ram Shriram, the early angel investor in Google.

Q7. What is the worth of Social networking website Facebook.com?
A. In a recent estimation Facebook was worth $10b. FYI, Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them.

Q8. Social Networking site that deals with Lawyers?
A. Avvo.com is used to find every licensed lawyer, Read attorney ratings, client reviews, bar sanction history, and lawyer endorsements.

Thats it folks. These were the Q&As that I could digest on the SearchCamp 2 day event. Cheers.

Latest Page Rank Update on Google Toolbar

2007-10-30T02:07:00.000-07:00

Here are the effects of recent / latest Google Toolbar Page Rank Update by Google on Friday, 26th October 07, on the Internet. There are many factors that effect the Google PR for a website or a weblog on the Internet.

Google adjusted its organic PageRank algorithm in a way that resulted in a major drop in rankings for many sites, event the largeer ones such as Digicert.com and WashingtonPost.com among others. The algorithm shift that took place after a long time was a surprise, and also it was a major shock that prompted loud and sharp piercing cry from the SEO community after their client's sites started disappearing from Google's SERPs.

I am fortunate to say that, for my weblog there is a shift in the page rank from 0 to 1 and how on earth did I manage that? What extraordinary thing did I do? None, actually. I posted on my blog almost everyday and moreover I was having a good number of posts and also I had registered a domain and created my blog as sub-domain on the new domain and rewamped it both in regards to search engine visibility and in terms of general usability. This must be the way that Google liked during this new update.

I even observered this before, of course. Every time Google makes a change to its organic algorithm, SEOers scurry and panic as they try to figure out a new way to reverse engineer what Google is doing and then sell this solution to their extremely desirous clients. Even when armed with advance information that Google is scrutinizing their tactics, they fail to clean up their act and the result is the kind of hard blow we saw last week.

The relevance of any particular Website is an inherent quality that can only be faked for so long. You can't be any more relevant than you are, and you can't expect any temporary advantages you reap through link-trading or other unethical tactics to persist, because Google watches its index as closely as the security of the US president.

The worst thing is that the whole obsession with rankings and optimization has stopped SEO Community from thinking about the fundamentals of good Search marketing. If a Search Marketing effort should to be taken seriously, why dont you offer better product or service, A more relevant Web site, Better webpages, A lower price in the market etc.?

Unfortunately, the Search Marketing industry's obsession with visibility on Google Organic Search has blinded us to a very obvious facts, and I hope that the Clients who allowed themselves to be drawn in by the seductive pitches od the agencies have no one else to blame for following them into this ambush and seeing their traffic drop.

Reciprocal Link Exchange

2007-10-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

There is not strong evidence that Google had out ruled Reciprocal link building activity for the websites.

In my opinion Reciprocal link exchange is not much important in the present trend Optimization trend but due to the reason that more and more people exchange the links with a mutual understanding without any relevency between websites.

This technique is identified as spam. In general Reciprocal link exchange will benifit us provided the following three major factors are satisfied:

1. The other website who links us should have more page rank from the page where our link is placed which implies more visitors to that page.

2. Two websites should be related to eachother.

3. There should not be more than 25 outbound (external) links from that page.

Finally, one should not only rely and stick on to one or two techniques while building backlinks to a website, but they should adopt to Natural link exchange techniques too, such as - Blog comments, Article comments, Social bookmarking links, Submitting articles to digg, technorati among others.

Search Camp Day 2

2007-10-22T02:09:00.000-07:00

There was much more excitement on the day 2 of the SearchCamp Event with few more presentations on the Keyword Cluster Analysis, Paid listings, Ad Optimization and Social Media Optimization among others.

There were good and interesting crowd present even on the second day. These include the participants from Search companies such as Google, Yahoo and major IT service providers such as Pinstorm, Efrontier, DCI among others.

Young aspirants and bloggers had a nice debates on all the topics.

SearchCamp Pictures

2007-10-10T06:38:00.000-07:00

This is the SearchCamp Banner on the stage of Tidal Park Auditorium in Chennai on 6th and 7th Day of October 2007.

Mahesh had presented his ideas in an awesome way.
This is the panel debating on In-House and Outsourcing Search Marketing Efforts of a company.

Consisting of Mahesh from Pinstorm, Venkatesh from DCI and Vikram from efrontier among the 2 on the extreme right and extreme left.

Young Enterpreneurs and partners who were one of the organisers of SearchCamp Event.

My friend Bhaskar represented efrontier with all his SEM efforts.

SearchCamp - A Successful Foundation for Search Education

2007-10-07T19:17:00.000-07:00

Here I wanted to give a short summary of the 2 day event of SearchCamp happened on 6th - 7th Oct 2007.

There were people from different places such as Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Baroda, Calcutta, Chennai, Cochin, Coimbatore, Dubai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Indore, Madurai, Mangalore, Mumbai, Nagaland, Pune and Taichung who attended the SearchCamp and made the event successful with their inputs and presentations.

To elaborate this following are the people who gave a very good presentation.
Rajesh, SR. Online Marketing Specialist,Logix Microsystem
Jyothirmayee JT, Analyst/Tech Lead - Search Marketing, uGenie, Her blog
Ashwin Ramesh, CEO Organicapex.com
Prabuddha S. Raychaudhuri, Founder and CEO, SEOguru Technologies - http://www.searchengine-optimization-guru.com/
Shivakumar, BPO Entrepreneur, Owner CEO iSource Solutions Inc., CA
Mani Karthik, SEO Consultant - DailySEOblog
Ezhil Raja, Blog - On Black Hat Techniques
Mahesh, Ratan, Harish and Vikram from Pinstorm

...and many more

This camp would'nt have been that effective without Kiruba Shankar, Podcaster, The Kiruba Show. He took lots of efforts to organize and anchor the event. Kudos to him.

Google Index is Hacked

2007-10-04T03:21:00.000-07:00

This is the latest News to digest in the Search and Internet Security Industry. The Inquirer highlights the events of the hack happened. I am sure that this must be a regular hacking on the index but this is the first time Google Watchdog identified it.

It appears that some search results are returning Chinese sites, which are easily identified by their .cn suffix. These malicious .cn sites, which appear before the valid returns, give users more they bargain for:

"When a punter clicks on one of the .cn sites, they are sent to an entirely different page which attempts to install one or more pieces of malware on the user’s computer.

The Google Watchdog whines suggestively that the the faked sites are redirecting the Googlebot to a location where content can be indexed, while at the same time recognizing normal users and redirecting them to a site that includes the malware."

This information is going to alert us more while clicking on the links on SERPs. Google users should be little careful while clicking on the results by avoiding click on the .cn TLDs (Suffix Top Level Domain).

Search Engine Marketing Event

2007-10-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

Chennai Trade Center had organized a Job fare wherein, I met my old SEM (Search Engine Marketing) friend Bhaskar (can read his blog here) and his boss Vikram (Director India Office) etc., for Efficient Frontier Silicon Valley Based Search Marketing Company. They have put up a stall in the Trade Center to grab the fresh and ecperienced candidates for their company.

We had a talk about the Searchcamp, a two day interactive seminar aimed to bring together the best minds from the Search Engine Marketing field to talk about search engine advertising, including optimization and marketing issues. Searchcamp event seems to be the first of its kind in India and is said to feature workshops, debates and keynotes on the present state and evolution of Search Engine Marketing.

Having got the awarenss about this event, Vikram wanted to sponspor for this event and took a Silver Sponsorship. Also, Pinstorm a Bombay based MNC has taken a Platimun Sponsorship for this event.

I am excited that I am going to meet lots of Search Marketing Folks, rather Gurus on this weekend at the Searchcamp Venue at the Main Auditorium, Tidel Park, Chennai.

Discover more about the topics and the people in the Searchcamp Event during Next Week here on my SEO Blog.

Manage SEO with Keyword Density and LSI

2007-09-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

How important is Keyword Density and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) for Content Optimizing on your Web Site?

Keyword density as you know is a combination of the number of times a keyword or a keyword phrase, in proportion with other words, appears on a Web page Copy. This is an important factor that need to be considered apart from many other SEO factors involved to rank a website discussed in detail here on my blog.

There are many tools out there on the Internet that can be used to look at the present density and strike a balance on it further. One such tool that I like the most is from SEOChat Keyword Density Tool as it provides accurate report including or excluding Meta tags.

In the recent case study that I made on my Client's website, there were unwanted and meaningless words were occupying the top density list, in between the other targeted keywords. This was the main concern for me.

Further more, maintaining the percentage of density was also an other concern. I had a very little time to take a decision on this as I have lost the positions of targeted keywords for my web site and gradual drop in the traffic to the web site.

I had decided to maintain a standard density as maximum of 7% for the Single word keywords and max of 2% for the Two words keywords and placed all the targeted and LSI (If you have to do some keyword research for your website, you can easily find the most valuable related keywords right in the search engines itself). These related keywords were inserted on headers and source, keywords in page elements, outgoing links and filtered words.

Finally, this concept had worked out with all the Websites for which I manage SEO.

Manage SEO, Adwords and Internet Marketing

2007-09-14T09:53:00.001-07:00

Work environment makes us all stick on for Hours together making our day each day.

What ever business you do, you should enjoy your work and feel satisfied by the end of the day.

I Manage SEO, Adwords and Internet Marketing as a whole. This is more if you think it is but I feel it is my cup of Tea and have it with a tickling taste buds.

Search Marketing, Brand Promotion and Advertising Strategies

2007-09-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

Search Marketing or a whole Internet advertising plan depends upon the size of a company that want to implement the strategies. The size of a company, its revenue and investment gives a rough estimate as how much should be spent on Online Marketing using the latest media.Going back to the past way of marketing there was a proverb saying "Use advertising like you are using salt. To make a serving of dal, use a fist of dal and a pinch of salt".

Large companies invest on different types of media to promote their brand, such media ads can be found on Mass media - such as Television, Radio, News Paper, bill boards etc.,

However, in the present trend, apart from the traditional marketing media, the Internet and Mobile marketing covers a wide varieties of demographics to drive-in the traffic to the website of a company promoting brand identity.

In addition to this, both the traditional media and the current media of marketing need money to be invested whereas, the small businesses does not need much of the investment inorder to promote the brand, rather it can start by using referrals.

Further more, a company wants to spend on advertising their product, from what is already in the market. It is not at all a good idea to spend on advertising such products. The key is to make the product so interesting and useful to the people recommend it to others stimulating Word of Mouth Marketing, the most effective type of marketing.

To sum up, the size of Advertising is decided to plan how much input you are going to invest on the result you want. You dont have to / want to put too much input, which will create more demand of the product that you can supply.

Adwords Dynamic Landing Page

2007-09-10T01:21:00.000-07:00

Recently, my client wanted me to setup a Dynamic Landing page for the new campaign on his Adwords account. This is a good idea but I am skeptical whether it is an act of misleading the users because the content on the landing page will change according to the query searched by the User.

Miles Baker's step by step points on "How To Customize Your PPC Landing Page with PHP" can be used for dynamic landing page URLs for Adwords PPC campaigns, can be encouraging the advertisers but IMO, this may mislead the users.

Points to Consider in an effort to Gain Backlinks

2007-08-28T21:47:00.000-07:00

What are the points that a SEO specialist uses while making an effort to gain backlings from other sites?

This will be a common question on most of the web centric SEOs, during the process of website submissions to gain backlinks.

While doing this you need to first consider the "Quality" and "Relevancy" of those websites that are requesting for the links and if you only link to sites that you think would be valuable and useful to the real human visitors then we can remove all of those worries in you.

There is no limit to the number of directories to which you can submit your site. For this reason, there are diversified links stretching from Directories to forums to Social Media sites. Seochat Forums had a similar discussion on how backlinks work that will be useful for newbies.

Check their "Quality" and "Relevancy" before you submit to any of the sites or reciprocate links with any of them by following below points:

Quality:

1. Their home page’s Page Rank should be higher than our site,
2. PR of their inner pages and the page where our site link will reside should be higher than ours,
3. Age of the domain preferred to be an old one and
4. They should be listed on Google

Relevancy:

1. The sites where we are going to submit should be relevant to your site,
2. They should have similar services that we provide and
3. .org or .edu websites will give you a good weightage if you gain a link back.

Finally, submitting using Add URL or Add Links Forms or post an email requesting for an inclusion or to reciprocate link or link exchange request to the webmaster or SEO specialist representing the websites which offer backlinks.

Click on Organic Search and Paid Search

2007-08-19T19:42:00.000-07:00

As we all know that the Search Marketing involves promoting website(s) on natural or Organic Search and Pay per click campaigns on different search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Mivaetc., apart from many other promotional techniques.

Here I would like to explain to the Internet search marketers whether it is good to go for PPC when Website(s) already ranks on the top of the organic listings for a given keywords.

It is a case study on the click stream data using Google Analytics done on Paid and Un-paid keywords through Google, Yahoo and MSN search Engines. It is evident that from both of the promotional techniques showed up almost equal number of clicks and conversions.

In my opinion, it is perhaps due the user behaviour and eye balls are unpredictable and are likely to click on either Sponsored listing of a given website or on an Organic website. For this reason it is better to promote a website using both Paid Search and Organic Search.

In other words when a website sustains a high competition on Organic Search and comes on top 5 positions, it is better we maintain the Sponsored listings for an user behaviour that provokes click on a listing is unpredictable.

www www2 www3 Google Data Centers

2007-07-28T18:40:00.000-07:00

Matt Cutts says Quality Equation or a Hardware update on the Google Search Algorithms, the testing happens on a single Datacenter first and then implemented on the other DCs.

Answer to the actual question asked as "should all things on same Class C IP block are roughly the same" was that he says it is roughly the same.

He says pay lot more attention on Content and Logs and work backwards on that, rather than spending time on observing the Datacenters.

Click to learn from Matt Cutts Vedios on Data Centers that was released on 31st July 2006 and more.

I am now skeptical on the results displayed on the three main Datacenters as I throws the same results on SERPs though there is a change in position of my website on the three Google DCs every other day.

Recruit Search Engine Optimizers

2007-07-26T02:44:00.000-07:00

It is time for me to recruit a new SEO for a MNC that I am working in. Following are the points on Job responsibilities and Skill set required for the same.

In Summary, an SEO is the search engine optimizer who will be committed to deliver strong search engine performances for a single or various domains of an organization.

Responsibilities of an SEO are to:
· Develop comprehensive implementation and management strategies that will garner top rankings on the major search engines through search engine compliant website optimization techniques.

· Execute all aspects of a search engine optimization program for each of the websites of his /her team.

· Analyze and research keywords and coordinate with the designer to ensure search engine friendly HTML codes.

· Coordinate with the content team to enhance search engine friendly text for the websites. He/she will ensure proper keyword segregation and placements on various pages and improve link popularity.

· Research on and analyze the site architecture and come up with innovative ideas for developing the same with a view towards optimizing the sites for the search engine.

· Implement search engine and directory submissions, monitor trends in the search engine industry, develop effective keyword lists and monitor the site rank performance.

· Prepare and analyze reports on ranking, conversions and other metrics, understand search engines (how the spiders work) and study daily, weekly and monthly review reports.

· Utilize the available data to improve the site’s positioning and perform required analysis directly relevant to optimization/advertising on search engines. He/she will research, formulate and implement policies to enhance the search engine ranking of websites.

· Meet all the aspects relating to the targets set up by the team leader and coordinate with other members to complete the assigned jobs smoothly.

Job Profile for an SEO are:

· The candidate should be familiar with search engine algorithms and strategies and understand what it takes to get a website ranked in top positions on popular search engines.

· Must have a good knowledge of web design, HTML and links as pertaining to search engine optimization.

· Must understand the concept of page layouts and its implications for search engine optimization.

· General knowledge of website traffic analysis software (Webtrends, HitBox, and Urchin) will be an added advantage.

· Should have the basic understanding of natural search tactics and how web metrics are track (http headers, redirect, tracking pixels, etc).

· Must have a good command over the English language for efficient keywords analysis.

Please feel free to contact me on my mobile: 9381145619 or mail me at narsimhanim@hotmail.com

Know Pratibha Patil

2007-07-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

Google is now too fast getting the latest News through online search. The News about the new website launched by the Indian ex-ruling party - BJP with the domain name as http://www.knowprathibapatil.com/ was on the Mass media - TV in a News Channel and morning when I searched on Google (Googled) for the term "know pratibha patil" (without quotes), it appeared on the 1st page as the fisrt result on SERPs. The webpage that was displayed on SERPs was of Times of India News article.

This is what Google is upto. Targeting the future of Search where no one can ever dream to reach.

Search Engines

2007-07-03T22:38:00.000-07:00

Search Engines are the tools used to satisfy individual's intent. Like the one with Google, users tend to find the information they want with a query. It is with most of the Search Engines that happens to index the pages in different way and ranking them with the relevency with their important words (Keywords) density and frequency.

To begin with, different Search Engines have different ways using their Algorithms, list the pages on Search Engines when searched by the Users. This is more elaborated at Search Engine Watch Article.

Happy reading!

Google Personal Search

2007-06-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

I am very much sucked by Google's personal search. One way this is the best way to serve the online world in an users perspective, whereas, in terms of SEO efforts this is a bit misleading while we are on chat with the client on the other end and while updating them over the website positions on SERPs.

Well, I personally decided to be careful while I start a conversation with the client to update on the rankings on Google.This will always be a wise decision for all the SEOs or the Search Marketing community.

Happy Searching.

Google's Signals

2007-06-04T22:49:00.000-07:00

Google signal are said to be an elaborated form of giving importance to the webpages on the internet after the popular Google Page Rank. It is said in the article, posted at NY times that "for ranking pages, more than 200 types of information, PageRank is one of the signals. Some signals are on Web pages — like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years". “The data we have is pushing the state of the art,” “We see all the links going to a page, how the content is changing on the page over time.” Said by Mr. Amit Singhal who was recruited by Google in the year 2000 from AT&T.

I am impressed by Mr. Singhal's imagination as how the search is made powerful day after day. Also, I am happy about my sister who worked in Google for Adwords team, joined Google after working in AT&T, Atlanta in 2004.

Google Acquires DoubleClick

2007-06-02T00:31:00.000-07:00

Google Acquiring DoubleClick is one of the biggest acquisitions in the Internet industry for $3.1 billion. With this acquisition Google will gain an edge over the other online advertisers such as firstclick.com etc.

This acquisition will bring more revenue to Google with DoubleClick's technology products and services which are sold to advertising agencies and media companies to allow clients to traffic, target, deliver, and report on their interactive advertising campaigns, apart from their Brand Names and their major domain coverage.

Google, in its press release says that it is going to offer superior tools for targeting, serving and analyzing online ads of all types, significantly benefiting customers and consumers.

Happy Clicking

A New Website

2007-05-16T22:48:00.001-07:00

Highrankings.com

Highrankings.com is a leading SEO SEM forum for websites promotion through Advertisements, PPC campaigns, Search Engine Optimization etc., online. Highrankings.com is one of the top providers for quality information.

This is one such forum for SEO community that educates people with lots of information and the Administrator Jill.W is an SEO specialist among other moderators who are into the field of Search Marketing since half a decade.

I had registered a domain www.adzoomin.com keeping Search Marketing in mind. I am sure that this new domain will be as popular and more informative to the people around the world in the search industry.

New Google Analytics Interface

2007-05-08T22:21:00.000-07:00

New Analytics Interface by Google will be the edge over all other Web Analytics tools that are in the Internet as of today. This new Google Analytics Interface will provide the Web Analysts a new and comprehensive look with its features that are user friendly interface and it texts in bold and readable.

Tabs that were existing before are totally changed and the Graphs, Drop downs, Dates etc., provides an easy navigation and also there is a Help Resources tab placed right at the bottom of the left navigation bar to avail more information on usability of the interface, apart from Managing report with Scheduled Emails.

Map overlay with continents and Detail Level analysis. Data overtime is replaced with the Segment wherein we can navigate using a dropdown menu for Source, content, keywords etc.

Referring Sources tab was replaced with referring Sites, Search Engines and All Traffic Sources.
Defined Funnel Navigation is changed to Funnel Visualization and the Funnel graphics are more
comprehensive and colorful.

Comparision:

My major observations are: Earlier in the old Google Analytics account, under Traffic sources, the Adwords Campaigns used to show the data of all the websites profiles that were run using Adwords. But now it shows only the data of the relevent profile that we seek.

Further more, when we change the profile using top drop down menu, we used to get the stating graphs and need to be navigated further. But now in the new Google Analytics interface we can lang on the samme tab where we wanted to compare with the other site's performance. This way we will save time of navigation.

Finally, many more new features to deal with the new Google Analytics Account.

Happy Analysis...

SEO News and Happenings

2007-05-08T21:07:00.000-07:00

As in recent SEO Industry News, there was a media hype over newspapers in India and major News channels that the Microsoft is going to acquire Yahoo for $50Billion. It is said to be first released by NY post a popular press release site.

Later on this happened to be a rumour and was the traditional new followed since two years this was from many sources such as one from Highrankings forum.

Keywords for your Websites

2007-05-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

The keywords used in the websites are the final product after a thorough research over the following points:

1. Company niche is companys' domain, their products or services or Information
2.How heavy is its competition.
3.How people search to find them.

These 3 main points are usually considered by web marketers while selecting the required keywords to target a website. Also, one need to use the filtered keywords or key phrases on the Titles and Metatags to attract the Google's Algorithms. Once these keywords are selected they should be used in a systamatic manner considering the saturation part of it.

Finally, this keyword saturation will make Google to know about the site only when these keywords are relevent to the topic or context of the website. Click to learn more on relevency of the keywords.

Keyword Competition

2007-04-29T22:12:00.000-07:00

While a Search Marketer Judge the results tentatively by looking at the number as Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs in short, traditionally he finds that the competition for a term or a keyword to have such a competition.

But, in my opinion this will not give a right number in gauging the competition for the keywords. This is because the number of results that are displayed by Google as SERPs is a false one.

To support this, when you click at the last page you can see "repeat the search with the omitted results included" and you will find that the result pages are far less than the ones that are displayed as SERPs.

In addition to this you can find more pages that are omitted are either considered to be in Google's Supplemental Index or less important pages.

To sum up these SERPs cannot give a Search marketer a right judgement to modify his or her campaign with their keywords lest it is important to find the Search Count alone to optimize the content.

Happy reading...

Links from Web Directories

2007-04-19T23:53:00.000-07:00

One-way-Link from web directories are a sought of link farms that need to be avoided while submitting your websites. This is a lesson that I learnt by paying a price for ranks on Google.

There was a trade-off between the ranks of my site in Google and the submissions that were accepted in the recent past.

I had learnt that the directories that have a less popularity should not be considered while submitting your websites. The popularity is in terms of their visability on search engines, their Tristrank and their page ranks. TrustRank is a way to cut down on spam and filter out content that is not relevant to the searcher in order to bring them results they really want. What this could mean to you in the near future is that linking to a non-trusted site would deem your site untrustworthy as well. It is so important to be careful to whom you link.

Consequences of linking to black-hat websites can be severe. Google terms Trustrank as, “Web spam pages use various techniques to achieve higher-than-deserved rankings in a search engine's results". While human experts can identify spam, it is too expensive to manually evaluate a large number of pages.

Instead, we propose techniques to semi-automatically separate reputable, good pages from spam. We first select a small set of seed pages to be evaluated by an expert. Once we manually identify the reputable seed pages, we use the link structure of the web to discover other pages that are likely to be good.

We hardly see any link farm websites on the Internet these days. This is because they have taken the form of a Link Directory. Listing on such link directories IMO may get our sites drop in ranks on Search Engines like Google.

Learn SEO SEM and Internet Matketing Techniques

2007-04-12T02:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a new buzz in the Search Marketing Industry. You guessed it right, it is a SEMPO Institute SEM training program that teaches standardized strategies and best practices, and provide courses to establish a benchmark for SEM expertise worldwide.

The courses and testing consist of basic SEM, and advanced SEO / SEM tracks, and was developed by an extensive list of SEM professionals worldwide.

The course is priced at $499 for the basics, $1,750 for advanced SEO, and $2,250 for the SEA program.

SEMPO has also expanded internationally, with global committee representation in India, Japan, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia.

SEMPO chairman Gord Hotchkiss also recapped the Annual State of Search 2006 report, highlighting the following:

- $9.45 billion dollar search spend in 2006, which will rise to $18.6 billion in 2011.
- SEM is poaching offline budgets.
- For the first time, marketing executives consider search a marketing priority.
- SEO strategy and paid search / SEO implementation are the most common agency services utilized by advertisers.
- SEO is the most popular form of SEM, used by 75% of marketers.

These are amaizingly great numbers.

Google Ranks a Site

2007-04-10T03:05:00.000-07:00

Today, I observed that Google ranks a site with the changes made with respect to their guidelines onto the Titles, Metatags, Alt tags and Anchor texts also a little of Cross-linking with keywords.

The lesson that I learn't is that there should not be any further changes in the mean time with a panic when you do not find the ranks popping up in SERPs in a week or two, because it may take some more time to get good results, provided the modifications on the web pages are done properly.

Supplemental Result

2007-03-30T03:40:00.000-07:00

Today morning I had observed that my Blog is out of Supplemental Result and am happy to see that my blog is ranking on SERPs with my name "narsimhan". Check it out in the image.

Google may consider many factors such as duplicate content among other factors such as badly linked pages. It is said that sites or webpages in supplemental index have potential problem, which would mean that major search engines will have trouble indexing them.

But, I feel that it certainly has nothing to do with spiderability as they state, because we have all seen different. Happy reading.

This is the Big Day

2007-03-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

It is true that it is a Big Day for me in the Search World as all the websites that I am handling are with the Analytics code incorporated in them. Also I had learnt a lot from the Analytics and Adwords tools that gave me a awareness of how effectively the sites can be integrated into the accounts and accessed. This will definately give me an opportinuity to measure the performance of all my sites. Also I was surfing through the Adsense Success stories having amaizing presentation and sound quality, it could be because of the speakers that I am having.

Age of a Website

2007-03-20T23:42:00.000-07:00

This is a factor assumed to be considered by the search engines to rank a website on SERPs. It is well discussed at highranking forum as how important is it to own an older website for gaining better ranks on search engines. I personally feel that gaining backlinks for over a period of time is what makes the older sites so special.

Read more on this topic as how the ranks on Search Engines depend upon the age of the website.

User Intent On Search

2007-03-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

Search Engines provide information to the users from its wide spectrum of database covering all soughts. They provide users with a relevent search listings matching the user's intent.

Having said that user need to know the ways to get appropriate results over Search Engine Result Pages SERPs in short. This will not only provide the user with the right information but also choises on the Internet.

In addition to this, the user also need to know the keyterms with permutations and combinations that can fit in to get the appropriate results for his use.

Finally, the user intent should be as short as possible by covering all the required intent in the words in the search bar.

To sum up, the user can get any information on the Internet with a clear intent and proper words in mind. Happy Searching!

SEOs Competitive Landscape

2007-02-22T22:00:00.000-08:00

SEOs are always on their toes with their dynamic skill set using forward thinking and innovative techniques to promote their websites on the Search Engines. There is a major factor that need to consider while optimizing a website which is none other than Competition.

Moreover, an Search Engine Optimizer uses his experience to judge the competition though there is an immence competition in the niche and work accordingly with his proactive approach.

Further more, this had happened to me many times while I observe the keyword positions during the day. It happens like a competitor works out on his website and tweaks their kewords etc., and make their site above ours'. This is a typical symptom that need not be taken seriously by the SEO community out there on the internet. Instead SEO need to be considered as "an ongoing process" and worked with a great deal of focus and dedication by using resources and tools required.

Finally, SEO is an information archetecture that need to be balanced properly considering the Usability for the sake of users and keep a track on the analytics to scale the performance every now and then.

2007-02-16T03:20:00.000-08:00

When I was searching for books on Google for the term - books available in landmark, I found a site that is no doubt an .org / non-profit as it is said, in the SERPs, but it will be great if a commercial website gets it done for which I am skeptical about.

My observations on this type of result on Google SERPs is that:

1. Authoritative Website,

2. It has it adress at the bottom of every page on its site.

3. It is an age old site for about 9 Years.

Post your feedback please.

Dynamically generated URL vs Static Ones

2007-02-15T22:50:00.000-08:00

There is need to convert dynamically generated urls to static ones only when there are session IDs in them. Otherwise it is not necessary. Google in its Technical Guidelines spotted not to use "&id=" as a parameter in your URLs, as we don't include these pages in our index.

Jill is an Advisor at Highrankings.com who gave a few inputs regarding this context - Should I Add HTML Pages to a PHP Site? - How To Write Persuasive Subject Lines.

SEO Factors while re-designing websites

2007-02-14T03:06:00.000-08:00

On home page, the tool tip using JavaScript or any other scripting methods may be helpful in an user's perspective, but not at all helpful in an SEO perspective. This is followed by many websites that are re-designing their sites in terms of usability of the website.

Further more, on home page, there will be maximum number of images covering keywords either through CSS or through image. Even this will make the age old SEO a futile effort if at all a site is SEOd and finding ranks on Search Engines. IMO, all the remaining images containing texts need to be replaced to text.

In addition to this, while re-designing a website in an SEO perspective one should consider retaining the page names as they were before and is a concern only when the site is already ranking well in Search Engines.

Finally, all the required 301 redirections should be on place when there are chances of renaming or considering deletion of existing pages and to avoid mistakes Customized 301 is the best bet.

Google Search Tip

2007-02-09T02:30:00.000-08:00

I am aware of most of the basic methods to search on Google but I recently came across Google basics page with guidelines of different ways to search on Google. Like if you do not want the results on SERPs that are not related to your intent then insert minus symbol as prefix to the un-wanted term. For example, an user wants an SSL Certificate and he does a search by just typing in "SSL" without quotes. Then he will come across all the different variety of results including the one related to music such as Solid State Logic. if when an user types SSL -Music then result does'nt throw up the Solid State Logic website.

Google's Personalized Search

2007-02-06T22:19:00.000-08:00

As Google is forcing personalized search results while the users are logged in to their Google accounts, in an effort to produce accurate results matching user's intent, there is a need to address all the SEO community around the world regarding this context.

From the Google announcement:

We have two main ways of personalizing your Google experience. First, you can customize products and services like the Google Personalized Homepage. Personalizing your homepage gives you the at-a-glance information that you care about—such as your latest Gmail messages, news headlines, or to-do list—right at your fingertips, just the way you want it.
Second, we offer automatic personalization through things like personalized search and recommendations. Our goal with these types of technologies is to make your Google search experience better based on what we know about your preferences, without you having to do any extra work.

Today, we're taking another step toward making personalization more available to you by combining these two into a single signed-in experience. Now, when you're signed in, you'll have access to a personalized Google—one that combines personalized search results and a personalized homepage.

The way Google is tweaking its algo to make the SERPs personalized, an SEO need to understand the way Google displays the results. Further more, every SEO need to take a deep breath and think little inclined towards the User's perspective in terms of optimizing a website.

Moreover, even when Google wants to guage users intent through their account, I would like to list out few points where an SEO can have an edge over their competitors:

User friendly Navigation
Anchor phrases relevant
Alt tags

These three may be the basic points among other search engine friendly factors that need to be focused. Happy Optimizing!

Advertisers around the world in the PPC market.

2007-02-01T21:09:00.000-08:00

Google quality score gets the businesses on its toes to maintain and track all their ads constantly. Though it has an edge over Yahoo Search Marketing and Miva among others, it is widely accepted by most of the advertisers around the world in the PPC market.