There is so much talk out there about what the 'perfect' web page looks like. In this article we give you tips on what we consider perfectly optimized as well as tips on helping turn the page into a great conversion tool.
Step one – Know who you are targeting
As with any marketing campaign the first step in optimizing ANY web page is to know your target audience. Is your site B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer). This is important because this not only affects the tone of your site, but also the keywords you chose.
It is imperative that you nail who your target is before you do anything else because if you don't it doesn't matter how big your site is, or how many pages you have. If you don't write to the right crowd you aren't going to get too much business.
The best thing is to write down who you think the target is. Be as detailed as possible. For example, your target may be a 30-45 year old female, in middle management, who drives a mini-van and takes her 3 kids to school before she goes to work. She makes $45,000 per year and has a bachelors degree in finance. This is the type of detail you need. You should be able to picture this person in your mind. Not just the abstract idea of her, but a physical look as well. the better you can picture them in your mind the more successful you will be.
Once you know who you target is the next step is choosing keywords.
Step two – Choosing the right keywords
This may be the most difficult part of your journey, especially if you don't fit the target profile. That is, picking the keywords they will use to find your site.
You can start by using free tools like Yahoo!s keyword suggestion tool. It gives you a good place to start picking keywords.
Start with a phrase you know your site is about (i.e. if you sell widgets, then simply put "widgets" in the search box). The tool will then not only spit out other related words, but also the search volumes associated with each for the previous month.
A word of caution however: Sometimes, depending on when you use the tool, the search volumes are from a couple months ago. So if your product is seasonal based, the numbers may actually be lower or higher than represented.
Don't be afraid to get a few hundred words to start. Remember, right now you are just gathering ideas – phrases that could drive traffic to your site. They aren't all necessarily being used by your target customer.
You can also go to Google's Adwords site and perform the above steps. Start with a phrase or two which describe your site or product and use Google's suggestion tool to help expand your list.
At this point you want as many phrases on your list as possible. Don't worry, you will cull the list pretty quickly.
Once you have a huge list of words, the next place to go is a site like Wordtracker, which has a keyword analysis tool. This tool can be used for a one time fee, or if it's something you might want to return to you can purchase a subscription. It is a fairly simple tool to use and will give you a good idea of just how likely your site will be able to compete for a phrase.
A warning about Wordtracker: The software uses search volumes from some fairly minor sites such as Dogpile, so the estimates could be a little skewed. But again, unless you deal with an SEO firm that has their own proprietary software, this is about your best alternative.
Also remember as you are culling your words, don't just focus on the competitive factors. These won't account for your target audience. Therefore you need to have that picture in your mind of the target as you are selecting phrases that they might use. If you are unsure, you could always as for help from friends and family that fit the target profile.
A good rule of thumb would be to chose about one phrase per page. That doesn't mean that you will only have one page per phrase, but it gives you a good target. So if your site is 300 pages, consider having a list of 300 phrases.
Step 3 – Write your pages
Now that you have your keywords its time to write, or re-write, your content to make them more appealing to the target audience, inserting the key phrases you've selected whenever possible.
Keep in mind that you don't want to over do it. Also now is a good time to ensure you have proper keyword density's and page length.
I recommend pages that are 400-500 words long. If they are a little longer or shorter that is fine, however if they are approaching 1000 words or more you should split them up, trying to hit that 400-500 word limit.
On this 400-500 word page you should have 2 or 3 occurrences of a key phrase, and you want to limit the key phrases used to 2 or 3. In other words you could have between 4 and 9 occurrences of all your key phrases per page. This should provide you with optimal keyword density.
Above all, make sure the pages are readable. Don't optimize for optimization's sake. If only one key phrase applies to the page, then only use one.
Step 4 – Optimize your Pages
This can be done in conjunction with the writing. In fact it should be done at then to save time. I purposely made this a separate step so that I could outline the finer points of optimization.
Provided that you are following the guidelines found in step 3, your pages should already have good keyword density, now is the time to improve that optimization by adding optimized meta tags and if appropriate, some image alt tags.
First is to write the meta description tag. While many engines will index thousands of characters in your description, I recommend no more than a couple hundred characters. That is about how long this paragraph is.
The meta description should be a readable sentence or two with the same keywords that you wrote the page for. In other words, the same phrases should appear in the meta description as the body. They should also appear as near to the front of the tag as possible however don't sacrifice readability for this. If the tag doesn't make sense with them at the front, then reorganize until they do make sense. Be sure to use proper punctuation as well.
Also preferred but not mandatory is a meta keywords tag. While none of the major engines use this tag, other smaller ones, and some specialty engines do use the meta keywords tag. If your target uses one of these engines then it makes sense to have that tag in place.
Also, with the keywords tag there is a lot of debate over using commas or not. Personally I do not use commas. I just combine the phrases and remove duplicate words. For example, if the page is about blue widgets, yellow widgets and red widgets then the keywords tag could be: "blue yellow red widgets."
Common sense should be used when deciding if you will use image alt tags as well. If your keywords match the image and you can make a compelling image description, then do it. Otherwise don't.
Step 5 – Write a compelling title tag
I purposely left this as a separate step from meta tags because this is the most important part of your optimization program. Again, it can be done at the same time as the previous two steps, but it's importance can not be over-emphasized.
This is because the title tag is the tag which is displayed in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). It is the link that people click on, and also the tag which is generally read by the visitor before they decide to visit.
Therefore, if your title tag isn't compelling, it doesn't matter how well optimized your page is, it may not get that click.
For this step, you need to look at your competition to determine what they are doing. Perform a search to see what is compelling about their listing? Is there one that stands out? If so what are they doing? For example, if on every other site the keyword is the first phrase on the title, then consider moving your keyword in to the second or third phrase.
This is because, as you will notice, engines like Google bold the search term in the title and snippets or description. One way to make your title stand out is to have the term in a different position than the competition. That way the bolding stands out like this:
key phrase in title tag
key phrase in title tag
title tag with key phrase
key phrase in title tag
Notice how the third one stands out from the rest?
I can not emphasize enough how important that title tag is. As I said, it is the "hook" to get visitors to your site. If the title is ineffective, then it won't get clicked which means you don't get the opportunity to woo that client.
Summary
As you can see, optimizing a page has less to do with optimal keyword density and more to do with knowing who it is that will be using that page.
If you don't know who your target audience is you will never be able to properly optimize your pages. Sure you can optimize it for whatever keywords you choose, but if they aren't the words that your customer will search for, what's the point?
In the end, the more you know who your customer is, the better you will be in all your online ventures, from introduction of your product or service, to closing the sale. It is up to you to cater to them, and not force them into a more generic mold. This is because todays web searchers are much more savvy and willing to browse more if a site doesn't appeal to them.
by: Rob Sullivan
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While it may seem obvious to many of us in the industry (The so-called veterans) it may not be that obvious to all.
That is, no matter what rankings you achieve or how much you are spending on your PPC in a month, you really should only consider one thing: Your customers.
100% of your efforts must revolve around who your customer is.
In this article I give some tips to ensure that your marketing campaign revolves around your customer.
While I was unable to attend Search Engine Strategies in New York this year (I went last year – it was an incredible experience) I was surprised and glad to hear that there was an over -riding theme coming out of the sessions both from the SEM's presenting as well as the engines.
That theme is user intent.
That means, one must understand what the user – their customer – wants when they visit the search engine and ultimately click on a search engine result whether it is paid or organic.
I started to think about my clients over the years and some of the things they have said when I ask them, "What are you looking for in this campaign?"
Many of the responses include: "I want to be number 1 for [insert keyword here]" or, "I need to lower my PPC costs by [insert value here]" or, "I need to beat my competitor [insert competitors name here]."
What is the most important element missing from these comments (and, I think, from many clients in general)? The focus on the customer.
In the years I've been asking the question "what are you looking for in this campaign?" I think I can count on one hand how many people responded to my question above with, "I need to reach my target audience effectively."
While it is true that many companies are beginning to realize this now, it hasn't been that way for some time.
I think what is changing in today's world is that companies are beginning to realize that search is big business. As such, they have marketers interacting with SEM firms and not IT people. It is these marketing people who are asking the right questions or, in many cases, answering them the right way.
Here's an example: I recently sat in on a call with a client and one of the first things they said was, "We have devised seven unique personas for our site and need to target each one individually."
"What? You've already done the personas? We usually do those." But you know what? They did an incredible job. After reviewing their persona information, I could put a face to the persona. I knew what that person looked like, and what his or her intent was with the site.
And that is the most important thing to consider in today's SEM world – you MUST know who your customer is. You MUST understand their intent if you are going to succeed.
For example, if your customers tend to have completed the research stage and are in the buying stage, don't send them to a PPC landing page with product specs. Instead, send them to a landing page with pricing and shipping information.
Better yet, send them to the pricing/checkout page and give them free shipping! That will undoubtedly help encourage the sale.
Similarly, if you are finding a product specification page ranking highly for a purchase search term, try and find a better page to optimize for that term and de-optimize the product page so that the purchase page will rank higher.
This is where personas are extremely helpful. If you can put a face to your customer, you can determine their intent. And if you can determine their intent you can effectively create your entire marketing campaign around it.
Generally what you will find out, as you become more intimate with that persona, is that you probably don't need to rank #1 organically for a highly competitive term. You could probably get away with above the fold visibility and still make an impression.
Similarly, you will probably find that the knowledge of your target's intent can help you optimize your bidding strategies by cutting expensive terms, performing day parting, or whatever else you need to do to ensure that your site is visible to them at just the right time.
What many search engine marketers are learning is that the user's intent, derived from an accurate persona, is more valuable than anything.
It's more valuable than a #1 ranking. It's also more valuable than an expensive PPC term.
In fact, such knowledge will likely impact the terms you use altogether. While you may think that the searcher will use certain terms, in fact you may find that you are way off base.
But, it's not just search marketers concerned with intent. The search engines are also investing heavily in technology to help them figure out the intent of the searcher and serve the correct results.
For example, I could be searching for "Manhattan" and the search engine has to determine what my intent is. Am I looking for city information? Am I looking to find a hotel or book air travel? Or, do I merely want a drink recipe.
You see, simple terms like this can mean many things, therefore the search engines are trying to use their technology to figure out what the searcher wants.
And many times, when you perform a search and you see a PageRank 3 site outranking a PageRank 6 site, this is why. It is because the search engine has tried to determine that intent and is therefore trying to match the site that best suits that searcher.
But why would a search engine be so concerned about intent? It's quite simple. Right now most of us have Google set as our home page. But what does it take to switch that to MSN or Yahoo? A couple clicks of the mouse and you've just changed search results providers.
This is what scares the engines the most – that one of their competitors, or a completely new black horse, is going to come along and woo away users with technology that improves relevancy to the user.
So, if you are planning your SEM campaign for 2006, my opinion is go back to the drawing board. First, determine your goals. Then, determine who it is you are trying to reach and why they would want to use your product or service. If you can determine this intent then you can effectively craft an SEM campaign that will be both successful and cost effective.
Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through safe and effective link building. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.
by: Rob Sullivan
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If you are serious about being a webmaster you will need to learn about 301 redirects and redirection in general.
I wrote a minireport on this topic. Even if you don't use it now keep it for the future or pass it along to your friends
http://RegularJoeMarketing.com/reports/301.pdf
This is on my marketing site... anyone interested in making money online? Well if so take my 7 day free e-course before you start trying to make any money online or even if you are making some money. This is a system i wrote and use. It is free so nothing to lose.
Check it out at http://7DayIM.com
thanks
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Best Blogads tips and tricks
1. Sell Premium Ad Space- Blogads advertisers like to really show their ads well and are most willing to buy the most visible space on your site. So place the Blogads code on top of your blog and above the fold.
2. Blogads Compatible Templates - There is too much content to keep on top above the fold. Choose a template that keeps your blogs top content and the Blogads both on top. I switched from 2 column to 3 column wordpress template so that I could get the Blogads code on the top of the sidebar while keeping my search box and feed icons on top too.
3. Blend Ads - Just like you blend your Google Adsense ads, blend the Blogads into your template so that the advertiser gets those clicks they need. On the other hand, depending on your template, you can contrast them with your content if that works better. The control panel allows you to easily customize the CSS to blend these ads.
4. Join Hives - Advertisers often target a group of publishers by purchasing ads from a hive. A hive is a group of related sites publishing similar content. You decide which hives you want to join, email Blogads, and they send you the hive leaders email address. Membership in Hives is at the sole discretion of the hive administrator, the blogger who manages the network.
5. Rotate Ads - When you accept ads to run live, give them all an equal chance to hit the top of your premium advertising space by rotation. Select "any" position to easily rotate multiple blogads on your site.
6. Competitive Ad Pricing - How much should you charge for Blogads? All publishers in their marketplace can easily be visualized by traffic and category. See the advertising rates for different ad specifications in sites with similar niche and traffic and adjust your prices similarly. The official recommendation is
"Price hi-rise at 4 times your standard prices and minis at half your standard. Price classifieds at 10% of your standard prices. Alternately, price hi-rise at $4 per thousand impressions, standard at $.80 per CPM, mini at $.40 cent CPM and classifieds at $.10 CPMs."
7. Start Cheap - Its a good idea to start with lower ad pricing which will get you advertisers quickly and then you can gradually increase your rates. The marketplace displays the number of running ads on the publisher sites. If your site is running 2 blogads, it will attract more advertisers that a site which hosts no ads.
8. Earn affiliate referrals income- Blogads often gives its popular publishers some Blogads invites to let other members join the network. Try to pass on these invites to popular bloggers who earn lots of money from Blogads and you get a referral commission. You will earn 5% of the ad revenue sold by bloggers you sponsored.
9. Great Adstrip name- While browsing through the Blogads marketplace, attract the advertiser by choosing a crisp name for your adstrip. Use terms like "Premium", "Above the fold" or "Top of Sidebar" to quickly convey where your ads are located. Let them check out your site.
10. Free Blogads - You might decide to giveaway free Blogads for a week to select advertisers, contest winners etc. by a special code which lets them set up ads for free. Create an Offer code to allow friends to by-pass PayPal and order a free ad on your blog.
11. Custom Blogads - Got no advertisers? Create your own ads and fill up the space. Its hints advertisers that they too can buy that premium online space. Use the "create ad w/ offer code" link.
12. Blogads Sale - Drop your prices for a week, 2 weeks, or maybe a month and see advertisers queue up to fill your blog space in a day!
13. Pitching your Blog - Create a great adstrip pitch to highlight your blog features. Let advertisers know your pagerank, number of page views and blogads position on one page easily.
14. Multiple Blogads Units - You can create 2 different sets of Blogads codes. Create a Premium space and a Standard Space. Premium Advertisers stay on top, may not rotate and are charged higher. Standard or cheap ads may be charged lower and be placed at bottom of sidebars etc. If you get lots of Blogads, this might work for you.
15. Enable Multiple Ad Types - Blogads allows multiple ad specifications ranging from
Hi-rise - Image size is maximum 150×600 pixels, 35kb jpeg/gif file size or 70kb flash file size plus 300 characters of text
Standard - Image size is maximum 150×200 pixels, 16kb jpeg/gif file size or 32kb flash file size plus 300 characters of text
Mini - Image size is maximum 150×100 pixels, 5kb jpeg/gif file size or 10kb flash file size plus 100 characters of text
Classified - A maximum of 500 characters of text and no edits after the ad has been submitted
Enable them all so that you can target a broad range of advertisers with each ad type. I might like the Standard type ad, while you might be interested in the High rise. Enable Flash ads for even more options.
Blogads is often the most popular income source for high traffic blogs. I hope these Blogads tips and tricks will help you increase your blogads advertisers and help you succeed with Blogads, while earning more money too. Buy Blogads on our site.
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[This post is regularly updated]
Google Adsense program is a popular web advertising program which provides a good income source for many websites. There are well defined terms of service to strictly adhere to when participating in the program.
On my visit through sites and forums, I daily notice several instances of misuse of Adsense ads. So here a few helpful Google Adsense tips, probably many you already know, and few you might gain by knowing now. These adsense faq are all picked from the Program Policies, Terms and Conditions and FAQ itself and presented in a simplified manner.
1. Never click your own adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason. You know this one very well. This is a surefire way to close you Adsense account. Never tell your office associates or friends to click on them. Keep a check if your family or children are busy increasing your income by clicking your ads and indirectly trying to stop your income. Dont even think of offering incentives for clicks, using automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Adsense is very smart to detect fraudulent clicks. Check the ads which appear on your pages by the Google Preview tool if required.
2. Never change the Adsense code. There are enough means of adsense optimization & customizations available to change the colour, background or border to suit your needs. Do whatever you want to do outside the code, never fiddle within the ad or the search code. They know it when you do. The search code has more limitations to colour and placement, but you should adhere to the rules. The code may stop working and violates the TOS.
3. Do not place more than 3 ad units and 3 ad links or 2 adsense search boxes on any web page. Anyway, ads will not appear in those units even if you place more ad units. But this is the limit they set, so it is better to stick to it.
4. Do not run competitive contextual text ad or search services on the same site which offer Google Adsense competition in their field. Never try to create link structures resembling the adsense ads. Never use other competitive search tools on the same pages which have Adsense powered Google search. They do allow affiliate or limited-text links. Update: Google has allowed you to run contextual advertising like Yahoo ads, Chitika etc provided the ads do not resemble Adsense ads.
5. Do not disclose confidential information about your account like the CTR, CPM and income derived via individual ad units or any other confidential information they may reveal to you. However, you may reveal the total money you make as per recent updates to the TOS.
6. Label headings as "sponsored links" or "advertisements" only. Other labels are not allowed. I have seen many sites label ads with other titles. Dont make your site a target in a few seconds gaze.
7. Never launch a New Page for clicked ads by default. Adsense ads should open on the same page. You may be using a base target tag to open all links in a new window or frame by default. Correct it now as they do not want new pages opening from clicked ads.
8. One Account suffices for Multiple websites. You do not need to create 5 accounts for 5 different websites. One account will do. If you live in the fear that if one account is closed down for violation of TOS, believe me they will close all accounts when they find out. You can keep track of clicks by using channels with real time statistics. They will automatically detect the new site and display relevant ads.
9. Place ads only on Content Pages. Advertisers pay only for content based ads. Content drives relevant ads. Although you might manage some clicks from error, login, registration, "thank you" or welcome pages, parking pages or pop ups, it will get you out of the program.
10. Do not mask ad elements. Alteration of colours and border is a facility to blend or contrast ads as per your site requirements. I have seen many sites where the url part is of the same colour as the background. While blending the ad with your site is a good idea, hiding relevant components of the ads is not allowed. Also do not block the visibility of ads by overlapping images, pop ups, tables etc.
11. Do not send your ads by email. Html formatted emails look good and allow placement of these javascript ads. But it is not allowed as per TOS. You do not want impressions registering on their logs from any email even once. They are watching!
12. Keep track of your content. So Adsense is not allowed on several non content pages. But it is also not allowed on several content pages too. Do not add it on web pages with MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results. Also exclude any pornographic, hate-related, violent, or illegal content.
13. Do not alter the results after ad clicks or searches - Ensure you are not in any way altering the site which the user reaches to after clicking the ads. Do not frame, minimize, remove, redirect or otherwise inhibit the full and complete display of any Advertiser Page or Search Results Page after the user clicks on any Ad or Search results.
14. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing - Although the definition of 'excessive' is a gray area and is subject to discretion, yet Google adsense with correct placement, focused content and high traffic will get you much more income than other programs, so excessive advertising is not required. Keyword stuffing does target better focused ads, but overdoing it is not required.
15. Ensure you Language is Supported - Adsense supports "Chinese (simplified), Japanese, Danish, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, English, Polish, Finnish, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Swedish, Italian and Turkish". In addition, AdSense for search is available in Czech, Slovak, and Traditional Chinese. If your web pages language is not supported, do not use the code on such pages.
Update:
16. Maximum 2 referral button per product per page - With the launch of the google adsense referral program, you are allowed to put only 2 referral buttons for adsense referral, adwords referral, Google pack and Firefox with google toolbar referral.
17. Do not specify Google ads as your alternate ads. - Several services like Chitika eminimalls allow you to place alternate urls, when a targeted paying ad cannot be displayed. This involved creating an simple html page and putting the ad to be displayed instead. Even Adsense allows an alternate url feature instead of displaying public service ads. But never use Adsense ads as alternate urls.
18. Do not confuse with adjacent images - It was a common policy to increase CTR by placing same number of images as the number of text ads, which falsely gave the impression that the text ads represented an explanation to these images. Inserting a small space or a line between the images and ads is not allowed. Make sure that the ads and images are not arranged in a way that could easily mislead or confuse your visitors. More.
Whenever in doubt, it is better to ask for adsense help from the learned staff of Google Adsense. They are very helpful!
Earn instant money with Google - Sign up for AdSense.
RAHUL GUPTA
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I wanted to take a few minutes and tell you about a new software product that's, literally, tripling and even quadrupling thousands of Google Adwords and Adsense User's monthly earnings.
This new keyword software program allows you to plug in a root keyword and it will immediately generate thousands of highly profitable Adsense keywords. Heck, it'll even create Adsense optimized web pages for you... but that's really
a side benefit of the program.
You can also monitor your Adwords competition to see which keywords are actually making them the most earnings each month... Then, you can steal their keywords and use them as your own!
The software even allows you to create your own Adwords ads and them upload them to your Google Adwords account, without even logging into your account.
Anyway, I won't go into all of what the software can do in this email, but you can visit the URL below to watch several demo videos that the creator of the software has made.
If the videos and testimonials at the website don't get you excited, I don't know what will. I'm excited just writing this email :-)
Anyway, visit below to have a look at the demo videos. Enjoy!
=> http://rankwhere.com/keyword-elite.php
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Is someone watching every move you make on your computer? Do they know your every keystroke? Your login ids and passwords? Your credit card numbers? Your social security number? If there's Spyware or Adware on your computer, they likely do. Scared? You should be. If you're like most Internet users, you're probably infected with Spyware and Adware and you don't even realize it. Luckily, there's something that can be done about it.
Spyware and Adware are Malware programs. These programs allow their users to spy on your Internet browsing activities. In the most innocent form, these programs are intended to allow companies to observe your purchasing habits and send you "pop-up" ads when they deem appropriate. However, there are more malicious uses for Spyware and Adware, including the intent of identity theft. Spyware can contribute to identity theft by recording your credit card numbers and other personal information. And as if the threat of identity theft isn't enough, these Spyware and Adware programs can also cause your PC to crash.
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