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Archive for June, 2007

There is no question that you can make some good money with Google AdSense, but you’re setting yourself up for disaster if you make any of these Top 10 mistakes!

1. Do not use fake information when opening your Google AdSense account.

Google says that’s a no-no and they will cut your account off and keep all the money you may have earned. Besides, trying to hide your true identity can cause serious problems with the I.R.S. or whoever your tax authority is.

2. Do not hack or modify Google AdSense code other than to change the parameters that Google authorizes you to change.

Any attempt to bypass Google’s built-in algorithms not only poses a danger to the integrity of the network, but it threatens the financial modle that Google operates under. You’re not dealing with some Mom-and-Pop company here, and Google has the legal muscle and deep enough pockets to drag you through every court in the land if you damage their business with your hacking antics.

3. Keep AdSense ads off of your registration, confirmation, and all “thank you” pages.

Don’t ask me why you can’t put your ads there. It makes sense to me that those would be wonderful locations. Google thinks otherwise, however, and doing so is a hanging offense according to their Terms of Service.

4. Do not display AdSense ads and a competitor’s ads (like Overture’s) on the same page at the same time.

That just makes plain good sense. Google doesn’t demand 100% SITE loyalty from you, but they do insist that their own ads not be cluttered up by offerings from their competitors.

5. Don’t “beg for clicks” or provide any incentive for clicking on your Google AdSense ads.

This is a biggie and you see this rule violated all the time. Any of the “get paid to do stuff” sites that put Google ads in the member’s control panels are walking the plank and they don’t even realize it. Even those sites with the polite little messages asking you to “help keep my site running by clicking on our sponsor’s ads” are asking to be cut off if those happen to be Google ads.

6. Never click on the ads running on your own site, even if you are genuinely interested in the product or service and are thinking of buying it!

Nothing screams FRAUD louder than a webmaster running up his or her own click counts by happily clicking on ads fromtheir own site. The Google Gods can track this activity and it won’t be long until you find yourself getting a goodbye note from their fraud team.

7. No misleading labeling

Google is very specific about what text can be placed around their ads. Their Terms of Service state: “Publishers may not label the ads with text other than ‘sponsored links’ or ‘advertisements.’ This includes any text directly above our ads that could be confused with, or attempt to be associated with Google ads.”

This is to keep visitors from becoming confused and barking up Google’s tree when they clicked on an ad that led to a porn site instead of the recipe site they were expecting to visit.

8. Avoid keyword spamming and other divisive tricks

You may be tempted to buy one of those “generates thousands of key-word rich pages in seconds” programs that are so popular these days but I’ll tell you this: Their days are numbered. Google is wise to such shenanigans and they will be hot on your trail. Other prohibited gimmicks include:

• ”Sneaky” page redirects that send a visitor off to a different site then they were expecting to visit.

• Multiple sites, domains, pages, etc. which have substantially duplicate content.

• Hidden text or links of any type.

• Excessive outbound links on any page. Google recommends no more than 100. I’d keep it way below that.

• And here is a nugget of wisdom straight from Google’s mouth: “Do not participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web as your website may be affected adversely by those links.

9. Don’t advertise anything on Google’s prohibited items list.

It’s a lot shorter lists than PayPal’s or eBay’s, but it includes a lot of the same stuff like hacking/cracking content, porn, illegal drugs, gambling sites, beer or hard alcohol (I guess wine is OK), weapons, and the other usual stuff.

10. And the 10th dumbest thing NOT to do with Google AdSense is to let the other nine things stop you from running an honest site that’s designed to make the most out of this very profitable opportunity that Google offers!

Joining an affiliate program is one of the easiest ways to start an online business and generate income for your website. These revenue sharing programs are very popular on the net. And is the way many new entrepreneurs started online.

When you join an affiliate program your task is to promote the merchants services or products on your website or in your ezine. This is easier than you might think because the merchants supply members with banners or links back to their site to promote the product. Plus they tally up your clicks or sales.

But Beware!

Make sure you understand all the details of the program. Avoid MLM programs. Only the first tier group will reap rewards. Avoid any program where you recruit other affiliates. And your earnings are based on a percentage of their profits. Your profits plummet if your recruits abandon the program.

Affiliate programs pay their members a fixed amount for each sale, click through, lead, or banner impression.

Here’s a simple breakdown of most payment plans:

-Pay per sale.

A commission is paid for each sale your site/ezine generates.

-Pay per click through.

You receive a payment for each valid click to the sponsors website.

-Pay per lead.

You receive a payment for each sales lead for a service or product.

-Pay per impression.

You receive a payment each time a merchants banner or link is displayed to the merchants site.

Joining an affiliate program is easy! Just be sure to select an affiliate program with appropriate services or products that match your targeted audience.

If your ezine/website attracts Rugged Out-doors motorcycle enthusiast, you certainly would not display maternity clothing or baby booties.

Or if your ezine/website attracts young teenagers, you certainly don’t want to display senior citizen products like walkers or vitamins for older adults.

Always read the fine print. Make sure you understand the payment clause. Many affiliate programs will only send you payment after you’ve accumulated a certain sales amount. Anything from $10.00 and up.

Affiliates might pay every other week, per month or per quarter. You will receive a payment if you reach the minimum balance in sales during that pay period. Most balances are accumulative. So, if you do not reach the minimum during one pay period it will be rolled over to your next pay period and added to any sales balances. Once again, read the fine print in the affiliate agreement when you sign up for pertinent details.

Here are a few popular affiliate programs.

Clickbank http://www.clickbank.com

Commission Junction http://www.commisionjunction.com

To find more affiliate programs, go to one of the search engines like:

Google http://www.google.com

Type in affiliate programs. Click on the one’s that interest you.

Are you a newbie and want an easy way to get into business fast? Join an affiliate program!

One Super Affiliate Rosalind Gardner shares her techniques and secrets in her newest ebook. Check it out if you want to get into business fast.

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Picking a good web hosting company is important to keeping your website open and your costs down. There are many to choose from, as well as different pricing plans to look over. Depending on the amount of sites that you intend on building, you may want to consider a larger web space in the long run.

You should start with the smallest web space that you can get to test the waters, just incase niche website Internet marketing does not work out for you. You may want to add on later, so make sure that your provider offers that option.

You will want to choose a provider that has a reliable service. If your site is down or takes to long to open up when visitors are trying to get in, it may lead them to click out of your site and move on to the next one. They will also more than likely not visit in the future since they will remember their bad experience. For this reason, it is probably best to stick with a well known company who you can check reliable references on. There are many small hosting providers that offer space for as low as $.50 to $1 per month, however, you never know what you will be getting and many of them want you to pay for at least a years worth in advance.

You will also want one that has the most affordable hosting. If you can create your own small site or have one made for you, then you will probably be able to find space for as low as $3 to $4 per month. However, if you need to choose a company that offers a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) website builder, then you will probably end up paying $10 to $15 per month for the smallest amount of space. But if this is the only way that you can build a site, then it is necessary.

Some web hosting providers may also offer a deal on a yearly URL or other products when you make a web hosting purchase.

Ultimately, whatever web hosting provider you choose will depend on your individual needs and what you can afford. Hopefully you will be able to snap up a well known provider at a low price who will allow you to upgrade your service as needed.

To make money with articles that you place on websites, you will also need a variety of good affiliate links that will help to generate revenue. It is important that you know where to find affiliates and that you choose the best affiliates for you and your niche site.

When you pick an affiliate, it is important that you determine which companies you will profit best from based on the frequency that the product is likely to sell. There are several types of affiliates and some will offer you more money from a sale than others will. Before you get hazy-eyed by dollar signs, however, remember some products are bound to sell more than others. If you sell on product four times a year from a little known company that gives you $100 per sale or sell a well known product 3 times a week at the rate of $10 per sale, then you will make much more money with the $10 per sale product. Often times large well known companies will offer a very small profit per sale because they are established and know that their product is likely to sell well. Small, unknown companies, on the other hand, need all of the promotion they can get. Also, because they are unknown, their products are likely to sell less frequently.

The most important rule when picking affiliates to promote on your site is to pick products that would be of interest to those who would likely visit your niche site. Otherwise you will be promoting a product to a group of people who do not even want nor need it. If your niche site targets parents of young children, then promote baby products. If you niche site targets gardeners, then promote gardening products. If you promote baby products to gardeners, you are almost guaranteed to not make a profit no matter how much money the affiliate company offers for a sale.

Lastly, there are two main ways to find an affiliate company for your niche website. You can sign up with a company that manages the accounts of hundreds of companies, big and small, and apply for the products within these accounts or you can do a web search for companies that would match well with your niche, visit their websites, and see if they advertise an affiliate program.

Choosing a good niche subject to base your website around is one of the most important aspects of making money off of your articles. This will give you a foundation to build from and you can target one general audience with a pack of keywords that they are most likely to be searching for. You should take each one of these keywords and use it for the basis of one article on each page. This way, even though you are targeting one specific subject, you will be sure to interest a wide variety of people in that one niche. They may also find other pages that interest them, which will keep them returning to your site to learn new information about the niche subject.

The best way to find keywords for your niche subject is to use a keyword software program and type in the word that is the subject of your niche. This will generate a list of keywords or phrases that contain your niche and will also show you approximately how many people search for each word or phrase. Some software programs may also tell you how many sites are out there to compete with for each word or phrase (this will help you know if those sites are worth competing with for the number of searches out there). You then deicide which of these would be most profitable by determining which have the least amount of competitors, so that you have a chance at making it to the first or second page of search engine results, but that also have a decent amount of people looking for that keyword or phrase each month. These will be the keywords or phrases that you will base the pages of your niche site on.

If there are a number of topics that you like, pick the one that you feel would be easiest to start with and then, once that site is built and generating some revenue, you can start another site. The most profitable website marketers, who use their talent of finding niches and combining that with good site content and a handful of affiliate links, have a good amount and variety of niche sites that they have started. You are never limited in what you can do with niche website marketing, unless you find out that you do not have the marketing skills or the needed funding to make it happen. Otherwise, the sky is the limit!
Create Your Niche WebSites

Learn to use search engine optimization techniques when writing your articles. If hiring a writer to write articles for you, you can choose one who already knows about SEO or you can supply them with a list of keywords and let them know where they should be placed and how many times they should be repeated throughout the article. Optimizing your articles for search engines will help them rank higher when someone searches for a keyword relating to your subject, which means that you will receive more visitors because more people will actually see your URL. It is a fact that most visitors don抰 look past the first search engine result page and by the third search engine results page there is practically no audience left for you to promote to. What this means for those on the third or high page is no traffic. This is why it is very important for you to make sure that your articles are prepared in a way that will eventually get them to that first or second search engine results page.

When you are trying to make money through promoting articles and affiliate links, you will need a good, simple, and easy to navigate website to put them on. There are two ways that you can accomplish this: you can try to do it yourself if you have any web design skills or you can hire someone.

Doing it yourself, unless you were a pro to begin with, can be difficult for some. You will need to read many tutorials and it may take some time to get going. You could also risk having a site that looks very badly made and thrown together. It is also important (for visitors and search engines) that your site is easy to navigate, which may be a problem if you do not know what you are doing.

Making a Do It Yourself website can be hard, but if you accomplish your goal, maybe you will learn so much that you can write a few articles on it to add to a new DIY niche site!

Blogging is a concept that started in late 90s. It used to be a way to comment an existing webpage, an opportunity for visitors and readers to react or voice out one’s opinion on the said page. What started as a single-sentence commentary has evolved into pages of personal take on just about anything and everything under the sun. As it continues to move forward, online advertising has tapped into the blog’s potential. Here are 5 reasons why you should use blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

1.Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get your piece on the net is through blogging. No skills are necessary?an average adult can read and type, or at least click a mouse. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. If you have a PC and an Internet connection (who doesn抰?) then you can blog and advertise.

2. Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturate our lives, we question the credibility of promoters?claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, unscathed by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience. You definitely want to buy a tried and tested product.

3. Blogging is free. Because blogging is yet to be proven as a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing tools and thus offer it for free. Any opportunity for free webtime is definitely a bonus especially to businesses that are starting up. Needless to say, paid blog pages can generate more income for your seriously growing business.

4. Blogging builds credibility. As you get more and more into writing your experiences on a particular product or industry, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts for their own information needs. As such, you become an expert on it; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs. As companies and professional organizations notice the growth of your readership base, they may soon get in touch with you for advertising on your blog page, or make you an affiliate, which pays for every referral generated from your blog site.

5. Blogging builds your market. Unless you are a Hollywood star, chances are, only your Mom reads your posts. Mom has a lot of friends, so she lets her friends know how interesting your blog site is. But you need not depend on Mom to increase your readership base. Look into the following ways to build your market through blogging:

-By using your e-mail. Today, blogging is overcoming the e-mail’s popularity in quickly and effectively reaching and expanding a market. In this age of speed and quick access, logging in and downloading e-mail is simply taking longer than clicking into a blog site. Let them explore your site by using a short e-mail message as teaser to your blog site. If your e-mail is on an entirely different subject, use your e-mail signature to give a link to the site.

-By using subscription. An easy way to get your readers e-mail is to give them an opportunity to subscribe to your blogsite. Keep some exclusive information for your subscribers to entice readers to subscribe and give their e-mail address. Just be responsible in using their e-mail address, as the last thing you want is a comment on your blog that you are a spammer.

-By understanding your readers. Conduct a simple survey for your readers to understand their profile and advertising preferences. Ask consumers to give you feedback on a post, an ad link, or a trial that you shared. In this way, it is like interviewing your readers without the commitment and intrusion of a face-to-face interview.

-By joining a blog network , network of blogs maybe a collection of blog sites that share the same industry, interest, readership base, payment mode, etc. Consumers find credibility and convenience in clicking one link to several real bloggers about a single subject. Clearly, more bloggers are better than one.

-By using RSS. RSS is the fastest growing technology on the Internet today. As such, having RSS feeds to your blog is definitely another means of generating awareness for your readership base. Having a variety of feeds can add interest to your blog site.

Give your business a boost by effectively using blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

With the addition of this document to their website, the people at Google appear to be trying to frighten people away from search engine optimization altogether. Although they say that “Many SEOs provide useful services for website owners“, they finish the sentence by describing the range of what those useful services are:- “from writing copy to giving advice on site architecture and helping to find relevant directories to which a site can be submitted“.

They say that an SEO’s useful services include:- writing copy, giving advice on site architecture and helping to find relevant directories…. These can be part of search engine optimization, of course, but they are not what is widely understood by the term search engine optimization; i.e. optimizing pages to rank highly. Even writing copy doesn’t suggest anything to do with seo copywriting, and giving advice on site architecture is to do with website design and not search engine optimization, although an SEO can advise on it with respect to crawling.

It is quite clear what sort of things Google considers to be SEO, and it isn’t anything to do with optimizing or, if it is, it’s only on the fringe of optimizing.

The document goes on to say, “there are a few unethical SEOs who have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to unfairly manipulate search engine results“. The implication is that search engine optimizers who go further than the sort of things that Google mentions, and actually optimize pages to improve rankings (manipulate search results), are unethical. Google clearly views any sort of optimizing to improve rankings as unethical.

Later in the document, Google lists a number ‘credentials’ that reputable search engine optimizers should have. In Google’s view, a search engine optimization company should employ a reasonable number of staff (individual SEOs are not reputable), they should offer “a full and unconditional money-back guarantee“, they should report “every spam abuse that it finds to Google“, and more, and they warn people against those who don’t measure up. But there isn’t a search engine optimizer in the world, individual or company, who doesn’t fall foul of Google’s ‘credentials’. There are people who can write copy (not seo copy), advise on site structure and even find directories to submit to, but they aren’t search engine optimizers and, in terms of rankings, they are of limited value.

The purpose of search engine optimization is to improve a website’s rankings. Google see that as manipulating the search results, and they don’t approve. The impression given by their document is that they are trying hard to scare website owners into not employing search engine optimization services to improve their website’s rankings. That, in my opinion, is unethical.

Suppose there are 1000 hotels in New York, each of which has a website. When somebody types “New York hotels” into a search engine, all 1000 websites are equally relevant to the search. Because of the way that Google and other engines have been designed, they normally display the results 10 at a time. But which of the 1000 hotel sites will be displayed in the first 10, which of them will be displayed in the second 10……and which will be placed right at the bottom of the pile?

It is well-known that searchers don’t look very far down the results, so the sites that are nearer the top will take all the business, and those that are further down will get none. But which sites will be at the top? Google uses its algorithms to determine the order of the results. It is patently obvious that all 1000 equally relevant websites will not be displayed on the first results page (the top 10). It is also obvious that equally relevant sites cannot be displayed where they belong. Some necessarily become more equal than others.

So what if the owner of one of the websites decides to try and push his site to the top? Is that wrong? Of course not. The site is just as relevant as the top ones; it’s just that Google cannot satisfy all the relevant sites. This is where ethical search engine optimization come in.

Search engine optimization optimizes a website’s pages, so that they will be ranked higher in the search results for the most relevant search terms, according to what the website has to offer. Search engines may well display relevant results at the top, but they can’t display all the relevant results at the top. Search engine optimization allows the pages of relevant websites to be displayed at or near the top of relevant search results. And that’s all it does.

So what are search engines like Google so afraid of? SEOs have exactly the same aim as the engines - relevant search results. The difference is that search engines don’t care about individual websites, whereas search engine optimizers and website owners do. That’s the only difference. Engines don’t care if a particular website is in the top 10; SEOs care very much that a particular website is in the top 10. But they can’t get an off-topic site there because the search engine algorithms see to that. And that’s an important point - search engine optimization can only get pages to the top of relevant results. The search engines’ own algorithms keep off-topic pages out.

Search engines want relevant sites at the top. As a search engine optimizer, I want relevant sites at the top, and I want one of them to be my site. Search engines can’t place all the relevant sites at the top, and they aren’t going to do my site any individual favors, so I give them a hand and adjust things so that my relevant pages are at the top of the relevant results. That’s all that ethical search engine optimizers do. They are not against the engines, and they don’t try to achieve what the engines themselves don’t want (irrelevant results). They merely strive to adjust the results by placing a different, but equally relevant site at the top. And there’s nothing unethical about that.

Update - June 2003

In this thread at the WebMasterWorld forum, a Google employee known as GoogleGuy chose to answer a number of questions that had been posted in the forum. He was the one who chose which questions to answer, so I think his response to the questions in msg #12 is very revealing.

Q: Does Google like honest SEO’s or would you prefer there not be any?
Q: What do you think about SEO? Do you think there will be a room for SEO in future WWW world?

A: I think that there will always be a need for consultants that help site owners make their site more useful for surfers and search engines. That might include advice on site architecture, explaining what sort of pages would be crawlable by search engines, or giving help on the copy on a site. Lately, I also see more SEOs broadening their offerings by managing PPC for clients as well.

I think the thing that *doesn’t* work well is when an SEO gives bad advice, or does things well outside quality guidelines from search engines, or takes advantage of their client’s lack of knowledge. That happens less than it used to, but sadly it still happens pretty often. For example, earlier today our hidden text algorithms detected a spam network run by a really bad SEO. There was hidden text stuffed at the bottom of the page, and hidden links to old-style doorway pages. There was proof that the SEO did rank checking on Google; basically this company was breaking almost every guideline you can imagine. The really nasty part is that unknown to their clients, the SEO also inserted 7-8 hidden links back to the SEO, so roughly half the PageRank that each customer had earned was getting routed to the SEO! Because the SEO put hidden text, hidden links, and doorway pages on their clients’ pages, the clients may have temporary trouble now. That SEO has basically shot their credibility with both Google and all of their customers. That’s the stuff that we really hate to see. You see that happen less often than it used to, but unfortunately it does still happen sometimes.

I reprinted the whole of GoogleGuy’s response but, although the second paragraph is interesting, it’s the first paragraph that is relevant here. He chose to answer questions that were specifically about search engine optimization, but he ignored it almost entirely by equating it to helping website owners with “site architecture”, crawlability and such - only a very small part of the search engine optimization process. Although necessary to a website, the things he mentioned won’t get high rankings and are, therefore, not about search engine optimization or “SEO”. In other words, he made no attempt to answer the questions that were asked. Why? Because Google don’t want anybody trying to move pages up the rankings. If confirmation of that fact were necessary, GoogleGuy’s response to those questions is confirmation enough.

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