A good way to start monetizing your site is with Adsense, Adsense is great for many different reasons. First off it is simple to do and Google creates instant relevant ads for your site. Secondly you earn money every time someone just clicks your ads, yes you heard right, they do not have to buy anything; all they have to do is click the ad. You are probably wondering how that works right? Well Google offers business owners and webmaster the opportunity to pay for sponsored listing. This is called Google adwords. You may have seen them, when you do a search in Google you will find to the right that there are sponsored listing, this gives business owners etc…

The opportunity to get targeted traffic quickly without having to wait for natural rankings for certain keywords. When someone sets up an Adword account they can choose to have there ad appear on other websites and the search engines or just one or the other. Google splits the commission with you for referring the targeted traffic. Really it’s a win, win situation; everyone gets a piece of the billion dollar pie. Adsense is free and simple to join, but before you do make sure your site is in working order and has good content. Google can reject your site. Once you get your Adsense account you will be able to place ads on any site that you create.

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You Need Flash 8 for this Content

Another great video by Matt Cutts!

Popularity: 75% [?]

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Ok, so now you are starting to put everything together and you are at the point that you are ready to start designing and creating your site. You may be wondering what is the best and easiest way for a beginner to do this? XsitePro is an html editor that will allow you to build rich content sites that the search engines just can’t resist. This software is very easy to use and offers a step by step user Manuel as well as video lessons. With the resources and not to mention there open forum and great customer service, you will have your site up in no time. With XsitePro, you literally don’t have to know any code, although over time it would be smart to learn some code as it will help you solve problems a lot quicker. The owner of XsitePro “Paul” has really put a lot of time, money and effort into creating a software, so that the average Joe can publish there content on the web.

There are minor disadvantages; the software is not as flexible as some of the other, more expensive editors, so you may not be able to add flashy headers etc… For the money and the ease of its use I would say it is one of the best software on the web. Paul gives you a 365 day money back guarantee, which is unheard of and insane. The reason he does this is because once you use the software and see the ease and start making money, you would never want your money back. I personally use many different html editors and platforms and I use XsitePro quite frequently, especially for my sales letters. Take a look and see what you think, I would suggest even using the software. “Heck you have a full year to see if it is right for you” and if you do decide to try it please let me know what you think.

Click here for more information on XSitePro

Keywords: XsitePro

Popularity: 77% [?]

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Pay per Click advertising is a very popular and productive way to promote your website, if the program is run well. Too often, people set their site up with a provider, choose a couple of keywords, and forget about the campaign. Later, they wonder why they don’t have success with their online ads. It is important to plan, implement, and maintain your pay per click advertising as you would any other marketing campaign. All campaigns have 4 major parts; Research and planning, Implementation , Measurement, and Analysis and adjustment.

Research

What are you marketing? Not all PPC services are the same and some will be better than others depending on the subject of the marketing campaign. Just as the cost per click through depends on the demand for that keyword, success will vary from site to site. For example, BizRate , NexTag , and PriceGrabber are used for price comparison and are geared for retail. Google is by far the most popular search engine with approximately 50% of all search activity.

Set-up Several Campaigns

It is easiest if you start with a single provider with several different keywords, you should quickly be able to tell which keywords are most productive. Once you have honed your keywords, launch with several other providers and compare the effectiveness of each. If you start your campaign with many different keywords and providers, it will be harder to differentiate the success of the site and the success of the keyword.

Metrics

All campaigns are a work in progress…always! To be effective it is important to track of your campaigns progress. Overall, you want information that will help you track your Return on Investment (ROI). At a minimum, you should measure and track the following:

• Times each specific keyword ad was clicked
• Number of people exposed to your ad
• Daily Unique Visitors
• Hourly Unique Visitors
• First time visitors
• Avg. page views per hour
• Page views per visit
• Page views today
• Visits today

Adjust

Now that you have collected and analyzed your information, adjust your plan. Don’t hesitate to change providers or keywords. The internet changes daily so it is important to continue analyzing and change as needed. The following is a list of the most popular providers of pay per click advertising.

• Google AdWords
• Ask.com
• Yahoo! Search Marketing 
• MIVA 
• ABC Search
• Enhance Interactive
• SearchFeed
• 7Search
• Findology 
• Microsoft adCenter

All pay per click campaigns has the potential to be successful. It is an ongoing process but very rewarding when your ROI grows. If you are not able to properly manage your campaign, you may want to look into hiring a management service. This is particularly helpful if you are not staffed to spend the time on research and statistical analysis or if you are investing large sums of money into your campaign. There are also many software programs that can assist with analysis and management.

Keywords: Pay Per Click

Popularity: 82% [?]

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How eye movement research can improve your SEO

When you enter keywords into a search engine the page that comes up is called the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This term sometimes refers to the single page or the complete collected results depending on context. It is important to understand how people respond to these pages to formulate a complete marketing plan for your website.

For years, psychologists have study eye movements in relation to attention, comprehension, reading speed, and general interest. Cornell University performed a recent study on SERPs. They measured both the click percentage rate and visitation time on sites via SERPs using a number of undergraduates in a controlled study setting. The results provide some valuable information for SEO and SERPs in particular. Some key points from the study and application for your site are outlined here:

• The first two listings of a search page receive almost equal attention initially when a page is displayed. However it drops off significantly from there and dissipates. This reiterates the importance of high listings on pages. Interestingly, rankings 6-10 receive almost equal initial attention from the viewer.
• People tend to focus more on entries before the page break, no matter what rank the page break falls. For instance, if the break is at 6 you will see a drastic drop off at 7.
• The time spent exploring the abstract of search result 1 are almost 3 x that of the next closest, item 2. The time spent actually exploring the sites however decreases at a slower rate. This may indicate that they assume pertinent info to the subject to be obtained in the first abstract and then are clicking looking for format and other features that appeal to them.
• On all search engines tested, from the 5-6 result all measurements fall off dramatically, leading one to believe that 5 or above is really the magic SEO rating.

This study re-emphasis the importance of high ranking but it may also imply that most of us are going to be forced to lure customers through other means including pay per click advertising that also has a prominent feature on the page and further studies can be used to demonstrate the effectiveness of this and other techniques.

Another study was performed by The Estlow Center regarding eye movement and page layouts. Though this was performed on homepage layouts, it gives us great insight to how people scan all pages. The following were reported in 2004:

• People scan from the top left part of the page and spent more time fixated on this portion than any other portion. This would indicate the most favorable spot for ad placement and is consistent with the Cornell study.
• People generally move from the top left in a diagonal line to the middle right, bottom, then top right looking at the right margin from bottom to top. Though most people assume that people read from left to right in sequential order, this is not true for scanning information. The top right portion of a page is scanned later and for a shorter amount of time than the middle sections all the way across the page. This indicates the least appealing ad space or listing space on a page.
• The best overall placement on any page is indicated to be in the top left to left middle of the page.

Research has always been important to marketing. These are just two studies in a flourishing area of research. Use these tips to pick search and ad placement. We will continue to explore similar studies in future blogs so stay tuned.

Keywords: Serps

Popularity: 64% [?]

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Another Case of White Hat versus Black Hat SEO

The prevalence of persons using trademarked names illegally has currently come to light in many venues but in particular, Google® Adwords. Some competitors have apparently begun to use other trademarked names to advertise on Google® Adwords. The advantages to such a ‘black hat’ tactic include:

The use of established reputations by vendors to promote a similar product or product off of the valued name

The advantage of ‘stealing/hijacking’ search results meant for the originally trademarked brand

Increased search traffic due to the originally trademarked brand

So with people participating in this and other ‘black hat ‘methods of SEO…how can you compete? Short answer…easily. Consider the following:

Expand the number of search phrases that you use for advertisement
Many people stop brainstorming after they have completed the first round of keywords. KEEP BRAINSTORMING. Relevant search phrases not only bring potential customers but may also attract a higher search engine rating.

Build your ad content around each phrase and promote all phrases with unique content
Black hat promotions are built around tricks…not solid offers of valuable content. If you are not a writer…make sure you plan enough of your budget to provide valuable content through outsourcing.

Relevance is important…customers will never return if redirected to irrelevant content. Black hatters make their money from a number of initial hits not returning customers/viewers. A solid marketing plan should be built around repeat readership so make sure you are encouraging this.
Analyze your results: Not even Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Donald Trump come out of the gate with all the answers. Analysis is extremely important. To do effective analysis, you must start with very good records. At the very least track where your clients come from, interests, visitation rate, and input.
Black hat SEO has immediate but not long-lasting results. They are shady webmasters who try to make a quick profit then disappear. The same can be said of a certain segment in all businesses and industries.

As with all start-up business; assume the first year is a wash and don’t expect any profit until the second year. While the internet has many examples of exceptions…just as the restaurant industry; most online businesses will fold within the first year. The exceptions typically occur because their owners planned for the worst case scenario and when they made a first year profit…they were able to reinvest.

In general, Black Hat SEO employs any method to send their website to the top of a search lists no matter what the ethical implications are. White Hat SEO employs similar methods but within ethical boundaries. For example, White Hat systems do not represent non existing pages, content, or keywords.

Trademark infringement is just one of the many techniques employed by Black Hat SEO artists and firms. If you treat the internet as you would any other business venture, you can prevail. However, if you are looking to get rich quickly, beware. The internet is just another business avenue and as everyday passes it must be treated as being more and more within the traditional business mold.

Keys: SEO and Trademark

Popularity: 62% [?]

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We pick up here where we left off last time. We had just discussed the importance of unique and consistent users as well as the current state of content. Today we will discuss the other 2 huge concerns for any launching website.

Design: Size may not matter but looks sure do. Which of us hasn’t been searching for content or information and the web and rejected a website not for it’s content but because it was hard to read or navigate? Your website doesn’t have to be the most beautiful and complex. In short it just needs to be easily accessible to as many users as possible. What does this involve? Consider the following:

Colors: Make sure all colors match in all web browser formats. Test them in as many formats as possible. There are many color wheel web site matching color sites on-line…take advantage of them.

Access to Info: Don’t be sneaky and out smart yourself. I’ve seen many websites that try to lead you to a PPC or Affiliate site without offering any benefit. Though you may get the inebriated or otherwise distracted click…most users hate this technique and will leave your site.

KISS: As they say…keep it simple stupid: Keep your content relevant and encourage outside input. Address the most common concerns of your reader first and always provide a forum for feedback. Most readers who submit comments or questions will come back for a response…even if they hated your original post.

Linking: As we discussed earlier in the ‘Red Queen Theory’, for every advancement a predator makes…the prey must also advance. In this case, most search engines have algorithms and formulas that are designed to recognize useless links. For example, if you have a site that sells or provides information for teens…a link to a pornographic site is not a valid link. This is easily obtained through linking software and outsourcing but provides no real value to website, even if that site has a million hits.

Most websites will still supply linking but only with approval. For instance, if you provide business consulting most sites will ask to see your web page, portfolio, and have a phone call or other contact before an exchange takes place. This is a good policy for long-term web-sites since some websites may actually lower your SEO ratings.

In conclusion, the days of the quick get rich web schemes are gone. You should look at your website as a long-term not short-term investment. Plan for an initial investment and schedule a promotional budget for the first year. Only on the Internet do people believe that a venture can make them rich overnight. It may still happen…but it is the exception and certainly not the rule.

Popularity: 65% [?]

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Hostgator is highly regarded in the web hosting community. They have been in business since 2002 and use the Planet data center in Dallas Texas. They are based out of Florida and have phenomenal uptime and customer support. I personally have 3 reseller accounts with Hostgator. The majority of there service plans offer a 99.9% up time. 

Hostgator can benefit the most novice webmaster or the most advanced. For the newbie’s I would recommend starting with the Baby gator plan, you will be provided with more then enough bandwidth and diskspace to get started, not to mention it only cost $9.95 per month. Hostgator offers 24 hour support, so if you need assistance you can chat with a support agent via live chat or call there 800 number. If you don’t decide to go with Hostgator be sure that you choose a host that makes automatic backups of your site, that has great uptime, and provides quality service. There are too many benefits to list but you can go here to read more Hostgator.

Keywords: Hostgator | Hostgator review

Popularity: 76% [?]

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Keywords: Matt Cutts

Popularity: 32% [?]

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You now want to find a niche that interest you and that could potentially be profitable. I personally relate to directories to find my niches. You can use for example EBay and scroll through the categories and the sub categories to find that long tail niche which will have less competition. Competition is not a bad thing, in fact the niche that you choose you want to have competition. This tells you right away that there is money to be made in that particular niche.

You may be asking your self how can I figure out if a niche is profitable? The answer is simple, search Google. When you type a key phrase into the Google search or any large search engine you will find sponsored results to the right. Sponsored results mean that marketers are paying to list there ads there to sell or promote that product or similar products. When you find a niche you then want to analyze how much competition there is, for newbie’s I would recommend finding a niche with under a million competitors for the primary keyword. Another rule of thumb is to be sure that your primary keyword gets searched for 1000 times or more per month. These simple tips will help to get you moving in the right direction.

Keep reading and I will walk you through step by step on how to create a successful website. Go find your niche! Do you have tips and tricks that you would like to add? We would love to hear them.

Keywords: Niche research | Tips for niche research

Popularity: 41% [?]

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