The Use of Google Reader For SEO

One of the recent services launched by Google is the Google Reader, which is available at [reader.google.com]. The Google Reader will allow Internet users to search for relevant RSS feeds and manage them too. As a result, Internet users will be able to benefit from the updated information and current news articles or snippets on various topics of their choice.

In the recent past, we have noticed an increase in the popularity and use of blogs as well as RSS and this increase is going to be there in the near future. One of the primary reasons for the popularity of RSS feeds can be contributed to the availability of updated information in a systematized manner and accessible to almost anyone. For the average Internet user, the launch of the Google Reader is being seen as one giant step. It is a powerful tool that is easy to use.

Using the Google Reader
For first timers, using RSS or downloading and configuring the RSS reader can be quite a cumbersome process especially when you can visit your favorite web site and use their advanced search features to look for new articles or topic specific articles/news. There is another breed of people who would not even try the task of understanding how a new process like RSS feed will work as they have a pre-conceived notion that it might be complicated. This pre-conceived notion gets most of its strength due to the availability of other options.

The Google reader has been hence created to make the pre-conceived notions disappear and to make searching for the latest news on RSS simple and easy. To use the Google Reader, you need to follow 4 easy/baby steps:

1. Visit [reader.google.com] to open Google Reader
2. Type your topic of interest in the search box
3. You will get a list of results related to your topic of interest. Find the one you want.
4. Click "Subscribe"

Did you ever think it could have been so easy? Well! That's all you have to do to sign up for your favorite feed and the good part is that you can sign up for more than one topic/feed.

What you need to do is click to go back to the Google Reader homepage. On the homepage, you will find a list of feeds displayed on the left-hand side. This is the list that you have subscribed. If you choose any specific feed from the left hand side then you will see all the new posts added on to that particular feed on the right hand side. You do not even have to search for new or updated feeds!

Hailed as one of the best products from Google, the Google Reader has a high usability and hence will make your life a little more comfortable in a world where knowledge rules supreme; where knowledge is the difference between success and failure.

Is the Google Reader for you?

Since the Google Reader is easy to use and is considered a powerful tool; it will be helpful for anyone and everyone who wants to keep themselves updated on any kind of news from forest fires in the tropical rain forest to Premier league soccer scores. Although the service is meant for every one but the people who will really benefit from it will be the researchers, business professionals, reporters, consultants, analysts etc.

The Features
The Google Reader comes with some value added advanced features, which include:

G Mail This: Through this, you will be able to advertise your website or services to others on G mail. All you need is a G mail account.
Blog This: This feature will be helpful for those who already have an account on blogger. If you click on "Blog This" then it will open your blog account and you can insert the link on your blog as a reference.

It is impact on SEO
The Google Reader will ensure that RSS and blogs become an integral component of any Internet Marketing strategy. Since the reader is being targeted at getting more users hence the feeds will soon become more SEO friendly and keyword/key phrase driven.

Standing in the present, it seems that the Google Reader is all set to take on the future!

Author: Moe Tamani

Role of W3 Compliance In Search Engine Optimization

There are many people who are unaware of W3C compliance and many who do not know what kind of role the W3C compliance plays in SEO. First you need to understand what W3C compliance really is. W3C stands for the World Wide Web Consortium and this body or association has been providing the guidelines for website structure since 1994.

The guidelines or rules have been created according to the best practices and there are certain reasons why you or your website designer should comply with the W3C guidelines. All the reasons are not SEO driven and some of the non-SEO reasons include:

1. W3C Compliance will ensure that your website is accessible to the disabled.
2. W3C Compliance will also ensure that your website can be accessed through different devices like cellular phones and PDAs and also from different browsers like Mozilla Firefox.
3. W3C Compliance will ensure that in spite of the different functionalities and requirements of different technologies and browsers, your website will be accessible and function in across different mediums in a similar way.

Now that you know the non-SEO reasons for ensuring full W3C compliance, you will probably ask: what has this got to do with SEO?

According to a statement made by Frederick Townes from W3Edge web design, if you use the standards and incorporate the best practices then you are ensuring that your website will be designed in such a way that it is easier for search engines to interpret it. At the same time, the search engines will be able to skew the content-to-code ratio in the right direction and force the information on each of the web pages to be accessible.

Basically, he means that if you remove excess code from your web pages then the keyword driven content will get a higher priority. The second most important thing is that following the W3C compliance will ensure that your web site can be easily spidered.

How to add W3C Compliance to your website.

Actually it is easier said than done. If you do not have a website then you can have it designed based on the W3C compliance from scratch and your website designer needs to know how he/she can do it. If you have a website, which is not W3C compliant then you have only one option:
You need to hire a web/graphic designer who is familiar with the W3C standards and has the capability to redo your site based on the standards.

Either ways, you will benefit if your website is W3C compliant.

Let us look at a worse case scenario where you will have to do the website all by yourself. There are quite a few good resources that you can take advantage of. One of the best is the FireFox Web Developer extension. You need to first install the FireFox browser and then install the Web Developer extension.

One of the major aspects of this tool is that it provides a one-click check for W3C compliance and it will provide you with a list of the different types of errors, their cause and the solution and everything will be according to the W3C standard. The Web Developer extension can test CSS, HTML, and XHTML, compliance.

Some of the other good resources that you can check include:
1. Holy CSS ZeldMan
2. A List Apart
3. CSS Zen Garden.

How to start
Once you have downloaded the Firefox browser and installed the Web Developer extension, you will need to bookmark your resources. Once this is taken care of, you will have to test your website and at the same time check that your site meets all the W3C standards.

You should first start with the CSS validation. CSS validation is an easy process and can be done quickly as compared to most of the other code files. Once you are done with CSS, move on to HTML or XHTML validation. This will take at least a few hours and even more. The bigger your website is, the more time it will take.

After the validation of CSS and HTML, you will have to comply with Accessibility standards. In this process, you will be cleaning a chunk of your existing code and moving some of the code to CSS.

What is the need?
By now you are probably wondering why you need to do all this. The only reason is that once you complete all the validations, you will have a fully compliant website. Although the W3C compliance is not the only factor that drives SEO but if your website maintains the standard then you will definitely have the edge in the rat race.

Author: Moe Tamani

SEO Is Key To Success On The Internet

Running an Internet marketing campaign will be unsuccessful unless you take into account the importance of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. If you ignore or skimp on this part of the equation, you will surely fail at promoting your website, product or service. While the acronym SEO is bandied about with abandon by gurus and would-be gurus, most Internet marketers have little idea what it means or where to start to get their site in shape to be in the top 10 of search engine results pages. Even those with some knowledge are always learning, expanding and evolving with the ever-changing algorithms and strategies that will produce targeted traffic on a consistent basis.

Advertising has been an integral part of business for a long time. Advertising to reach new clientele is a time-honored tradition that has been universally accepted to promote products and services. The difference between a geographically located store and a virtual store is extreme. While you can hang a sign in your physical store, there is a totally different method to attract visitors to your virtual outlet. If you are lucky enough to already have a customer base, you need only add your website URL to your business card and inform your clients. If you are new to the Internet and are trying to carve out a niche online, search engine advertising and knowing the ins and outs of SEO will make or break you.

There are a number of free and low cost advertising methods available on the web with varying degrees of success, but if you want a lot of traffic on a continuous basis, you'll need to really learn and understand the search engine advertising methodology.

While Google isn't the only search engine out there, it is the best known and it uses a variety of complex algorithms to arrive at which websites should be listed in the top 10 on relevant keywords or search terms. When you type in the search term "red nail polish cheap", for example, a certain website will be listed as #1 on Google. People will usually click on the first search term they see and as a result if you can attain that position versus position 4,234,030, you will get significantly more visitors looking for red nail polish. How you accomplish this feat falls under the purview of SEO. If you can understand this example, it will be immediately clear just how important it is to optimize your website.

With the "Why Optimize" clarified, lets talk about how you accomplish it. Most larger business go out and hire an SEO specialist who has their ear to the Internet ground with their thumb on the pulse of search engine algorithms. The world of SEO is complex and their are people who do nothing but navigate the industry for you. Their services do not come cheap; however, the results can be amazing and your company can benefit exponentially. Business owners who utilize SEO specialists versus the do-it-yourself method will have a distinct edge when it comes to ranking and position.

Some of the basics to familiarize yourself with include keyword density, META tags, titles, backlinks, unique content and the like.

Keyword density is measured by the number of words on a page divided by the number of times a particular keyword or keyword phrase appears on that same page. The concept behind keyword density rests in the fact that if a particular word or phrase appears a certain amount of times, when a visitor searches on that word, your webpage will appear nearer the top because it is more relevant to the searcher's interest. For instance, web pages on dog toys will never appear in a search result about nail polish. While this is fairly straightforward, it is more complex than that. If you put the word "nail polish" on a page too many times, you will incur penalties because it will be deemed inappropriate. Search engines will think you are trying to cheat the system and your page will wind up 4,000 pages down in the results.

META tags are part of the HTML code where you tell visiting search engines (called spiders) what your web page is all about. In conjunction with the META description, the search engine will put you in certain relevant search results and use the META description as the description in the listing. Again, you will want to avoid putting irrelavent keywords and idiotic descriptions in these areas because you will be penalized and your page dropped into obscurity.

Inbound links, also called backlinks are also taken into account when spiders visit your site. The more backlinks, the more popular your site. A backlink or inbound link is where somebody quotes you on their website and lists your site in the quotation or write up. As a result, the more backlinks you receive, the more search engines think you have some good, useful information to share. Otherwise, why would somebody else list you on their site if all you had on your site was junk. Logical, eh? Different search engines take backlink relevancy more or less into account.

Unique content or low duplicate content is another important factor for search engines. They will compare the content on your site to the content on every other indexed (listed) site in their database. If they find a ton of other websites with the exact same content, you will be penalized for duplicate content. Their thinking is that you are simply taking content from other places and placing it on your site. It is just junk to fill up the site. So, keep it to a minimum and use as much original content as possible. If you do cite or use content from another website, give them the love through using only a portion and giving them a link back to their total article. In your write up, give them credit, and write up your thoughts and feelings on what you've read. In that way, you will be creating original content and not snatching others hard work. It will be viewed as unique content.

If you can't string three words together, there are professional freelances on the Internet who are willing and capable for a fee to provide you with as much unique content as you need on any subject you desire. This extra step and small investment will insure that your website is valuable to your visitors and a site that the search engines adore. It will all convert into more sales for your business in the end.

Author: Kevin Sinclair

Tips for maximizing Your Google AdSense Revenues

Despite what you may hear, the Google AdSense program is not for everyone. There are some types of web sites that do poorly no matter how hard the owners try, and there are others that should be doing well but the webmaster simply isn't putting in the effort to make things happen. Here are some tips to make AdSense work better for you. If you do them all and you're still not having any luck, then you just might be running one of those sites that don't make money

1. Determine if your visitors are in the mood.

Like I mentioned at the top of this article, some web sites just don't work with pay-per-click programs. The best performing sites fall into one of these categories:

Sites where users go and expect to buy something while they are there. E-commerce sites fit the bill here.. Sites where users go to find specific information on something that they want to buy now. Music and video review sites, vacation information sites, resume building sites, etc. You don't have to actually be selling these types of things; your site can just be a mecca for information pertaining to these things. Then, when the visitor comes to read your content, they are more likely to click on your ads.

Sites where people who have disposable income and a credit card like to visit. This includes sites with money management, investing and lifestyle content.

Sites that draw a large amount of new users every day. Free coupon sites and How to sites are good examples. Sites where people go who expect to read ads. Classified ads and shopping comparison sites fit into this category.

2. Make sure that your visitors don't feel that you just want to grab their money

Give them plenty of relevant and well-written content. If writing isn't your best skill then hire someone to do it for you. Good content brings steady traffic and steady traffic pays the bills.

3. Play by the rules

Google has some very specific Terms of Service (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) for participating in their AdSense program. Learn those rules and follow them so you don't lose all of your investment by getting shut out.

4. Use the tools that Google gives you



Google gives you tools for determining the best keywords for your site, measuring ad performance, and setting up different ad channels for fine-tuning ad results. These guys and girls are the 800 lb. Gorillas in the Pay-Per-Click market. They didn't build these tools just to keep their programmers busy. Take advantage of their knowledge for they are very big and you are not!

5. Tweak, fine-tune and then tweak again

You should never be happy with your AdSense performance. If it's good, then you need to make it great. If it's great then you need to make it amazing. If it's amazing then you need to take it to the UPS club. The UPS club? Google sends all checks over $10,000 per month to the webmaster via UPS overnight delivery. Now there's a club that I wouldn't mind belonging to.

6. Get more traffic

No matter how much traffic you have, you need more. More eyeballs translate to more clicks. Even if you're only pulling a 2% click-through. That's a lot of clicks when you have thousands of visitors each day.

7. Experiment with new keywords

New keywords can bring new ads and new eyeballs along with it. Set up some new pages on your site and experiment with different content. Once you get something that's working then refer back to Tip # 5.

You can see results in near real time when you use Google's AdWords. Don't be afraid to be different. If something that everyone else is doing doesn't work for you, then invent something that does work and get it on your site.

6 Google Adsense Tips

1. Less is More I believe the theory behind this lies within the visitor's experience at a website. If you serve up let's say... a 728x90 leaderboard, and a 160x60 side block, and maybe even an extra ad unit or link unit then you aren't just showing the top-paying ads, you're also showing a lot of the ads with lower values too. This is especially painful if your site only triggers ads in the $2 range. These low-paying keywords can be a distraction to the visitor and while the recommended "slop of gravy on top with a side of mashed potatoes" (describing sites using the 728x90 and 160x60 ad blocks on a page) has often been touted as the best placement for Adsense, it is being proven by many to not be all that tasty. Why? Because these ads are "outside" of your content, not within it. When Adsense ads are placed within the body of content, it generally performs better for many. I have seen this myself in testing different Adsense placement methods. One site I own jumped in CTR by 10% when I removed the full meal deal and opted for a small 468x60 text ad block within the body of my content.

2. Keyword Density While Google doesn't reveal the specifics on the methods behind their Adsense madness, most people have learned through experimentation that keyword density plays a significant role. Adsense does rely on the content to determine which ads to show, and they want their ads to be shown. It would also appear that content towards the top of your page has a greater influence over the ads. It's almost a passive way of forcing Adsense users to boost their keyword density to not only show the most relevant ads, but to improve search engine positioning which improves the chances of those ads being seen. Perhaps an underhanded means of thumbing their nose to MSN, which seems to feed on keyword loaded sites these days propelling many an Adsense website into it's top rankings. Either that, or I've been watching too many shows about conspiracy theories.



3. Less is More - or More is More? Another theory is that using fewer internal links on your webpage gives visitors fewer "click-away" options, thus improving chances of them clicking on Adsense ads. If you have 20 links on your page and let's say 4 of them being within a 728x90 ad block, then visitors still have 16 other links to choose from beside the meager 4 Adsense links. Keep only 5 links on the page, and they now have only 9 links to choose from other than Adsense ads. Add more Adsense ads, such as a block containing 5 more links carefully weaved into your content (such as a 336x280), and they now have a better chance of getting clicked on with a ratio of 9:9. Taking it a step further, you could also factor other numbers into the equation such as : percentage of page scanned before clicking away, percentage of page scanned before scrolling, number of average scrolls per page to predict good places to place ads, etc. The odds can definitely be in your favour with this tactic. I haven't aggressively tested this theory yet and with a blog this is certainly not an option, but I have noticed on another site I own this might explain the 20-40% CTR I'm seeing on pages where all internal links are at the bottom of the page.

4. Using Images Next To Ads While it's reported that Adsense doesn't like images placed next to ads which appear to be served by Google, this has been proven by many to boost CTR incredibly. And because these images are different than those which caused the worldwide pandemic of "banner blindness", people are more likely to notice them. It really just makes sense. Human beings are visual creatures. From the time we were monkeys popping our heads over the grass to see if a lion was coming our way, our eyes have always been our first tool in evaluating a situation, and of course, checking out other monkeys. But back to Adsense..... even more effective is when you use images that illustrate the content of the page. I've used this trick and find it reallly works well.

5. Font Type and Size This was announced on the official Adsense Blog recently and it's a great tip. Adjust your page's font and size to match Adsense ads can greatly boost CTR. This could be difficult if your site has a lot of static pages, but a simple batch search & replace tool can help you speed things up. Now figuring out what the matching font is has been a chore for many. I believe (through trial and error) that the font used mainly in Adsense ads is Arial, size: 11px A number of people have reported that they've witnessed Adsense ads conforming to their page's CSS font styles. If anything is occurring here, I'm willing to take a guess that Adsense ads might be able to adapt to a very limited number of fonts and if you happen to use one of those fonts on the page, it will change accordingly. But as I said, if this is true than I think it's limited. After all, have you ever seen an Adsense ad in FontLeroyBrown 20px ?

6. Test, test, test Nearly everyone agrees that Adsense is only as effective as the unique way you integrate it into your website. What works for one person may not work for another. While there are some basic principles which are great starting points for any website, your design and content is unique and therefore visitor behaviour will be unique. Your best results will come through experimentation and patience.

How to Monetize your site using AdSense

With the advent of blogs and other informational sites, the search engine market space has become increasingly competitive.

Sometimes website owners begin to wonder if they will ever make money off their product or service. In this article I give you other ideas on how to make money with your website, even if you don't sell products or services.

My experience with AdSense

As an owner or contributor to many sites, not just search engine related, I've come to learn a thing or two about monetizing a site.

The thing is, I don't mind writing for these sites - it gives me an outlet because my mind is always racing with new article ideas.

On one of my sites is about console gaming: Xbox, Nintendo and so on. It's not a huge site, but I get some decent visitors. I have a friend who writes for a similar site that deals with portable gaming units like the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP.

When we started writing it was for fun and to bring some news to the world. Kind of like a console gaming news aggregator.

So when Google came out with their AdSense product I applied for an account immediately. Since I work in the industry I knew about AdSense long before most people and got an AdSense account within 48 hours of applying for it.

The setup was quite easy. I logged into a web based console and the system helped me pick the types of ads I wanted to display and even helped generate the code to insert into my pages so the ads matched the same font and background color of the site.

All in all it took me about 15 minutes to sign in, generate the code and paste it onto my page template. Now, every page on this site has Google Ads displayed.

And the great part is the ads are related to the content of the pages. For my Nintendo pages, all the ads relate to Nintendo while for the Xbox pages all ads relate to Xbox.

And the best part of this is that for every click on an ad I make a few cents.


Now, I don't make a lot of money on AdSense, but there are sites out there that do. Weblogs Inc. is a series of blogs all built around themes. A recent interview with the founder showed that the sites are on par to make over $1 million in AdSense revenue this year. That's right $1 million from AdSense.

So you can see that AdSense could be a way to make money in addition to whatever else you do on your site.

How do you get an AdSense account?

Well the first thing you need to do is apply for an account.

It's quite simple really, you give some basic information such as the URL of the site that will host the ads, your contact information and so on, and submit your application.

Google responds fairly quickly and generally your site will be accepted if it meets their guidelines and policies. You can find more information on these policies on the AdSense site.

Once you've been accepted it is a matter of creating your ad code, of which there are two basic types.

AdSense for Content

AdSense for Content is the most common type of ad displayed. These are the ads you see on sites that are marked with "Ads by Goooogle" either above or below the ads, much like the ads you see on Google's site.

The display formats vary for these types of ads which you can see on the AdSense site here. As you will see, there are a variety of layouts available, from text ads to banners.

Once you've selected the type of ads you want to display on your site, you pick the number of ads, and apply a style.

Pick a style which matches your site. In other words, try and pick one that has the same color background and text as your site. This way they don't stand out as much.

Finally, copy the code provided by Google (yup they even provide that for you - pretty simple hey?) and paste it on your page where you want it. Google even provides ideas on the best placement of your ads. Check this page out for more information on ad placement.

AdSense for Search

As the name implies, this is a Google search box which you'd place on your site that searches Google and returns Google results. For these searches you can earn money as well.

Google even allows you to customize the search box by changing the colors to match your site and even insert your own logo if you'd like.

Then, when you've added this feature to your site, your visitors will be able to search Google or search your site and, as I mentioned, if they select an ad you get a cut of that money. You can even find out what phrases people were searching for.

Tracking your Performance

Once you have the ad code(s) inserted into your site the first ads you will likely see are PSA (Public Service Announcements). This is because Google uses its advanced crawling technology to crawl the pages where the ad code are found and matches ads to the content.

Therefore if you check back in 15 or 20 minutes you should see ads that closely match the content of the page on which the ad code is found.

Google also offers you a way to monitor your AdSense account's performance.

By logging into the AdSense console you can generate tons of different reports showing click through rates, impressions, average returns per click and more.

Further, you can get more advanced as time goes on, by setting up channels and tracking them separately. Google now allows for 200 channels. Which means you can have 200 different ad display types scattered throughout your site.

Lets say, for example, that you want a search box as well as ads, but you have different places you want to place ads on your home page as your internal pages.

By using channels, you can track the clicks separately to see which types of ad positions perform better. This allows you to find the best place on your pages to place ad code to make the most money.

Show me the money!

Payments for AdSense are pretty straight forward. Google will mail you a check or you can sign up for their beta direct deposit program.

If you click on the "My Account" tab you can edit your payment preferences.

Google only pays out monthly on $100 or more. So if you don't have more than $100 by the end of the month, the total will roll over into the next month and continue to grow until you do have $100 or more by the end of the month.

I remember when I got my first check - I was so excited. I was expecting a check with the Google logo - you know like the logo they have on their home page. Turns out it was a very official looking corporate type check. Too bad - I was going to scan it and save a copy of my first Google check.

Some final thoughts

If you find that your site just doesn't generate enough clicks in a month to generate at least the $100 minimum, you can use your ad code on other sites which do drive more traffic.

If you know someone who has a high traffic site but isn't taking advantage of a program like AdSense, I'd recommend contacting them to see if they'd be willing to display ads on their site. Perhaps you can make a deal with him - splitting the ad revenue. Be careful not to distribute your code on too many sites, though, as you could set up flags because your clicks have gone up so quickly in a short time.

One thing some people have been known to do is create content specifically for high paying ads. I read a story once about a guy who built a blog around asbestos removal. He didn't know anything

That way you can monetize your site (and others) using AdSense in addition to your existing products or services.