SEO - Regionally Targeting Your Traffic
Posted by reviews on Apr 7, 2008
SEO - Regional Targeting for Geographically Specific Traffic (geotargeting)
How does one target a specific geographic region/country/city?
There are a few areas of SEO and marketing that you can do to improve your site ranking within a particular region, known as ‘geotargeting’. The biggest challenge would be ranking well in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) across a range of regions. It would probably require several regional campaigns.
- Domain TLD: You can register your domain with a country specific TLD, such as “.co.uk”. This should help you rank better in the UK. The same can be done for other countries.
- Hosting: This is a major factor, if web host server is located in France, then you are likely to rank well in France. Unfortunately, you may not rank well for search engine users in other countries. You should look around for webhosts from that area, for example: you can be hosted on a Maui server, if you are targeting a Maui audience.
- Languages: If your site includes more than one language, you will have a better chance of ranking well within countries where that language is spoken.
- Keywords Usage: If your website has too much content for “German”, as apposed to the “UK”, then the search engines may perceive this as the website is targeting the location mentioned in the content. I do not believe in keyword density as being of any value, but I do believe that including the keywords within the content would be relevant.
- On page/site SEO: Create individual pages or sections of your website for the area you are targeting. Your efforts should then focus the traffic to these pages/areas. This includes link building, advertising, and other means to direct traffic and improve your rank in the SERPs.
- Localized Link Building: Find local bloggers and websites (government city, state, country too!) and see if they’d link to you. Even better, see if they would write an article or two about your site or services.
- Create a network: Buy domains and host them on localized webhosts. Create original, good content and point them to your main site. You may even get some referral traffic from them as well.
- Google Local Business Center: By using the Google Local Business Center, you are also narrowing your site down to local areas.
Use the Local Business Center to create your free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they’ll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even coupons to print out and bring to your shop. It’s easy, free, and you don’t need a website of your own.
- Select your keywords.
- Write your ads.
- Set your budget and bid amount.
Google Analytics for Tracking Google Base (Froogle) Visitors
Posted by reviews on Dec 3, 2007
For those of us that sell products via an ecommerce site, you probably are familiar with Google Base (formerly Froogle) where you can list your products on Google Product Search. You may wonder if you are getting many visitors from Google Base. You will likely get visitors if your pages are fairly well designed in Google Base and the pricing and attributes are good. The question would be; how does one track Google Base visitors using Google Analytics?
Google has an answer on their Official Google Base Blog, however their advice is odd and a pain in the arse at best, and very bad advice at worst. Their answer is to create another page just for the Google Base visitors, thus creating duplicate content, which contradicts Google’s own webmaster guidelines. Nice.
Regular landing page: http://example.com/page1.html
Unique Base landing page: http://example.com/page2.htmlBy creating two versions of the same page on your website and submitting the unique landing page URLs to Base, Google Analytics can show you exactly how much traffic is being sent to your website from Base. Just make sure to include the unique landing page URL in the link attribute of your bulk upload file.
A much, much better answer was supplied by Scott Horne over at WebProNews. They even provide great graphics to help you. He suggests adding a query string to the end of the url link in Google Base, such as ?ref=base.
It would look like this: http://www.example.com/nifty-product.html?ref=base
You would then log into Google Analytics, go to the specific domain, go to Content, Top Landing Page, and do a search for ref=base.
Very simple!
Very interesting Article at SiteSalary.com About PortalFeeder v2.0
Posted by reviews on Nov 25, 2007
PortalFeeder v2.0 is desktop software that you would use to help manage your websites. Most importantly, it is WordPress-friendly and offers seamless integration.
It is loaded with features, including a keyword research tool, template management, content import, free article search for additional content, product review integration, built in ClickBank search, Ebay RSS feed support, and a directory. I love the fact that this offers tools for Affiliate Marketers. With careful search engine optimization (SEO) and built-in desktop support with this wonderful program, you can start making money in a very short period of time.
There is much more so you will want to read about it. It also includes Blog Automation tools that allow your site to add content automatically. It also includes helpful tools to make your blog posts stand out, as ProBlogger mentions. All in all, this looks like an excellent tool for anyone trying to make money on the internet!
Ways to Find Your PPC Niche (Adsense, etc)
Posted by reviews on Oct 24, 2007
Many of us want an income in which we can “set it and forget it”, such as creating websites that may have great content, but also brings in some steady income along the way. How do you find good ways of determining what is searched for and what is bought?
There are a number of good ways to find revenue niches for your sites.
You can take a look at Google Trends which is Google’s report of what is hot.
With Hot Trends, you can see a snapshot of what’s on the public’s collective mind by viewing the fastest-rising searches for different points of time. You can see a list of today’s top 100 fastest-rising search queries in the U.S. You can also select a recent date in history to see what the top rising searches were and what the search activity looked like over the course of that day. We update Hot Trends hourly.
It’s a great way of seeing what is happening at the peak of a wave.
Another handy tool for seeing what is selling well is to look at Ebay’s What’s Hot page in Seller Central.
Selling success often translates into being at the right place, at the right time, with the right product. Check back often to stay on top of the latest promotions and hot items on eBay.
Ebay also lists Hot Items by Category, has an Ebay Pulse, and many other options on the above page.
John Hold had a great suggestion;
I find the best tool to use is the google search box. Not on googles home page but in your browser. I use firefox and have a google search box in the header. what you do is just type in any one letter like “f”. it will automatically fill the search box with first, all the searches you’ve made starting with that letter but under that will be “suggestions”, that’s what you want to look at. with “f” you’ll find “facebook, firefox, friendster, etc etc”. these are the top searched for sites. next type in a second letter like “a”. Now you see the most popular search terms that start with “fa” like”family guy, fandango, etc”. I then typed in “t” so that my first three letters are “fat”. After “fat people, fathead” you’ll see some good niche material like fate, fatigue, fatty liver, and fatima. Now click on a search term (niche) that you think will pay good and look at the ads that show and how many there are. From that info you decide if it’s worth going after.
The possibilities are indeed endless. I just typed in “str” for kicks and found these 3 niches, stress, strep throat and stroke. Bet any of those could pay some big adsence bucks. Knock yourself out!
Another is to try to get your hands on Google’s monthly list of most searched for terms or the monthly highest paying words for PPC. These lists can be a challenge to get, but can be insightful.
The last suggestion is to simply read magazines, ezines, and newspapers for the latest news or research being done. You may be able to get a jump on your competition just by using the ‘old noodle’ (your brain)!
An Ongoing List of Adsense Alternatives
Posted by reviews on Oct 24, 2007
Webmasters can place Google AdSense JavaScript code on their web pages which would then allow Google AdSense to be displayed as advertisements based upon the content of the web page.
Some webmasters are either not accepted into the Google AdSense program, or do not wish to do business with Google.
For those webmasters, there are many alternatives to Google AdSense.
Click here for a list of alternatives
for the List of Google Alternatives Page of this site
The Power of Google
Posted by reviews on Oct 12, 2007
Google seems to be growing exponentially. During the month of August alone they were reported to have had 31 billion queries throughout the world. In total more than 37 billion searches were carried out across all Google sites. Second on the list was Yahoo!, which had a paltry 8.5 billion searches recorded during the month. Yahoo!, Ask, and MSN Search do not come anywhere near being as used or have the level of usage. Although there was a poll conducted recently showing that Yahoo! had a slight lead for users in terms of being a favored search engine. These users still seem to be using Google anyway.
The Asia-Pacific region, including China, Japan and India, contained the greatest number of unique searchers, with 258 million conducting over 20 billion searches during the month.
Since Google has such dominance, as far as search engines are go, they also can greatly influence the way websites are designed, how people market their sites, and to that end, which websites people visit. They can also pretty much dictate the cost of advertising as well. This level of control over something so pervasive, being the internet itself, makes one think that they have more influence now than Microsoft ever had during its hayday.
I believe they are bordering on monopoly control of the internet. I wonder if they will be eventually targeted for regulation or some sort of government instituted penalties, such as being broken up.
Yahoo! Search Marketing $199 Credit Toward Advertising
Posted by reviews on Sep 13, 2007
This is great news for those new to Yahoo! Search Marketing. That is a ton of credit! This applies to the Self Service option only (where you do the setup yourself).
Click here for the link