These two parameters, together, put your ad in a good position (typical 1st to 6th position) on the search results page.
Google adwords is unlike other pay per click search engines where the highest bidder gets the highest position. Google wants to present the most relevant ads, matched with the keywords that generated these ads to searchers. So that a high click through rate means your ad is relevant to searchers even if the CPC is low.

If Your ad is presented (impressions) 1000 times and the CTR is less than 0.5% of the number of impressions, your ad gets slowed by Google and could eventually be disabled. If you ad is slowed you can edit it and run it again.

So here is your dilemma. To generate a decent CTR you need a good position. To get a good position you need a popular (competitive) keyword. Using a popular keyword means you will have to bid high. Yet you want a low CPC in the range of $0.05 to 0.10.

What to do? Look for not so popular keywords. Obscure keywords that few people use to search in your industry. Very few advertisers will be using them too. Identify many of these keywords. Make sure they are targetted. Add all the obscure keywords together. This will give you a good list that will generate a good amount of impressions, good CTR and at a low CPC.

Looking for good and obscure keywords

Use the keyword tools to check for currently used keywords, related keywords and alternative keywords. You can use the tools at:

1. Overture tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
2. Google tool at http://adwords.google.com/select/main?and=keywordsandbox
3. wordtracker at http://www.wordtracker.com
4. Espotting at http://www.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp

How to discover your obscure keywords

There are various ways to discover obscure keywords related to your industry or search term.
1. Use keywords with very low search count at Overture keyword suggestion tool. These are not competitive Keywords. They are not often searched on. But remember you are trying to add all obscure keywords to make a great keyword list.
2. Add variations to the keywords generated above. For example market to markets, marketing, marketers marketable.
3. Check your website log and fish out keywords searchers are already using to locate your site or product. You will be surprised at what people type into search engines to locate your site.
4. Use the Thesaurus and dictionary to check for alternative words synonyms. You can use more than one type of dictionary. When checking for meaning of words, you will often see in the description, alternative words with same meaning as the word you are checking for.
5. Ask friends, family members, what words they will use when searching for your product or the theme for your Website.

NOTE: Always keep in mind that, what the keyword tools will give you is a tiny fraction of what millions of people use on the Web. The keyword tools at overture won’t give you those keyword count because very few numbers of people use them at a time or period.

Features Provided by Google to Achieve your desired CTR

(1) Exact Match
(2) Phrase Match
(3) Broad Match
(4) Negative Keywords

Exact Match: To designate your keywords for exact match, put them in brackets. For example, (niche markets). So your ad will only show if “niche markets”, without the quotes, is searched for. It won’t show up for market niche. This is a highly targeted way of getting visitors to your site. Unfortunately, you will get very few impressions using the exact match feature. Though your CTR may be high.

How to use it

Use exact match feature when you are bidding on competitive keywords. Because of the low number of impressions exact match generates, not many advertisers maybe using it. So experiment and at the same time try to lower your cost per click (CPC).
Phrase Match: To designate your keywords for phase match include them in quotes. For example “niche markets”. Your ad will appear when these words are searched for at the search engine. Also when words are added to those. Example, “building niche markets” or “niche markets discovery”. The main keywords will always appear in the other which you set it. That is, niche markets and not market niche. Your ads will not appear for “niche successful markets”. The phrase match generates many impressions. Though not as targeted as the exact match, it more targeted than the broad match option.

How to use it.

This is the feature you will most likely be using often . Build a good keyword list. In the niche market example, you will not appear for niche marketers or niche marketing so include these and others in your keyword list.
One important feature you should use with your phrase match option is the negative keyword. This is explained below. Negative keywords help to make your keywords more targetted by allowing Google not to add them to your main keywords.When you designate a keyword as negative, Google will not add it when you are using phrase or broad match. If not, Negative keywords could make your keywords to have different meaning than what you intended. For example, a word like free. If you are not offering anything for free and free is added to your main keywords, then clicks to your site might be wasted and costing you money. So designating the word free as a negative keyword will make Google not to add it to your keywords

Broad Match: Broad match is the default setting for Google adwords and your ad is automatically shown for expanded match, plurals and other variations. So be sure to remember to change it when starting a campaign. Choosing the broad match feature allows Google to add other words to your main keywords. This makes this feature to be the least targeted. It produces the most impressions and probably the most CTR. But due to its non-targeted nature, could produce very low conversions or ROI. Using the “niche markets” example in broad match, you could have your ads displayed for searches on “locating niche markets”, “niche markets ideas, “succeeding in marketing niches” etc. your keywords will come out in many variations in plurals.

How to use it.

To have an appreciable success in using broad match, you need:
(1) To build three and four keyword phrases. This limits the number of words Google adds to your keywords phrases.
(2) Build a good and extensive negative keyword list.
(3) Use the Google keywords suggestion tool. It will show you words that will appear with your keywords. That is expanded matches.

Negative Keywords: This feature is used to eliminate words that could be added to your main keywords. For example, the word free. Just add a minus in front of the word ( –free ) to make it negative, this word will not be added to your keywords. Example, if your keywords are “niche ideas”. Your ads will not show for “free niche ideas”.
It is extremely important to use this feature so as to eliminate unwanted keywords, unwanted meanings and untargeted keyword phrases.
This is also important when you are dealing with children’s products. You will need to eliminate porn words so that your money is not wasted. Imagine a user searching for adult content and clicking to your site. Use of negative keywords is an additional way of making your keywords more targeted when you are using the phrase match or broad match options.
One tool you can use to search out negative keywords is at http://www.ebooksdeal.com/cgi-bin/keywordtool/keywordtool.cgi.

How to build a good campaign structure:

A good campaign structure saves you loads of time and contributes immensely to a successful adwords campaign.

Campaign 1 Campaign 2 Campaign 3

Adgroup 1 Adgroup 2 Adgroup 3

Ads 1 Ads 2 Ads 3 Ads 4
Keywords keywords keywords keywords.

Google adwords gives you the flexibility to test your ads as much as you want. You can delete ads that are not giving you the right CPC,CTR or ROI. Create more ads to take the place of the deleted ads. Test as many ads as you like until you attain your desired CTR or CPC.
But you can only do this if your campaign is properly structured and set out well from the start.
You need to know what ads and in what adgroup(s), associated with what keywords, are giving you the required results. And those that are not. So that you can quickly delete the unwanted ads. On this basis you can set out your campaign structure as indicated above. For example, explaining campaign 1.
Start testing your large keyword list by distributing them among the different adgroups. Group keywords that are:
1. closely related in one adgroup.
2. group keywords that are highly competitive in another adgroup.
3. group keywords that are not competitive.
4. group keywords that are in plural
5. group keywords with misspelled words etc.

If you have different kinds of products with different keywords, create one adgroup for each product. This allows you to create ads specific to keywords for each product . So, you don’t have general ads which apply to all your keywords.

The general idea is to group your keywords as you like them so that you can easily identify which ones are producing the required results.

For each adgroup you can now create different ads. For easy management , 2 or 3 ads per adgroup is okay. I use two ads per adgroup. You can use the same set of keywords you have allocated per adgroup for ads 1, 2, 3. the only difference in the ads will be the title and description. At the ads level you can change any ad that is performing below expectation. delete and write new ads. If it is the keywords that are performing badly, delete that adgroup and create another. However, do not get into the habit of creating and deleting adgoups. If you test and track your results properly at the ads level you will not need to replace any adgroup after deleting it. Your result would have shown you that the keywords for that adgroup are not profitable and need not be used again. You then research new obscure keywords that you can use.

Note: If you use the same keywords for more than one adgroup only one adgroup will be shown at any point in time. Also Google optimizes ads on an adgroup basis not on keywords basis. Better performing ads gets shown more often. For example,

Keyword : “high heel shoes”
Ad #1 15% CTR
AD #2 5% CTR

When high heel shoes is searched on ad #1 shows more often than ad #2.

Keyword: “low heel shoes”
Ad #1 10% CTR
Ad #2 20% CTR

When low heel shoes is searched on ad #2 shows more often than ad #1.

However, you can choose to remove the optimization feature so that you can test all your ads equally.

Achieving your goals

(1) Producing your best impressions. You need to present your ads to the right searcher ( visitor ). This is important so your ads are not displayed to the wrong searchers, thereby generating wasteful clicks. For best impressions-
(i) good keyword research
(ii) good negative keywords
(iii) use phrase match

(2) Producing your best CTR. The click through Rate (CTR) is the number of times your ad is clicked on compared to the number of times it is viewed, in percentage. So if out of 100 impressions (views) your ad gets clicked once, your CTR is 1%. To produce your best CTR put your main keywords in the title and description of your ads. Example, keyword phrase is “niche markets”.

Title: Discover niche markets
Description: Download software for discovering
Niche markets fast.
URL: http://www.yourdomain.com/niche.html

A user searching for niche markets will be instantly drawn to your title because it same as what he is looking for. The title catches the eyes and the searcher is drawn in to read the description. The description also talks about niche markets. Before you know it…click… and one very targeted visitor has gone to your website. This type of keywords – title – description gets the most targeted clicks in a adword campaign.

(3) Achieving your best return on investment (ROI). To produce your best ROI you must apply the keyword – title – description approach described above. This gets the searcher to your landing page. The landing page is the page your visitor will first see after clicking on your ad. This page must be specific to the product you are selling or the action you want the searcher to take. Do not send the searcher to your home page unless the action you want the searcher to take is there.
So it is keyword – title – description – landing page. You don’t want the searcher looking all over your website for what has been described in your ad. Also do not frustrate the searcher by a slow loading page.

(4) Achieving your best cost per click (CPC). The ultimate aim of every advertiser is to have minimum CPC while maintaining a good ad position. Typically position 1 to 6. Even though writing good and enticing ads is the key to a good CTR, having a good keyword list is the key to many targeted impressions. A combination of these two will produce your best CPC.

Tips and Tricks

(1) Keyword variation. Here are some easy ways to generate variations in your keywords.

(i) Make keywords plural. Example, niche market to niche markets.
(ii) Adding the ing to verb words. Example, market to marketing.
(iii) Adding er. Example, market to marketer.
(iv) Adding or. Example, invest to investor.
(v) Adding ment. Example, invest to investment
(vi) Adding -. Example ebusiness to e-business.
(vii) Combining and separating words . Example, Web site to Website.
(viii) Common misspellings . Example, successful to successfull
(ix) Interchange words . Example, niche marketing to marketing niche.
(x) Replace words . Example, marketing niche to marketing segment.
(xi) Use American and English spellings. Example, vigor and vigour.

Use these anywhere it is possible in your keywords or keyword phrase.

(2) Tweaking your ad copy: Are your ads attracting enough clicks? . Here are some ways you can use to generate ideas for greater CTR ads.
(i) Study the ads of your competitors. Study the way title and descriptions are written.
(ii) look at the regular result pages when you type in your keywords at Google search engine. Study the description and the title of the sites that come up.
(iii) Use very specific words like download, free, trial etc if it is relevant to your campaign.
(iv) Include the price of your product if you know that it has a comparative advantage.
(v) Emphasize benefits to users in your ads.
(vi) Write out your ad in the best possible way. Do not, at first, limit yourself to the number of words allowed. When you are satisfied then try to reduce it to number of words allowed per line.

(3) Tracking: Tracking the results of your campaign is about the most important aspect of your adwords campaign after building a great keyword list. Tracking helps to indicate where your campaign is heading, good or bad. You need to carefully follow your impressions, CPC, position, etc. All these are present in the report panel of the adwords interface.

GOOGLE ADWORDS SCENERIOS

There are different situations you will find yourself as you try to achieve and maintain a profitable adwords campaign. Sometimes, you will find that adjusting certain parameters might improve or get worsen your the campaign. The trick is to test. Don’t be afraid to test . It is only by testing that you can really get to understand how adwords works and then master it.

Let’s look at some situations we might find ourselves in while running our adwords campaign.

1. LOW IMPRESIONS AND LOW CTR.
(a) This can happen when you are just starting your adwords campaign. You have probably not read enough about the Google adwords program before drawing up your campaign.
(b) Also it can be that you have not done your keyword research very well . You might be using keywords that people hardly search for.
(c) It could also be that your daily budget is so low that Google would not want to exceed your budget. So your ad is presented very few times.
SOLUTION ;
i. Set your daily budget high. Do not worry. Google will not exhaust your daily budget. If your daily budget is set to $100 for example. You will be spending about $10 daily. Or if you set it at $20 you could be spending $5 to $7 daily. Setting the daily budget high enough gives you plenty of data to analyze your campaign. Your impressions will be high. CTR will be high too if your ad is well written.
ii. Brainstorm and research good keywords. Use the available keywords research tools to know which keywords searchers use to find your site .
iii. Write good ads that follow the keyword-title-description-landing page formula. This will increase your CTR and conversion.

2. HIGH IMPRESSION BUT LOW CTR

This is the situation new advertisers to Google adwords find themselves. Here you will be trying to convert most of your impressions to clicks. You can do this in two ways.
I. Increase your cost per click (CPC). Increasing your CPC places your ad in a high position which in turn generates high impressions. This will increase the cost of your campaign considerably. If your conversion is not good enough you might be running a loosing campaign.
II. Write better ads using the keyword-title-description-landing page formula. Searchers will be more likely to follow through from search results to clicking on your ad. This increases your CTR.
NOTE: If you have a keyword that is generating high impressions but low CTR , it is advisable to delete it. But if the keyword is important and related to your services or product you can create an adgroup for that keyword and also create ads for it. Then test and see which ad is producing the desired CTR. Further more, deleting poor performing keywords is like deleting your past poor performance. So that, the new adgroup will not be hindered.

Also, it not good to leave keywords that are not generating impressions. Delete them. Though Google will not penalize you for these keywords until the impressions have reached 1000, low impressions generating keywords will hinder keywords that are performing well. This is the case, because the Google adwords system budgets for all keywords and if your daily budget is low, your keywords, including the performing ones, will be shown less often. The system will not exceed your daily budget.
Bottom line; use fewer keywords for a low daily budget.

3. HIGH IMPRESSION,HIGH CTR GENERATED BY HIGH CPC.

Every advertiser wants high CTR with low CPC. Typically in the range of $0.05 to $0.10 per click. But in industries where there are heavy players with costly keywords, high CPC could be the order of the day. How will a small business compete in a situation like that ?

1. Again the answer is in keyword research. Extensive, in depth research will provide you with the obscure keywords that few people have discovered.
2. Another way to compete is to know how much a visitor is worth to you. You have to have a good conversion rate at your website.
If for example,

A click is $1 and you are converting at your site at 5% conversion rate. This means, for every $100 spent 5 visitors buy your product. For you to break even (that is, no profit no loss) your product must have a margin (profit) of $100/5 clicks=$20.
So if each product has a profit of $20 on top of the cost price, then for each $100 spent you will recoup $100. Anything less than $20 margin will mean a loss for you. And anything higher than $20 means a gain in your campaign.
However, due to fluctuations in ad position, CTR, conversion rate, competitive bidding by other advertisers, it is advisable to ensure that your visitors worth or click worth is such that the profit on each product is high enough to allow for these fluctuations. For the example, $35 to $40 margin would be good . I must stress that this depends on your product, industry, competitors etc. The example is to provide a general idea of what to do.

HIGH IMPRESSION AND HIGH CTR WITH LOW CPC.

This is the dream of every advertiser. Achieving this takes a lot of hard work and testing. Google adwords is unique in that your ads go online immediately. This allows you to test your ads as much as you want. When you are not satisfied, write new ads. You can also set CPC for campaign as well as for individual keywords.
One trick you can use to achieve this, is to initially set your daily budget high, CPC high, and write good ads. This will position your ad well, 1st to 6th position. Once you have achieved a good CTR (4% to 7%) gradually lower your CPC while retaining a high daily budget. Always remember that a high impression and CTR will get you a high position even if your CPC is low compared to your competitors’

HIGH IMPRESSION,HIGH CTR,LOW CPC BUT LOW CONVERSION.

In a situation like this, low conversion is due to several factors

1. Bad or wrong landing page. Your landing page must be directly related to your ad. Do not allow the visitor to search for the information which brought him to your site. Use the keyword-title-description-landing page formula. On how to create a landing page that converts very well go to http://www.wilsonweb.com/isalihu2001

2. Keywords that produce high impressions, high CTR but are not exactly related to the landing page. There are some keywords that are closely related but have different meanings. For example, the keyword phrase “web pages”. Your title and description could be for a software that builds web pages. But the searcher is looking for how to write web pages that sell. This results in many clicks to your site with very few conversion.
So you should make your title and description as explicit and direct as possible. This leaves the searcher in no doubt as to what is on the landing page.

GOOD AD POSITION.

A good ad position is from 1st to 6th position. A good ad position is obtained by having a high impressions and high ctr.

AVERAGE AD POSITION

This is typically between 7th to 10th position. A higher position is achieved by either increasing your bid or writing better ads for higher CTR

summary

1. Keyword research . Very important. The bedrock of your adwords campaign.
2. Good campaign structure as set out above.
3. Write good title, description with relevant keywords in them.
4. Follow the keywords-title-description-landing page formula
5. And test, test and test. Track your results efficiently.

Therefore, those looking for your content will come by, read your articles, and have a high probability of being interested in the targeted ads. Every time someone clicks an ad, you get paid! That is, as long as you have designed your site to maximize AdSense clickthroughs!

Let’s look at seven tips for creating AdSense sites that create money.

#1: Keyword Density

Before you place ads on your site, be sure your keyword density is good. You will want to be sure that the right kinds of ads are placed on your site. A free way to determine what the ads will look like on your site is to go to http://www.resultsgenerator.com/adsense/ and type in your keywords. You will then be able to see exactly what ads would show on your site.

If you don’t like what you see, then you know that you need to make changes to your keywords! You can get keyword suggestions from Results Generator from Overture or from the free trial version of Word Tracker.

#2: Focused

Not only will the ads be based on your keywords, but they will also be based on your content. You definitely want your keywords and your content to match as closely as possible.

#3: Write Often

The more information you have the better. Why? Because the more content you have, the more visitors you get. Many people suggest that you write a new article every day since no one wants to come back to your site to find the same old messages!

#4: Choose The Right Format

AdSense allows you to choose many different ad formats. Research has shown that wider ads are more successful. The top three formats are:

” 336×280 large rectangle
” 300×250 medium rectangle
” 160×600 wide skyscraper

Additionally, the 468×15 horizontal ad link under the navigation bar is also a good bet.

#5: Color Counts

You have the option to create a Google AdSense ad in any color of your choice. The best thing to do is to make your ad blend well with your site color scheme. You should make the border color and the background color the same color as your web site. You will want your text color to either be black or the color of your main content.

When creating your Google AdSense ads it is recommended to use the color scheme and style of your website so that the ads blend in well. Ads without background color and borders perfom better than ads within borders with background color.

#6: Position Counts, Too

It is well known that visitors to a website scan the site to determine if it is worth reading. You definitely want them to see and scan your AdSense ads. Therefore, the best place to put them is in the top left part of your page or directly under your headlines.

#7: Increase The Number

AdSense allows you to use up to three AdSense units on a page, two AdSense search boxes, and one unit of ad links. Using all that you can increases the chances of earning money.

I talked to countless people that have great traffic, some with 300 to 1000 new visitors a day that say that they only make approx. at max $10 to $20 dollars a month on the adsense program. What a shame. But when I look at their websites the ads are either buried in wording that no one usually pays attention to or the ads are located in positions that just don’t call any attention to their presence.

So were the best locations for you Google adsense ads. Well, I have found the number one best place for the ads are near or in proximity to your main menu. Why near your main menu. Because you know that visitors eyes will and always look for the menu structure of your website. So the common places for placement should be to the top right, the very top under your menu, or the top left. These are the most common locations for you main menu.

But what about the color scheme of the Google adsense ads? Yes, color is very important. You have to make the ads looks as seamless as possible. Here is an example on one of my website http://www.pottery-barn-outlet.com. Here I decided to position the ads at the very top right under my main menu. In direct eye contact. Also, remove the borders; just these two changes will increase your adsense proceeds one hundred percent.

By using these tactics I was able to increase my adsense click through rate significantly depending on traffic level and people’s interest.

First a quick overview as to what the Google Page Rank actually is…

Google Page Rank (or PR as it is often referred to as) is simply an indication of the number of websites that link to a specific website. It also attempts to indicate the quality of those links. PR ranges from 0 to 10 (with 10 being the ‘best’ PR and 0 being the ‘worst’). The vast majority of small business websites will usually find they have a PR of between 0 and 5.

To calculate a particular sites PR, Google uses a fairly complicated algorithm based on the number of web links that it is aware of that link to the site in question. This algorithm will also take into account the PR of the page that is providing the link, thus a link from a web page that has a PR of 7 will be considered more valuable than a link from a page with a PR of 4.

Because of the way in which links from higher PR-ranked sites are considered more important, many people are choosing to buy links from websites with high PR’s just so that they can increase their own PR. I have seen sites selling a simple text link on their home page for over $700 a month purely based on the fact that they have a PR of 7 or above. This may seem like a lot of money but when you consider that the website owners that are buying these links often have websites that are in no way relevant to the content of the site linking to them, it is absolutely ridiculous.

Take this example, let’s say you have a website about health and fitness and you buy a link for $500 a month from a random website because it has a PR of 7. This random website has no relevance to your health and fitness site so what is going to happen? Well, your own PR may increase as a result of the link. You may get a bit of extra traffic but probably not much since people don’t click on links that that they are not interested in. You will definitely be $500 poorer at the end of the month!

Instead, why not spend the $500 on pay-per-click advertising and benefit from some quality, targeted traffic?

Of course, there is a bit more to it than that and the reason that most people want to increase their PR is because Google takes this statistic into account when determining where a website will be displayed in their search results. Many people assume that a high PR automatically equals a high search engine placement for their chosen keywords. Not so….

PR is just one of over 100 different factors that Google takes into account when deciding where your website will feature (and these factors and the main algorithm change on a very regular basis). It is perfectly possible for a website with a PR of 5 to get a higher ranking than a PR 7 site if it has better content or is more relevant for the search term in question.

Remember that relevance is all important with Google and a link from a website that is not relevant to your own site will be considered far less important than a relevant one (which makes buying links from random sites purely because they have a high PR even more crazy).

I have read several rumours lately that Google haven’t updated PR’s for a couple of months and they are considering phasing PR out or modifying it in some way. This is pure speculation but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. PR is easily manipulated (for example by purchasing links as described above) and Google doesn’t like to have their calculations or search results manipulated. It stands to reason that they will be looking at ways of preventing this.

So, in summary, is Google Page Rank important to your business?

Well, it is a good indicator of how many other sites link to yours and how important Google considers your site to be BUT I personally don’t place too much importance on this statistic and I certainly won’t be paying out for a link from a website just because it has a high PR.

As I said above, Google changes it’s rules on a regular basis and I see little point in chasing a particular PR on the basis that it might get you higher search engine rankings. If Google do decide to do away with PR, all your work will have been for nothing.

Instead, concentrate on building quality, relevant links from sites that are connected in some way to your own site content. This will ensure that any traffic you receive via these links will at least have an interest in your site. Building links on this basis will automatically increase your PR over time (without the need to pay out for overpriced, irrelevant links). If you do things this way and Google does scrap the PR indicator, it shouldn’t affect you in any way and the links you have in place will continue to benefit you.

Let me explain…

I studied so many books about Internet marketing over the last couple of years that I decided to start a new web site, and share my knowladge and experience with other fellow Internet marketers.

Since I read lots of information about search engine optimization (SEO), I intended to optimize all of my web pages for search engines from the beginning on, expecting Google to be my number one source of traffic in the near future.

I did an extensive keyword research using WordTraker, made a blueprint for my product and article pages, and the time has come to choose a great domain name for my new project.

I went to GoDaddy, the famous domain name registar, tried this and that, and finally came up with a beautiful domain name related to Internet marketing - netmarketingstrategies.com

You probably know that Internet marketing is a very competitive niche, so I was glad that this domain name was still available. I registered it immediately.

My site was up and running in 48 hours. Now I needed some fresh web content, and to get indexed by major search engines as soon as possible.

So, I spent a week or two writing search engine optimized content for my new online business.

I usually don’t submit my new web sites to search engines for indexing. I prefer when my sites are found on other web sites and get spidered automatically.

One of the easiest ways to have a link to a web site from other sites is by writing and distributing high quality articles. So, I wrote an article about two-tier affiliate programs and submited it to major article directories.

Within a couple of days I searched for my article title in Google and noticed that it did great. Publishers liked my article and they were publishing it on their web sites and newsletters.

I expected my home page to get indexed very fast.

Time went.

Each week I searched Google to see if my site has already got indexed. It didn’t.

I decided to see if my domain has been spidered by other major search engines. Yes, both Yahoo and MSN got it. So, what went wrong? Why Google won’t index my home page?

Here’s what I think went wrong: my further investigation showed that the domain name had already been used by another webmaster and had been expired half a year ago when I registered it. It seems that the previous domain name owner was using unfair search engine optimization strategies and his web site was banned by Google.

I sent a request to Google explaining the situation and asking to lift the ban from my web site. I am not sure if they will listen and help me.

I am ready to register a new domain name in a few weeks time if I still cannot get my site indexed by Google.

For the first few months after Yahoo decided to go their own way
with natural search (and MSN decided to get serious about the
search business), the search results provided by those two could
only be described as bizarre. Enough time has now passed that
the dust has somewhat settled and there are three main (from a
traffic standpoint) sites for quality natural searches.

The term “natural search” is to distinguish true searches, as
opposed to paid advertisements which appear in the search results
for many search engines these days. I guess you can’t really
fault the search engine companies from wanting to make some money
(actually, BIG money) selling ad space, but the debate over the
virtues of natural search versus paid advertising search is
something that could take up a very large book and still have no
clear resolution…much like arguments revolving around religion
or politics.

Like most people that have been working as online home business
entrepreneurs for a few years, I was strongly conditioned to the
need to “feed the 800 pound gorilla” of the search engine world.
Basically, “if Google didn’t love you”, it was very difficult to
get any meaningful natural search traffic to your website. Since
Google was actually the search engine that was serving up the
results for most of the popular search portals, if Google didn’t
look kindly upon your site and rank you well, you would not be
ranked well for most of the high traffic search sites on the
Internet.

However, the search landscape changed dramatically early in 2004
and things have been very fluid and interesting since that time.
Its not that Google has stumbled, or become ineffective as a
search vehicle, its just that major players like Yahoo and
Microsoft (via MSN) have decided to make a major thrust into the
search business.

Having been firmly conditioned (since shortly after 1998) that
Google was the “supreme deity of search engines”, I took the
highly publicized search entries of Yahoo and MSN with more than
the proverbial “grain of salt”.

Throughout a very recent three month period, one of my websites
occupied the #5 position on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for a very
popular and important (at least in my line of business) three
word search term. This situation provided an opportunity to
measure the current popularity of each of these three search
providers.

If asked “before the fact”, I would have guessed that Google
would still be the overwhelming #1 search choice and that
Yahoo and MSN would be distant #2 and #3 choices. Therefore,
I was somewhat surprised by the results that were tabulated
during this recent 90 day period.

For the period in question, the search popularity results were
as follows:

Google: 33%
Yahoo: 31%
MSN: 23%
All others: 13%

Unfortunately, serving advertisements online isn’t always easy. Many advertisement companies offering the service of placing ads on our sites have managed to turn the advertisement business into one big mess. Thousands of sites are bogged down with non-relevant pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-ins and banners.

What happens to our sites if these advertisements rarely hit their mark? No matter how many banners and pop-ups we show about herbal remedies to our visitors if we run a website about car parts they will not be interested and they will never click on those ads.

Not only that, but this kind of untargeted advertisement can even have a negative effect on our traffic. Who wants to go to a site that requires us to close pop-ups every minute or for every page we view?

In order to have advertisements that are interesting AND relevant to our visitors there is now a program called ‘Google AdSense’.

Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant, text-based, un-obtrusive Google AdWords ads on our website’s content pages and earn money.

Since the ads are actually related to what your users are looking for on your site, you’ll have a way to both monetize and enhance your web page content. The program is free, and Google pays you for clicks on the AdWords advertisements on your site.

Google offers their AdSense program to just about all website owners. After signing up for the program with Google you receive code to enter on the pages of your site and Google will dynamically generate ads that are relevant to your own web site’s content.

Whenever a visitor clicks on one of the links in the AdSense ad on your site Google credits you with a percentage of money that was paid by the advertiser for that ad.

AdSense also provides us with the option to be selective in which type of ads we want to display on our websites making it possible to send our visitors towards a certain type of products.

To make it possible for everyone to integrate AdSense into their sites the program offers a wide variety of settings that allow us to alter the ads appearance.

The Google AdSense program is incredibly accurate. By stepping beyond the boundaries of simple keyword matching it has become one of the most prominent tools to display accurate advertisements. A list of keywords is still used as the basis of triggering ads, but complex algorithms now ensure that ads that are not related to your site’s theme no longer show up.

Following reports that Google planned to launch a new Internet payment service (nicknamed Google Wallet), Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, denied that Google would be directly competing with PayPal. He did, however, acknowledge that Google has plans for some type of electronic payment service.

Without revealing any details, Schmidt emphasized that the Google payment service will not offer the same sort of “person to person, store-valued payments system” as PayPal provides.

The Internet commerce industry was rampant with rumours of the new Google service following an e-commerce conference hosted by securities firm Piper Jaffray. Speculation that Google Wallet would encroach on PayPal territory was reinforced by the appearance of a June 20th article in the Wall Street Journal which stated that Google was planning an online payment service to compete with PayPal.

PayPal is a unit of eBay and generates almost 25% of total eBay revenue. It is used by consumers for making a wide variety of Internet purchases. It allows purchasers to use their credit cards without divulging their credit card numbers to merchants. PayPal takes a percentage of each transaction and had revenues of $233.1 million in the first quarter of this year.

Most of Google’s revenue comes from online advertising and this expansion into online payments was seen by many in the industry as yet another example of the rivalry between the two companies.

Google is a giant in Internet commerce with revenues of $3.2 billion last year. A payment service that competed directly with PayPal would be a serious blow to both PayPal and eBay.

Hi, Google here. We want to index your website…

Is anyone there?

This article has a free corresponding online video tutorial that shows you how to summons the magic Googlebot to spider and index every page on your website, and it will only take about 10 minutes of your time.

Go here now to watch exactly what to do, step-by-easy-step…

http://www.gothrive.com/google-sitemap-video.htm

What you have access to with the new Google Sitemaps program is truly a gift from the Google gods. They’ve offering you a tool that you can use to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in the search engine database. With Google Sitemaps, webmasters can now take charge and make sure that their entire site is crawled and indexed.

One important note to make is that the Google Sitemaps program will not necessarily improve the ranking of your site’s pages. It only ensures that Google knows what you’ve got online for them to look at.

Before reading the following statement, promise yourself that you won’t stop reading if you see a term that seems a little scary. OK? Promise? Good. Go ahead and keep reading then.

The format specified by Google for “their” sitemap is XML (extensible markup language). Did I loose you yet? No? Good again.

You do not need to understand how to code XML to participate in the Google Sitemap program. There are plenty of free online tools that will create your XML sitemap for you with no XML knowledge required on your part. More on this in a second.

What information is including in this XML sitemap?

1) The URL for every file on your website.

2) A relative priority rank that you can assign telling Google which pages on your site are most important for them to look at.

3) The date last modified for each page.

4) Anticipated change frequency per URL. This again is a variable that you control.

According to Google, your XML sitemap can include up to 50,000 URL’s. If your site is a real monster and has in excess of 50,000 URL’s, then you’ll need to create a hierarchy of sitemaps with one leading to the next. This way you’ll be able to lead Google to all of your pages.

The options for generating and maintaining your Google Sitemap range from complex systems that are highly automated to very simple systems using online sitemap generators that require nothing more than clicking a few buttons.

Google now keeps a list of these ‘third party suppliers’ of generators on their site. Find them here: http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html

The program that’s demonstrated in our free video tutorial (http://www.gothrive.com/google-sitemap-video.htm) is found here: http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp

In a nutshell, here are the steps involved with using online generators:

1) Start the program.
2) Enter your site’s URL
3) Click the “Start Crawling” button
4) Customize URL priorities and change frequencies
5) Save the site map to your local hard drive
6) Upload your new Google XML sitemap to your website in the root directory (where your home page resides)
7) Validate your new sitemap
(can be done here: http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/internet/google/submit-validate-sitemap/)
Submit your XML sitemap to Google.

You can access the pages for the Google Sitemap program here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

8 steps in about 10 minutes. That’s all there is to it.

One question that you might ask is whether or not you still need an HTML sitemap, and the answer is “Yes, you still need your conventional sitemap”. XML sitemaps are not intended for human visitors. To see what I mean, take a look at the two following sitemaps:

HTML sitemap: http://www.gothrive.com/sitemap.html

XML sitemap: http://www.gothrive.com/sitemap.xml

Which version do you prefer? Your visitors will like the HTML and Google prefers XML.