Google Adsense is an easy way for many people to make money online. Whether you have a business website or a personal blog, utilizing some simple tips to optimize your ads can make a huge difference in your revenue. Two identical sites can have completely different profits from AdSense based on how they place their ads. Be sure that whatever changes you make to your site to optimize your ads does not conflict with Google’s policies. Fooling with the AdSense code will never be beneficial for you in the long run.

Matching your AdSense colors with the colors of your site is an easy, but effective way of making them more visible. Experiment until you have two or three color schemes that you know perform well with your site colors. Then you can occasionally rotate color schemes so your ads will seem fresh. Do not use borders around your text ads. Ads without a border that blend with the color scheme of a site always outperform other ad units.

One of your best options to optimize your ads is to use Google’s site-specific search box along with AdSense. Putting ads at the top and bottom of the search result page will ensure a higher click through rate (CTR). The top right corner of your site is a highly-visible spot to put a search box. Another easily executed tip is placing images above or next to your ad units. Everyone knows that “a picture is worth a thousand words” and since your ad space limits the text description, a thousand words can be really useful for increasing your visibility.

Where you place your ads is very important. A webpage is similar to a newspaper in that whatever is “above the fold” or seen first when the page is loaded has the highest impact. By placing your AdSense ads high up on your page people will see them without scrolling down your site. This is a well-known way of increasing your CTR.

Search engine optimization is one of the most vital qualities for high traffic websites. In addition, users coming to your site from search engines are more likely to click on your AdSense ads than regular readers. Placing ads in known high performing ad slots such as the top of left sidebar and the top of individual posts can have an immediate effect on your CTR.

Experimenting with these practical tips for optimizing Google AdSense can both increase your revenue and familiarize you with the most effective marketing strategies for your site. When you make a change, try it for a couple of weeks to get a thorough effect of the results.

First of all, I am absolutely 100% certain I am dealing with a penalty. A search for my domain (in the style of ‘keyword-info.tld’), with the tld omitted will put me somewhere at page 6. Other tlds with the same domain (not owned and/or operated by me) do show up on page 1 as they should, but their tlds don’t match the country I’m targeting. So a penalty it is. Here’s a list of things I tried:

• Fixed trailing slash duplicate content issue through a 301.
• Fixed ‘index.php’ duplicate content issue through a 301.
• Fixed ‘www’ subdomain canonical duplicate content issue through a 301.
• Removed all defective and/or thematically irrelevant links.
• Added a privacy policy.
• Added a creativecommons licensing statement.
• Checked robots.txt -> nothing wrong.
• Checked safebrowsing tool -> nothing wrong.
• Checked meta tags -> nothing wrong.
• Added noindex,follow to news index and category pages.
• Added rel=”nofollow” to a button of a thematically relevant high-quality top 50 listing – I NEVER purchased or sold a SINGLE link.
• Added ‘nofollow’ to my free thematic business listing, just in case G might be thinking I’m selling these positions.
• Built a couple of nice high-quality links through guest posting.
• Added new quality content on a regular basis.
• Added a tag cloud to improve crawlability.
• Added a great deal of relevant Wikipedia-like internal linking (as per Ronburk’s classic post).
• Added noindex,follow on the individual tag-pages to prevent duplicate content.
• Added the new canonical tag (yes, I am desperate).
• Removed interlinking (it was only minor anyways).

So, did I miss anything? I have to say that several external sites display one or more of my content pages. However, these pages all contain backlinks to my site, signaling to Google that my site is the original content provider. Note that we are talking about maybe 3 of 4 sites that each display a single page of my content. Should I ask these webmasters to take down my content or replace it with an excerpt? I’m not really sure whether this is the culprit, since I have another site which has been penalized in the same way at the same time. This site however does not have any copies of its content floating around and is thematically completely unrelated to the first site.

As you can see, I’m running out of options. As it stands now, my site is insanely clean. On-site duplicate content is virtually non-existant and all other technical issues are ironed out (gzip compression is on etc.).

Any ideas?

Even if you haven’t heard about Google Suggest, you may have seen it in action while typing a search query on Google. As you type, it displays suggested search phrases in a drop-down menu below the search box. Here are seven great things about using Google Suggest:

1.) It can make entering long search queries much faster; searchers may use the mouse pointer or down arrow key to select a desired suggestion, after only typing a few letters.

2.) Because its content is partially based upon other searchers’ queries, Google Suggest is great for learning about what sort of things people are searching for on the web.

3.) Google Suggest can be helpful for getting new writing ideas on a particular category you are interested in; just type in one or two words describing the subject.

4.) This Google feature is also great for helping you remember the names of places, songs, products, and other things that you can only recall a portion of.

5.) It lets users preview how many results there are for a particular word or phrase. The number of results is listed to the right of each suggested query (in no particular order).

6.) Additionally, this tool makes it easier to search for words you don’t know how to spell. Type the first few letters of the word, and there’s a good chance the rest will be suggested.

7.) Google Suggest pops up quickly and works under most major web browsers. It doesn’t require the installation of any extra software or new browser plug-ins.

If you prefer to use another search engine, it may have an equivalent to Google Suggest. Yahoo! has “Search Assist” and Ask.com offers “Search Suggestions”. These are quite similar, except that they don’t show the number of results alongside each suggestion.

Google.com offers its Webmaster Tools service to all webmasters free of charge. The tools provide a range of useful statistics, the ability to communicate certain search listing preferences directly to Google, and diagnostic features that list search optimization errors to correct.

Google Webmaster Tools holds great importance to webmasters for two main reasons:

1.) It gives webmasters a “look under the hood” of how Google works, which provides them with a greater understanding of search result rankings and indexing.

2.) It enables webmasters to get a better idea of what Google “thinks” about their web sites, how the Google “spider” sees them, and what improvements could be made.

MANY USEFUL FEATURES

In addition to interactively helping webmasters better comply with Google’s guidelines, Webmaster Tools can automatically perform various useful services like creating a Robots.txt file, counting links, or generating custom 404 error page messages.

Webmasters can not only find out what Google search phrases brought visitors to their sites, but the searches that made their pages show up in results. This holds importance because it may be used to determine what pages need more attractive description tags.

Site listing preferences like URL style (show “www” in results or not), image search inclusion, country-specific targeting, and “spidering” frequency, may be set in Google Webmaster Tools as well (under the “Settings” tab).

OVERALL IMPORTANCE

It is of the most importance that Webmaster Tools gives webmasters clear information on how to make their sites more acceptable to Google, the top search engine. This has the potential to raise a site’s position in results, considerably increasing its traffic.

However, the Webmaster Tools service does not replace Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tasks like META tag creation, keyword density enhancement, or link building. It also doesn’t take into account the policies of different search engines like Yahoo and MSN, which also hold importance.

OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Do other major engines offer Webmaster Tools equivalents? To some extent, yes. MSN/Live has the Live Search Webmaster Center (webmaster.live.com), and the “Webmaster Resources” section of Yahoo! Help offers some useful links within their site. Ask.com has a page oriented to webmasters as well.

ABOUT GOOGLE.COM

According to their web site, Google was incorporated in 1998 and relocated to Mountain View, CA (its current location) a year later. Google’s importance to webmasters grew as it rapidly became the top engine in following years, and Webmaster Tools was established in 2006.

Considering that this service is free and easy to register for, there is little reason for webmasters not to give it a try.

We noticed a change in the Google Algorithm for several of our clients at the end of January.  Many of our clients improved in the rankings, but a few also dropped significantly.   In hindsight, we are now are hearing that the Google Algorithm is the introduction of ‘brand’ measurements that is attempting to introduce another TRUST factor in addition to link popularity.  The general thinking is that the Internet has become a ‘cesspool’ of low quality content and links and it is more important than ever to ’signal’ to Google that your website is a trusted site for the most popular of keywords.

One of the best articles outlining this recent algorithm is from Aaron Wall at SEOBook.com : http://www.seobook.com/google-branding

Aaron uses Rank Pulse to show how large brands moved into the Top 10 rankings on Google; for example 9 out of the Top 10 rankings for ‘auto insurance’ are big auto insurance providers.

Other interesting reads on this topic:

• http://blog.mannixmarketing.com/2009/02/google-algorithms-brands/
• http://www.seomoves.com/blog/tag/google-algorithm-update/

Gmail has a lot of features beyond just sending and receiving email. Some of these are included to but not limited to creating filters and labels. Having filters and lables allows you to organize your email quickly and efficiently. We all receive lots of email each day – we might as well keep our Gmail accounts organized.

After I created my video I did a little research and found a video from Google. Ours is a little bit shorter without all the fluff!

Filters and Labels – Google

Many different factors influence your web site’s ranking among Google search results. Here are some of the top factors you should take into consideration, in no particular order:

- Inbound Links: Google is more likely to give your site a top ranking if other relevant web sites link to it, especially if they are well-known sites.

- META Tags: Description and title tags are also among the top factors to consider; they ought to be optimized with search keywords and appropriate text lengths. Be sure not to use the same tags on different pages.

- Spider Accessibility: Your site’s pages must be accessible to Google’s automated “spider” (or “robot”) system so that it can index them. Adding a “Site Map” will help make this possible.

- Creation Date: New sites generally receive low ranking levels in Google results for several months, while they are in the “Supplemental Index”. New pages are also at a disadvantage.

- Keywords: Web pages rank better when the search keywords being targeted are used repeatedly (but not too much) in the text, esp. if they coincide with the title and file name.

- Outbound Links: Linking to the wrong kinds of web sites (like bad neighborhoods) or exchanging links with unrelated web sites may harm your Google search ranking, especially if you do this more than once.

- File/Domain Names: Google also factors in the relevance of words within your web site’s URL, which includes its file, top level domain, subdirectory, and subdomain names.

- Outdated Links: It is best to avoid leaving links on your site that lead to URLs which no longer exist (this occurs when the linked pages have disappeared or changed their URLs).

These are some of the top factors which affect your site’s ranking on Google. Others also play a role, like image ALT text, time between updates, and the wording of inbound links.

The holiday season is over and all of us will spent hours with our favorite countdowns of the year. The search industry gets especially excited when top search term charts come out. After taking time to browse the top searches of 2008 on Ask and Yahoo!, then browsing this year’s edition of the Google Zeitgeist, I have to wonder: why do so many people search for branded websites in search engines?

According to Google, “facebook” (broad matched, of course) is the no. 2 searched term in 2008 behind “obama.” Ask’s rankings have the social network as the no. 5 most searched for term.

I totally understand that people searching online have a wide variety of education and comfort levels with the internet. Fine. That said, why on earth do people need to search “facebook” in Google or Ask to, presumably, find Facebook.com? Everyone says they left a comment on their friend’s  Facebook wall because, well, they left it on Facebook! Try using a direct web address every once and a while.

The tendency to search for web domain names is especially prevalent in Ask, where five branded wLebsites rank in their top 10 searches. I find it really funny that “Google” is the no. 3 top search term in Ask – anyone else? Ask is most likely being used by people who have a lower experience and comfort level with the internet. While I find this information interesting and useful for those who manage PPC accounts, is information like this useful at all to SEOs?

Other things I learned from the top search rankings for Yahoo!, Ask, and the Zeitgeist:

• Fans of professional wrestling own computers and can read (presumably) – WWE no. 2 top search in Yahoo!
• What RuneScape (a World Of Warcraft-style RPG) is – no. 5 search in Yahoo!
• surfthechannel is going to be a large player in 2009 for internet TV – no. 10 in Zeitgeist.
• People use Ask to gather information – Dictionary, Cars, Online degrees, and Credit score were some of the top searches.

Search on Yahoo! is still strongly driven by the entertainment industry, with the only non-entertainment related top 10 term being “Barack Obama.” Although, if you believe the ads from the McCain campaign, Obama is the world’s biggest celebrity. Whatever.

Anyway, in addition to Yahoo’s swing towards entertainment, I believe the news Yahoo! leads with in their  featured box directly drives how people search on their site. Argue amongst yourselves about whether or not she was a “search-worthy” celebrity this year, but did Yahoo! feature every Britney Spears headline – minor or major – she made in 2008? Yep. Thus the search volume.

Any other observations you made after checking out this year’s top searches? I’d love to hear ‘em. Thanks for hearing mine.

The recently released Google’s guide to SEO provides some highlights to what Google views as important:

1. Always focus on User Experience with the current SEO focus being on reducing bounce rate.
2. Always have unique page titles and Meta descriptions, this is easy to track with Google Webmaster tools.  Also, avoid using generic page names like page1.html.
3. Use short concise URL strings, preferably with descriptive words.  We recommend dashes, not underscores.
4. Make your site navigation as flat as possible.  Both in number of directories and clicks from home page.
5. Be consistent in your internal linking (caps versus no caps, www versus no www).
6. One URL to each document, avoid duplicate URL paths to the same content.
7. Have an xml and html sitemap with no errors.
8. Make sure the link text of all internal links is keyword focused.
9. Create content silos using breadcrumb navigational structure properly.

We decided it was time to revisit the topic of Google announcement of its’ improved indexing of Flash and get an update.  Basically, I came across 4 case studies on Google’s indexing of Flash showing that:

1. Since the introduction of support for SWFObject in July, Google hasn’t associated text content in Flash with the correct parent URL or as a single entity.
2. Flash files can accrue PageRank independent of their own parent URLs.
3. Google doesn’t index URLs containing #anchors (fragment identifiers) in Flash per W3C Guidelines.
4. Currently, Google doesn’t seem to support translations of text content in Flash.

These case studies continue to show that SEO for Flash can be achieved but only if done properly and then it will have limited value when compared to a site without Flash.  SEO can be done for Flash, but it is not optimal.  The Adobe announcement has not changed the recommendations for the immediate future because:

• Google can see text and links inside the Flash file which is good but it will not split them up a Flash file into multiple pages and index them separately. That means that your Flash file will be the equivalent of one, massive HTML page, unless you break it up into multiple HTML landing pages.  Remember that this can’t use the #anchor because Google will not treat that as a separate URL.
• Google will not run all types of Javascript and this makes it uncertain in the fact that Googlebot will index a Flash file that is embedded using the SWFObject script.
• If you have content dynamically loading into your Flash movies from an 3rd party XML file, this content may not be indexed by Google.

Until this is settled, one of the best alternatives is to make  an HTML alternative that is not only helpful to the search engines, it’s also great for people without the Flash plugin and for disabled site visitors.

Sources for Blog Post:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html

http://www.beussery.com/blog/index.php/2008/10/google-flash-seo/

http://www.yourseoplan.com/seo-for-flash.html