FreshWebz Web Design & Affiliate Marketing Blog

Use the keyword phrase in your title tag

The title tag is one of the most important tags on your Web page. And placing your keyword phrase in the title tag, preferably at the beginning, is very important to get that phrase into the search engines. Plus, that puts your keyword phrase as the link in the search engine index.

Get a domain with your keyword phrase

Putting your keyword phrase in your domain name is a great way to optimize for that phrase so use the keyword phrase in your URL.

Even if you can’t get your keywords into your domain name, you can put them into your URL’s. Search engines read the URL’s and assign value to the text they find there.

Use your keyword phrase a lot, but not too much

The ratio of your keywords to the rest of the text on your page is called the keyword density. It’s important to repeat your keywords in your document, but not too much. Keyword density should be between 3 and 7% for your primary keyword phrase and 1-2% for any secondary keywords or keyword phrases.

I received an e-mail from Google, telling me about their new search-based keyword tool!

They state “the Search-based Keyword Tool compares the content of your website against actual Google search queries to provide a list of relevant keywords which you don’t currently have in your AdWords campaigns. This new tool can help your business to grow and innovate on your keyword choices by taking the guesswork out of the process. Rather than adding keywords to an ad campaign based on what one thinks a user might search on, this tool enables you to manage your keywords based on what you know users are searching on.”

I visited the tool & was presented with a list of over 800 keyphrases, which Google says have been searched for & appear on relevant pages in my site. I decided to pick all the phrases that had a suggested cost per click up to and including £1.00 (246 of them).

I’ve spent the last 4 hours adding the phrases to my AdWords campaign, targeting the landing pages to the ones indicated by the Tool & using the suggested bids. However, as soon as I checked the keywords, all bar one are not displaying due to the bid amount being too low (even though it was the one suggested!). The quality score of the landing pages are also deemed poor, despite them being the ones that sparked off the whole process!

So, thanks Google; for suggesting I use your new tool; only to find that despite following all your suggestions, you STILL don’t display any of my ads unless I bid some ridiculous amount per click! I’ve just basically wasted an entire afternoon on this nonsense & on top of it, the new interface is rubbish! It’s slow, jerky & very frustrating to use.

What on earth is the point in giving me this information, which appears to be totally useless? Their e-mail ended:

“The Search-based Keyword tool actually found 2954 recently-searched keywords related to your site. For each suggested keyword, the tool will also show you:

• The average number of searches per month
• The competitive bidding level for each term
• The estimated bid to appear in the top three ad positions
• The suggested landing page for each keyword

To see all 2954 new keywords and decide which ones to add to your campaigns, go to www.google.com/sktool, sign in to your AdWords account, and enter your website URL. We hope that you find the Search-based Keyword Tool useful in driving even more business to your website through Google AdWords!”

Errrrrr! No it isn’t useful, has wasted my time & has not given me any new (& reasonably priced), keyphrases that I can bid on!

I will definitely not be returning to AdWords any time soon!

I’ve started working on writing more articles & getting them submitted to various directories. This is a time consuming process, but appears to be one of the few effective methods of getting decent, quality links pointing to my sites.

Although this whole writing process doesn’t come naturally to me, it’s surprising how quickly I’m now reaching my 500+ word target each time. But 500+ words in themselves are not enough; ensuring that the article contains combinations of the keywords & keyphrases you want to target is vital, as this content then shows that your site is relevant to those searched for keyphrases.

But are article submissions worth the time & effort? Once registered with an article directory, manual submissions take around 10 to 15 minutes on average to login, format and submit properly. Obviously, the writing of the article is a separate issue & can take a couple of hours to research and write. However, once the article is written, it can be re-submitted to a number of directories, withi only minor adjustments.

The more directories you submit your articles to, the more exposure they will receive & more links will be detected by the search engines, but you will need to make at least 10 submissions to get a reasonable exposure for your articles, adding up to a couple of hours per article!

To make the most of my time I have to make sure that the article directories I am submitting to, are able to bring me as many visitors and backlinks as possible. I am going to try to do at least 10 manual submissions for each article, so it’s important to choose those directories wisely. The only two ratings easily available to web users to judge the quality of websites and web pages are its Alexa Rating and Google PageRank. Both are not conclusive and often do not reflect the true authority or traffic of a page. But since there is nothing better, I will stick to these two figures when deciding if a directory is worth submitting to. Of course, one must not forget the power of themed sites. If you have a choice between a general directory and a directory focusing on the article topic; it’s better to choose the latter.

The current Top 10 article directories (by Alexa Ranking and with a Page Rank of around 5/6) are shown below & these are my starting point for any article submissions:

1. ezinearticles.com
2. ArticlesBase.com
3. buzzle.com
4. helium.com
5. webpronews.com
6. goarticles.com
7. searchwarp.com
8. articledashboard.com
9. articlealley.com
10. articlesnatch.com

However, there are some restrictions placed on articles by these directories; for example, buzzle.com insists that their articles are unique & not reproduced on any other directory, so you will have to write a different article just for this site. Some, such as ArticlesBase.com may apply “nofollow” to the article links, so you won’t benefit from an inbound link.

EzineArticles.com and Buzzle.com can bring you a lot of traffic, GoArticles.com brings you backlinks, and ArticlesFactory.com PageRank. You can even earn money from your articles by publishing them on Helium!

If you don’t have the time, or are not able to write articles by yourself, there are many content providers and ghost writers who can provide articles & then other services that submit them to the directories for you. I have used some of these services myself in the past, but I think the old adage of “you get what you pay for” applies, as I have not been impressed with the cheaper offerings I have seen so far!

I am considering using some more expensive services in the near future, but the cost does vary wildly; from $5 per article (for very poor offerings), to the most recent quote I had of £100 per article!! I think something inbetween will be more in my league & will blog about any that I find particularly useful/value for money.

Secretly spy on & uncover anyone’s Google Adword Keywords while you browse Google in real-time!

Download This Revolutionary New Keyword Research Tool For Free NOW!!

Keywords are the backbone and foundation of an online business as they are how people find your website. Without keywords, hardly anybody would ever find your site to purchase whatever it is you’re selling.

When broken down into its simplest form, what separates a failing online business from a thriving one is that the thriving business knows EXACTLY which targeted keywords/keyphrases will send “buyers” to their website. While, the failing internet business (99% of internet businesses) are blindly guessing which keywords to advertise with.

Based on this extremely simplistic view, we know that in order to have a successful internet business, we MUST know with 100% certainty which keywords are going to send potential buyers to our website – people that are actually looking to purchase whatever it is we’re selling.

Now, the question is…How do find out which keywords to advertise and base our business marketing on?

This is where PPC Web Spy comes into play…

With PPC Web Spy, you’ll be able to uncover all of the keywords that successful businesses are already making money with. Then, you’ll be able to take those keywords and advertise your own business.

Let me give you an example…

Let’s say you were selling a “how to make money on the internet” eBook. You would use PPC Web Spy to show you all of the keywords that a very well-known, proven, “how to make money on the internet” eBook seller was already advertising with.

Instead of you spending months and even years figuring out which keywords could potentially make you money, you can simply swoop in and take the keywords from this successful eBook seller… The keywords that probably took them months or years to uncover.

Then, just advertise your own eBook with those keywords and you can expect similar results!

Here’s a brief rundown of the specific “features” within PPC Web Spy…

You’ll be able to quickly and easily uncover any Google Adwords advertiser’s keywords in only a few seconds! Then, simply take those keywords and advertise your own product or service and get ready for the money to come rolling in!

You’ll be able to see critical Adwords data relating to each keyword. Data such as:

• The actual Adwords ads your competitors have written for each keyword
• The Cost Per Click, or amount your competitors are paying for each keywords they’re bidding on
• Your competitor’s Adwords rank, so you’ll be able to determine how much money you should be spending to get your site to a similar rank, to expect similar results.
• The total daily amount your competition is spending via Google Adwords
• And much more!

You can use PPC Web Spy to generate your own giant list of keywords based upon any of the individual keywords your competition is using!

You can also generate a giant, targeted keyword list by inputting your competitor’s domain name, allowing you to build an even larger, more targeted keyword list!

You’ll even be able to see the exact landing page (i.e. destination URL) that each Adwords advertiser is sending visitors to, WITHOUT actually clicking on their Adwords ad and charging them money – a very generous touch   )

It means that you’ll be able to shave off hours, days, months, and even years of time doing keyword research and testing exactly which keywords convert visitors to buyers. It means you won’t have to waste massive amounts of money as you slowly figure out your market’s “best” keywords.

PPC Web Spy saves you both time & money… and because PPC Web Spy is a Firefox plugin, rather than a bulky, standalone desktop application, you’ll be able to save money and time as you casually browse Google like you normally would. It’s VERY cool and powerful.

Don’t forget, the software is FREE to download, so why not give it a try & see how it can make a difference to your keyword research?!

If you’re selling products and services that are related to a special area, it is crucial that your website gets found by people that are looking for it. One of the easiest ways to get found by people that live in your area is to optimise your web page titles for your product & location.

What is the web page title?

The title of a web page is the text that is written between the tags in the HTML head code of a web page, is displayed in the web browser window when someone visits your website and it is usually used as the linked text when your website appears in the search results.

Why should you use optimised web page titles?

The web page title is one of the main factors that Google, Yahoo and other search engines use to rank web pages. A good, relevant, informative web page title greatly improves the chances of getting high search engine rankings for your product/service.

The web page title is used by the search engines as the bold linked text on search result pages. That means that it should be clear, relevant, concise and appealing, so that web surfers will be drawn to click on it.

How to write your web page title so that it gets better local rankings

If you optimise your web page titles correctly, they will both increase your search engine rankings and attract people from the local area & those looking for your products/services, to your website.

You’ll benefit from targeted traffic and targeted traffic leads to more conversions i.e. sales. Here are some things that you can do to improve your web page titles:

Include the name of your business, important keywords and your city in the title of your homepage:

FreshWebz – Affordable web design in London and Essex

Depending on your business size, change the order of these items. Well known businesses should list their company name first. If your business is new then it’s usually better to list the keyword first:

Affordable web design for small businesses: Freshwebz in London

People are probably looking for a solution to their problem (web design) instead of your actual company name. Instead of your town, you can also use the name of the greater area if your service is available in that area.

Use a different title tag for every page. This is important! The title should reflect the content that can be found on the page, so it’s less effective just copying the homepage title to every page. For branding purposes, the titles should contain your company name and a popular keyword for which you want to be found on search engines:

FreshWebz: Search engine optimisation & SEO services in London and Essex
FreshWebz: Web design Portfolio – websites designed for recent clients
FreshWebz: Contact us for an affordable quote for your new website design

Use short web page titles. Short titles are much easier to read for web surfers. Do not try to stuff your title with keywords in the same way that you wouldn’t stuff your page content with keywords. It is much better if your web page title is highly relevant to one keyword, than somewhat relevant to many keywords. If you want to optimise your website for different keywords, optimise different pages for different keywords.

Do not use special characters in your titles. Avoid symbols and other special characters wherever possible. They might not be displayed properly on all computers and your website listing might look strange in the search results.

If you change your web page titles as described, your website will get better rankings on search engines and it will be found by people looking for your products/services & who live in the right area. By getting more visitors for one topic, you will improve the overall ranking of your site & so improve your position for other search terms.

Unfortunately, the web page title is not the only element that influences the position of your website in the search results of Google and other search engines. If you want to make sure that your site appears in the top 10 results, you should optimise all factors that are needed to get top rankings. FreshWebz can offer your website guaranteed Top 10 Google rankings for your desired keywords in the natural listings.

I blogged previously about the failure of my short breaks white label site to make any sales, whilst it was integrated into the main My Travel Extras site.

As a result, I set up the site as a standalone short breaks mini-site & have just set a PPC campaign on Google, using only 3 or 4 (or even more), exact match keyphrases. I’ve created 4 different ad variations & limited my bids to £0.50 so that I’m not spending too much per click. With this budget, Google predicts at an average CPC of £0.37 – £0.49, these keywords could potentially generate 36 – 69 clicks per day (which would cost £20 – £40).

I think this is plenty for now, assuming a few sales come from these clicks(!), but I will be fine tuning the campaign as I go & see if these figures improve. If Superbreak make sales, then using an identical copy of their site & directing relevant traffic MUST generate sales, musn’t it?!!!!!

Time will tell!

Last week, Google added the Google Suggest feature that had been available in beta for a long time to its main page. This might sound like a small change but it can have a big effect on the traffic that you get from Google.

Google Suggest adds suggestions to your search query while you type it. For example, if you type “holiday” in Google’s search box, then Google will suggest “holiday inn”, “holiday insurance”, “holiday hypermarket” and a variety of other keywords.

The implementation of Google Suggest on the main search page might have several effects on the keywords that web surfers use:

MP3 is a very popular search term. However, it’s unlikely that a search for “mp3″ will return the results that the web surfer searched for. When you now search on Google, Google will suggest “mp3 player”, “mp3 downloads” and “mp3 converter” among many other suggestions. It’s likely that the web surfer will choose one of these suggestions because they describe more accurately what they are looking for.

Some people might think that the options offered in Google’s suggest box are the only possible keyword combinations that can be entered. Other people might rely on Google’s suggested keywords out of convenience.

Technically less adept web surfers or lazy people might stick with the default suggestions instead of really typing what they are looking for.

Instead of many different keyword combinations, the same (suggested) keyword combinations might be searched over and over. This could result in increasing AdWords prices for these keywords and in increased competition for these keywords.

Long-tail keywords are keywords that typically consists of 4-6 words. These keywords are usually very targeted and they often lead to conversions because people who enter long-tail keywords know what they’re looking for. As Google mainly suggests keywords that consist of up to 3 keywords, the amount of long tail keywords might decrease.

On the other side, Google Suggest might show some people that it is possible to refine search queries. Web surfers might use Google’s suggested keywords and further refine the queries with their own words. People who never thought about their search terms now might start to do so.

Good inbound link texts can give your website a boost in Google’s search results. Unfortunately, many people still don’t take advantage of the full potential of optimised link texts. They will list their links with the title of their site or use the time honoured phrase “click here“! This article explains how to make the most out of your links.

What is a link text?

The link text is the text in the clickable text that is used to link to another web page. It is the text between the anchor tags. That’s why some people call link texts anchor texts.

Why are link texts important?

Google and other major search engines heavily rely on link texts to specify the position of web pages in the search results. If many websites link to a web page with the link text “travel” then Google thinks that the web page must be relevant to the keyword “travel”. For that reason, the web page will get a ranking boost for that search term.

The more often a keyword appears in links to your website, the better your rankings for that keyword will be.

How to write good links

There are a few easy tips that will make your links more useful for both web surfers and search engines:

1. Write your texts as if there were no links. Search engines like links that are in the normal text of your web page. The content should make sense to the user e.g.

Getting links from another web page is a great way to improve your rankings on Google and other search engines.

2. Do not describe the action of the link, or a meaningless title, but the purpose of the link:

Bad: Click here for more information on cheap flights.

Good: Further information about cheap flights can be found on our site

3. Use clear and descriptive text for your links. The link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context.

Bad: The software can be downloaded for free on the product name website.

Good: The software can be downloaded for free on the product name website.

4. Avoid unpleasant surprises. If the link goes to a web page that starts a movie, or downloads a file then you should warn the user by mentioning this in the link:

You can download our review of this destination for free.

Many website visitors do not read the text on a web page but scan the highlighted keywords. For that reason, your link texts should be easy to understand & catch their attention even if people haven’t read the surrounding text.

Use keywords in your link texts whenever possible. The more often a keyword appears in a link to a specific web page, the better are the chances that this web page will get higher rankings on Google for that keyword.

1. Look for keywords on your own web site.
Think like a customer and pick the words that your customers might be searching on to find you.

2. Use a keyword suggestion tool.
Google and Miva both offer keyword research tools. The Google Keyword Tool has been updated to show actual search volumes rather than a graphic. Miva also shows search totals on its Keyword Generator. Yahoo no longer offer the Overture tool, but if you are signed up to Yahoo Search Marketing, you can use the Yahoo! Keyword Assistant to research new keywords.

3. Think about keywords that attract customers at each stage of the buying cycle.
The buying cycle has three major phases: research, shopping and purchase. The closer someone is to buying, the more specific your keywords should be. For example, customers may search for “guitar” during research, “Fender guitar” while shopping, and “American Standard Fender Telecaster guitar” when they’re ready to purchase.

4. Pick a mix of broad and specific keywords.
Keep in mind that using more generic keywords, like “guitar,” can cause you to go through your budget and may not lead to sales as often, but can be helpful for driving traffic from prospective customers who are in the research phase. Selecting more specific keywords may deliver fewer clicks, but they may be more likely to result in sales.

Some time ago, I set up a white label dating site, using the DIY Dating webmaster programme.

The site, Looking4Me, is still running but I have to be honest & say it was pretty much a “build & leave it” job; I really haven’t spent much effort in promoting it – added it to a couple of dating traffic exchanges and did some link exchanges, but other projects took over & I felt that the dating market was far too competitive to spend time & money on PPC. I have had 205 people sign up & few have even paid for a membership (they join the existing membership, totalling about 300000 members), but I still haven’t done much pushing of the site.

However, I recently received a brochure from White Label Dating, stating that they had a number of site owners earning considerable sums from their websites (between £20k & £30k a month!!). Obviously, I am not aiming for anything like this, but it seems that Internet Dating is still a booming industry & it would be stupid to not try & take advantage of it as an affiliate marketer!

So I decided to give it a go & set up another dating site, Find Me Dates, using the White Label Dating system. There are a number of big name companies using their system, but it seemed they were all using a landing page, rather than using the white label site as their home page. So I’ve done the same thing myself. A landing page allows you to optimise for search engines & make the site look good.

I was able to add features from the dating engine to the landing page, such as a member search & pictures of the newest members & then any click through takes the user to the membership pages. The landing page has been optimised for 10 dating keyphrases – london dating, dating agencies, dating agency, friend finder, online dating, uk singles, dating site, uk dating, internet dating, dating girls, which all had a good KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index), which is the ration of searches to results in the search engines. I will be submitting to web directories, using combinations of these keywords to generate inbound links & will see how the rankings go.

In addition, I am considering a PPC campaign on Miva, but still need to carry out research on the cost per click for what is a competitive sector – I may have to pick some very exact, long tail phrases to start with!