Make More Money From Your Ideas

"Is it better to host my blog on my own Web site, so it gets a better ranking in Google?"

Ideally, yes, you're right - hosting it on your own Web site is an advantage for Google.

But that's an answer for advanced users. For just starting out, I recommend that people use Blogger, and either host it at blogspot (default) or a separate domain name. These don't give you the same advantages as hosting it on your own Web site, but it does mean you can use some of Blogger's handy layout and indexing tools.

Of course, you can get the best of both worlds with some other blog software like WordPress.

Labels: blogs, search engine listings

"How do I get a number one ranking on search engines, such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo?"

Easy - pay for it.

Seriously. The easiest way to get a #1 ranking is to pay for advertising on these search engines. And the good news is that this is no longer only something for big companies with deep pockets. Pay-per-click advertising is well within the reach of any business. For example, with Google AdWords, you can have streams of visitors to your site for as little as $0.05 per click.

Labels: Google advertising, search engine listings

"I received an e-mail from somebody who promised to get me a top 10 listing in the search engines. Is this a good deal?"

Probably not.

Most of this e-mail is spam, and if the company is resorting to spamming YOU, they will probably use spam when they promote you as well, and that's bad.

If search engine marketing is important to you, then you require help from a company that specialises in this area. I highly recommend Ed Keay-Smith of Adwords Marketing, who is Australia's leading expert on Google AdWords and other search engine marketing techniques.

Labels: search engine listings

By far the best thing you can do is to put your main key words and phrases in the "title" tag of your page. This can dramatically improve your search engine rankings, especially if you're not doing this already.

Every page should have a title that is appropriate for the content of that page. So most pages will have different titles, but that doesn't HAVE to be the case - it depends on the page content.

This is just one of the tools for getting free traffic.

Click here for a free tutorial on this topic.

Labels: search engine listings

"If I were to add four or five META Keywords to a page of my website, how should the words be displayed or separated (eg on a single line separated by commas, or or separate lines for each Key word). And how many key words can I use for a page?"

It doesn't seem to matter much; however, the conventional wisdom
is to have them on a single line separated by commas. The most common advice for length seems to be 100-150 characters (Note: This is characters, not words!)

Having said this, most search engines nowadays do NOT consider META keywords as important. It's just too easy to put in keywords that are unrelated to the page content, so the search engines tend to ignore the keywords and just look at the page content instead.

So you're better off using your keywords in the title, sub-headings and text of the page (in that order).

Labels: search engine listings

"How do I get a higher Google ranking?"

This is a very broad answer, but I can start by giving you some overall guidelines.

First, one fast and simple way is to buy Google advertising, which will get you near the top within minutes. And it's not necessarily going to cost you a fortune.

If you'd like to go down the free path, though, the first step is to write stuff that people would like to read. People search the Net looking for information first, not for products. So Google gives higher priority to Web pages that provide useful (free) information. If your Web site doesn't do this, then it's going to be much harder to get a high ranking.

If you do provide free information, then you can start optimizing your pages to suit Google.

Labels: search engine listings

If you're asking this question, congratulations! It's one of the most common questions I get asked about search engine marketing, and one of the most important.

The answer is that you should do both - pay for Google ads and continue to market your Web pages for the free listings.

Ed and I talk about this in the interview for Get Traffic Fast, and you can listen to that part of it here:

Labels: Google advertising, search engine listings

"How do i find out useful keywords for my business and rank them
according to preferences.Is there any tool available?"

Start with the free Overture search term suggestion tool. Just type in your keywords and it will tell you how many people have searched Overture for those words in the past 30 days. Overture covers a lot of the Internet, so by comparing different keywords, you get a pretty good idea of what's the most popular.

Then you can take this and do even more market research to refine this list of keywords.

Labels: search engine listings

"How do I find out where search engines are placing me on their list and how do I change that position without paying for specific advertising?"

To answer the first part of your question, just do a Google search for the keywords you're interested in.

Look through the first 3 pages of results. If your Web site appears here in these three pages, that's good. If not, then it might as well be invisible, because most Internet users only look at the first three pages of results.

There are ways of improving your search engine position. The catch, though, is that it's a bit of a hit-and-miss process. And even if you do get the position you're looking for, are you sure that searchers are using the same keywords you used? I recommend that you do pay for some advertising, even if just for a short time. That will give you a better indication of what people are searching for.

Labels: search engine listings

"How do I properly list my business in search engines to get the optimum traffic visiting?"

The first thing is to do some research to find whether there's a market for your products.

Then I recommend that you buy some Google advertising to experiment with various keywords combinations. Yes, I know that you're talking about free listings, but I do recommend that you buy some traffic first. Even if you only invest $100 in this form of advertising, it will give you a clear idea of what keywords are the most popular.

Then start optimizing your Web pages to get a higher listing for free search engine traffic. There are specific things that you can do, and they don't require much effort. However, if you're doing them on the wrong keywords, it won't help at all! That's why I recommend buying the advertising first.

Labels: Google advertising, search engine listings

"How do I promote my site in search engines, without a great time-lag between new pages uploaded and returns from the engines?"

Use Google AdWords.

This is by far the quickest way to get listed in Google. It does mean that you're paying them, but it also means that you get an extremely high level of control over your listing. Typically, I find that my ad gets listed within 5-10 minutes of me creating it! It also means that if the ad is not working, I can take it down within 5 minutes as well.

I think that perhaps you were asking about getting listed fast with the free listings. The trouble is that you have less control over the search engine "spiders" that crawl the Web regularly. That doesn't mean you're completely helpless, though. For example, if Google already knows about a page that's changing regularly (your blog, for example), it will visit that page more often. So you can add a link from that page to your new page, making it more likely to be listed quickly.

Labels: Google advertising, search engine listings

"How do I make my website hit the top ten or 20, when searching say in
Google (1ST WOULD BE BETTER). Is it to do with maths, in the construction of the site?"

The #1 factor that will get you to the top of search engines is to write valuable information that people would like to read. The search engine's job is to serve the searcher, not the Web site owner. The more relevant and topical your information, the better its chances of getting a high ranking.

After that, you can consider various techniques for adjusting your page to increase your ranking. There are a number of simple things you can do to enhance your Web page, and thus boost your ranking.

Labels: Google advertising, search engine listings

"I would like to learn more about meta tags and other ways to optimize for search engines. What they are, where to find them, where to put them. I read articles all the time that tell you to use meta tags but no one says where to go to and put the keyword or whatever there for the meta tag. I see meta tags on the html for my website but is the information there not supposed to be there? Do I replace it or do I create my own?"

You've been slightly misinformed about meta tags, or perhaps you're reading material that is out of date. Search engines used to place a high emphasis on meta tags, but they don't do so any more because they are so easy for the Web site owner to manipulate.

Nowadays, search engines primarily look for high-quality content on your Web site. There are ways of adjusting your Web pages to attract the search engines, and it is important to know how to do it.

Labels: Google advertising, search engine listings

"How do I drive the punters to the product/site?"

First, stop referring to them as "punters" :-) No, just kidding - I know that you don't mean this literally. However, there is something important here - make sure that you do think of them as valued customers when they visit your site.

Anyway, your question was about getting them there in the first place ... First make sure that you target the right market.

Then direct people to specific pages of your site, relevant to what they are interested in. I looked at your site, and I would recommend that you do not send them directly to the front page, which is just a useless splash page. Rather, get some Google advertising that takes them to specific pages.

Labels: Google advertising, market research, search engine listings