Websites are quickly becoming one of the most popular ways of advertising. Whether it be a business, its product or service or something completely different, everyone of all ages is turning to the web as a method of getting their message out there. With the popularity of this marketing medium increasing and the number of websites always growing, it is obvious that everyone wants to appear at the top of Google’s search engine rankings. Achieving such a task is not an easy feat, however with a bit of perseverance, one can definitely improve their chances of reaching that glorious first page result.

Given that there is a heap of websites out there who are on the first page, what is their secret? It is a little industry term called “SEO” and it stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO basically consists of the customization of your website, its content and its internal and external links to assist in the overall indexing and ranking of your website in popular search engines. There are many contributing factors that are used in determining a website’s ranking and every search engine is different. This makes trying to optimize your site for Google, Yahoo, Live and the many others quite a painstaking task.

As most of us are aware, Google is currently the most popular search engine for the majority of Internet users. As such, it is only normal that we’d want to focus our sights on achieving a higher ranking within Google first with the hope that the rest will follow. To do this, we must start a journey that could potentially take months before we start seeing any real change, however we have to start somewhere.

Our journey begins by defining some of the key contributing factors that Google uses to determine a website’s and webpage’s ranking within its results. These factors range from keyword use to manipulating internal and external links and the líst goes on. To get you started, we have listed the top twenty factors that you should focus on in order to help get your website that little bit closer to the top of the search engine results listings.

Keyword Use Factors

The following components relate to the use of search query terms in determining the rank of a particular page.

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag - Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header.

2. Keyword Use in Body Text - Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page.

3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords - Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords.

4. Keyword Use in H1 Tag - Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase.

5. Keyword Use in Domain Name & Page URL - Including the targeted term/phrase in the registered domain name, i.e. keyword.com plus target terms in the webpage URL, i.e. seomoz.org/keyword-phrase.

Page Attributes

The following elements comprise how Google interprets specific data about a webpage independent of keywords.

6. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure - Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page.

7. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages - Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?

8. Age of Document - Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporarily relevant.

9. Amount of Indexable Text Content - Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page.

10. Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically) - Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating.

Site/Domain Attributes

The factors below contribute to Google’s rankings based on the site/domain on which a page resides.

11. Global Link Popularity of Site - The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity).

12. Age of Site - Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership).

13. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site - The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword.

14. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.

15. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site - The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain.

Inbound Link Attribute

These pieces affect Google’s weighting of links from external websites pointing to a page and ultimately will assist in the ranking of that page.

16. Anchor Text of Inbound Link.

17. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site.

18. Topical Relationship of Linking Page.

19. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.

20. Age of Link.

Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes

There are also some points we should make before you start getting your hands dirty. With any type of SEO marketing, there are some things that can actually have a negative impact on your ranking. These following components may negatively affect a spider’s ability to crawl a page or its rankings at Google.

• Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots.
• Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index.
• External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites.
• Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages.
• Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming).

It’s now time to get busy! Start prioritizing your tasks, modifying your content and building your internal and external links to meet some of the above guidelines. Keep in mind that improving indexing is mostly a technical task and improving ranking is mostly a business/marketing strategy. What might work now may not work in the future and finally, it takes time. Loads of time. Still, with a bit of trial and error and a good dose of persistence, you can achieve the search engine ranking you’re after.

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It seems that these days one cannot help but panic whenever Google does something new, the latest ‘unofficial’ move by Google was to remove all the url’s ending with ‘0’ from its index. Seomoz shared this piece of information publicly and so I am making this post based on that. Of course, one could ask why all the fuss if a url ends with zero or not, well, according to seomoz, this is mainly on account of the spammy pages as most of them end with the same, that is 0.

Therefore listing a page nowadays with a ‘0’ as a suffix becomes near to impossible, at least with Google. So let us just say that you have a website that had been indexed with Google and has a page rank of 4, the website url being www.xxe.com/web2.0, chances are that by now, your website would no longer have a pagerank and in addition, would no longer be indexed in Google.

There is no need to panic, all you would have to do is to resolve this issue with Google but seeing how long that they can take to respond to simple queries, it may well be some time before your site gets re-indexed again. If you are planning to create a site with the url ending in ‘0’, do not bother as it is not worth the trouble. For most of us, this may seem like a case of semantics gone silly, but then again, since we are not in the drivers seat, we will have to toe the line especially if we want to stay indexed.

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Knowing how to find the best keywords for use in your Adsense ads is not a straightforward process. Finding and implementing high profit, low competition keywords in your ads really is the trick for making Adsense payoff big. The following process should yield profitable, low competition keywords for your Adsense ads. This process is not perfect, but when you analyze it and try it for yourself, you can see that it makes sense. Adsense that is.

Step 1
Research some keywords for your niche that have a high CPC value. To do this, first find your keywords using the Google Adwords keyword tool or another tool that will give you niche specific lists of keywords. Save those keywords into a spreadsheet program as a csv file. Copy and paste those keywords into Google’s Traffic Estimator (you will need an Adwords account). The traffic estimator will give you the estimated clicks per day and the average cost per click (CPC) for each keyword. Copy and paste this information back into your spreadsheet file for later reference.

Step 2
Multiply the average CPC by 30% to get an estimate of your maximum earnings per click. The higher the average CPC, the more likely the CPC for the 2nd - 8th positions are high as well. You want this higher average CPC to start because if the CPC starts to drop off significantly after the 3rd position, your chance of getting high click earnings as an Adsense publisher will be diminished.

Step 3
Use any one of many tools available on the internet for helping to estimate the 1st - 8th position CPC values. These tools will estimate the CPCs for each position and allow you to see how much the CPCs drop off after the first position. This dramatically helps your analysis for picking the most profitable keywords. If the CPC values stay close to the each other and to the value of the first position, then you will more than likely have a profitable keyword.

Step 4
Now determine which Adsense ads occupy which positions. You can do this by searching on Google for your keyword and looking to see which Adsense ads are generated in the search results and in which order they are. Another way to estimate this is to use the Adwords Accelerator tool. It has a feature whereby Adwords ads are dynamically displayed for a given keyword you input into the tool to check. If the Adwords advertiser has used “Adwords for Content” in his advertising, these ads will be the Adsense ads someone else is displaying on their website.

Step 5
Compare the ads you found in step 4 to the results of using a keyword check function tool (available on the internet). If the advertisers you find by doing this closely match those you found in step 4, you will more than likely have a profitable keyword. If the advertisers are not he same, then the advertiser is possibly not using the “Adwords for Content” mode of advertising in his campaigns. This means that the keyword may not be the basis for the Adsense ads and may not be profitable.

Step 6
Now you must get the traffic. If you decide to get traffic using the Adwords approach, then just use the keywords in your Adsense ads that scored well from the above evaluation. Then, use lower cost per click keywords in your Adwords ads. The difference between the earnings from the click you get on your Adsense word from the cost of the click you pay on your Adwords word will be your profit. If you are planning to use search engine optimization techniques to get traffic to the website where your ads are, make sure the keywords you choose have the highest KEI possible. KEI is the ratio of the number of searches for a keyword to the number of competing sites having the keyword. The combination of a high KEI and a high score from the above evaluation will yield the best profit results.

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Over the years, Google AdSense became number one option to the web advertisers as it is a reasonable, fast and easy method for displaying ads on the websites.

AdSense ads actually generate revenue when they are clicked by the visitors. Therefore, millions of webmasters and web developers are searching for higher incomes from Google AdSense now days.

The ads on AdSense are always simple and relevant to the website’s content. Moreover, owners of various websites can enroll in AdSense program to enable text, image and video ads on their personal websites. However, a lot of AdSense users are desperately in search of the top paying keywords that would bring more revenues from the sites. The trick to gain higher revenue from Google AdSense is, if top paying keywords are present in the sites, more visitors will be willing to click on the ads, meaning more revenue will be generated.

Finding such top paying keywords is not that difficult. A little research on the net is required. If you search well, you will get the hold of it and realize which the top keywords are. Additionally, some web based companies would help you seeking good keywords for a certain amount of fees. If you register to such sites, it will give you the right set of keywords, which will certainly bring a lot of traffic to your site and will force the visitors to click on the ads.

Select the right set of keywords according to the contents of the site is also very important. If you have a medical website, you have to figure out the top ranking keywords from the medical field. On the other hand, if you have developed a sports site, you need to find out the top ranking sports keywords.

AdSense’s arch enemy Overture also could be of great help in bringing revenue from your website. Overture provides the details of the popularity of certain keywords and also the amount of cash an advertiser is willing to pay for certain ads on your site. To make good use of Overture, you have to search affiliate websites to find out the top ranking keywords. Once you figure that out, just put the keywords in your website.

There is no doubt that, there is money to be made with google AdSense and top paying keywords can make you rich in no time. But do not fall for scams or get ripped off by paying too much for some “top paying keywords list”. Keep your eyes and instincts open. However, to increase AdSense earnings, one also has to learn the ways for the best placement for ads, what colors work best and how easy it is to match them to a site. The process can take lots of trial and error at first but once it is done a financial reword is awaiting. The more attractive the website is, more people will visit and click on the links; resulting in higher revenues.

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