If you're not already advertising with Google, it's time to get
cracking! With more than 81.9 million unique visitors each
month, Google.com is a huge source of potential traffic for your
business.
Google has a wide variety of services, tools, labs and
advertising avenues that every online entrepreneur should know
about--yet many people are unaware that Google is much more than
"just" a search engine. So let's take a look at some of the key
resources you can use to promote your online business. Get Your
Website Ranked
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- Web Search: Just showing up in your potential customer’s
search results is the easiest way to use Google for free
advertising.
To show up on the first page or two of results,
you'll need to optimize your website to achieve the highest
ranking possible.
You may already be aware that you need to
spend some time getting the right keywords on your website and
increasing your "link popularity." But you might not have known
that Google looks at the first block of text it encounters on
your web page and uses that for the few lines displayed about
your site on search result pages.
So if you want to get listed
and also catch the eye of your customers, make your first
paragraph of text count: To be most effective, it should be
roughly 300 words with about 8 per cent of them being keywords.
- Sitemaps: Google's spiders constantly index web pages, and
it's impossible to predict accurately when they'll visit your
site. If you've paid attention to optimizing your site for
search, then they will crawl your pages. However, you can't be
sure that they've indexed all your web pages--they might index
just part of your site during a single visit. And since they
start at the top of a page and work down, they might not even
index the entire page before moving on!
One thing you can do to increase the likelihood of your entire
site getting "spidered" is to submit your site to Google
Sitemaps.
(There are several ways to do this; for an overview,
click here.) After submitting your site, Google creates and
stores an XML file that allows for instant updates and indexing
whenever your site's content changes. This is like having your
own data cable running from your computer directly to Google!
- AdSense: AdSense is one of the two kinds of advertising
avenues Google offers. The ads generated through AdSense are
third-party ads that sit on your website.
The program is free for you to use and you make money each time someone clicks on an
ad and moves off your site. In other words, these ads entice
your visitors away from your site (a bad thing), but you're
compensated each time that happens (a good thing).
Google matches the ads to your site by finding similarities in
the keywords of each.
The good news is, you can set a filter to
prevent your competitors' ads from appearing on your website,
and you can customize the appearance of the ads so there
background-colour is the same as your site's, making them look
more like informative content than sales pitches.
Try testing Google AdSense on your site to see if it negatively
affects your traffic and sales. If it doesn't, then you've just
found a new revenue stream. How much will you earn? That depends
partly on how much the advertisers are paying Google for the
keywords and partly on how many people click through the ads on
your site. But realistically, you could earn anywhere between
$0.03 and $15.00 per click--and as much as several hundred
dollars a day if you have a well-optimized site that draws lots
of targeted traffic.
- AdWords: The second of Google's advertising opportunities is
AdWords. These are ads that you create to promote your business
and that Google places on other sites for you. There are three
main places you'll see AdWord ads:
* On the right side of the page next to Google's "organic"
Search results * On other sites as AdSense ads * Alongside your
e-mail messages in Gmail
When you create your AdWord ads, you're in control of how much
they cost. You decide how much you're willing to pay for
specific keywords in your ads, and each time your ad is clicked,
you pay that amount. The amount ranges from a minimum of $0.05
to a maximum of $100, and you can set a daily budget that won't
be exceeded.
Google uses the keywords you chose to help them place your ads
on sites that have content relevant to yours, so you can be
assured the traffic you're paying for is highly targeted.
AdWords reach 80 per cent of internet users, and you can define
their target region and language. If you're wary about using
AdWords because of the possibility of your ads appearing on
sites that don't convert to sales for you, you can apply a
"negative filter" when creating your ad to exclude specific
sites.
As with AdSense ads, it's a good idea to test whether your
advertising investment is making money for you. If the
click-through traffic isn't converting to sales,
if your traffic drops off, or if a particular keyword is not drawing the
traffic--and sales--you'd hoped for, it's time to rework your
ads. Monitor Google--and Your Site's Google Ranking--With Other
Tools
We shouldn't always take a company's word for it when it comes
to what they offer. It's wise to get a second opinion or look to
the experts to see what the buzz is about a company's products.
Using Google is no different, and there are a large number of
ways to discover who's saying what about Google's products.
There are also a lot of people who provide tools and services
that supplement Google's, and these, too, are worth knowing
about.
Let's look at a few examples:
- GoogleAdvisor.org: This is a blog that focuses on AdSense,
AdWords and PageRank strategies. (PageRank is the Google tool
you can use to gain an instant sense of your website's
importance--you're assigned a rank from 0 to 10 based on how
many other sites link to you and how "important" they are.) For
information, tips, tricks and strategies related to Google, this
site is a good first stop.
- GoogleRankings.com: This site gives you a free tool for
checking your keywords. You can enter your site's URL and get a
report about your keyword density. You can then check how highly
Google ranks your site for each of those keywords.
- GoogleGuide.com: This site offers guides for both novice and
experienced users. Experienced users can find out more about
creating a website, including tips on PageRank, getting listed
and advertising revenue.
Now that you have all the information you need to promote your
business with Google, remember Google's philosophy: "Focus on
the user and all else will follow."
Every step of your business
should be about solving a problem for your customer. Google's
services and tools will help you achieve that.
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