Google officially announced that they are incorporating website speed as one of the factors in their search ranking algorithms. Site speed is a measure of website response time to a web request.

So if your website or blog is really bulky having a lot of flash, images and scripts and it takes too long to respond on a web request, its time to worry.

However site speed alone will not affect the search engine rankings in a broader way as there are many more factors.

According to Matt Cutts,

“Less than 1% of search queries will change as a result of incorporating site speed into our ranking. That means that even fewer search results are affected, since the average search query is returning 10 or so search results on each page.

So please don’t worry that the effect of this change will be huge. In fact, I believe the official blog post mentioned that ‘We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing.’

The fact that not too many people noticed the change is another reason not to stress out disproportionately over this change.”

Now the question arises how to speed up my website, below are some points which you can use to improve your website speed.

1. Choose a good hosting provider: Your website hosting provider must be good and reliable. Actually in shared hosting there are thousands of website hosted on same server and if the CPU and server capabilities are low it will certainly affect the loading speed of your website. Dedicated hosting is always better, but if you’re unable to afford it at this point of time, at least choose a good host.
2. Use very less flash elements on your website
3. Use less images and if you are using large images, load them in parts, it will boost overall website speed.
4. External JavaScript code files must be combined in one file, it will help page load faster.
5. Combine all external CSS files and compress them
6. Use website tracking codes and other JavaScript which needs to connect external servers to load, in the footer of the page.

These are some of the suggestions which can help your webpages load faster.

Do you have any more suggestions which can help improving website speed, share it with us here

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As we all know search engines are always looking for fresh and unique content all over the web and the main source for them for new content are blogs. This is the reason Blogging platforms like wordpress has always been apple’s eye for search engines.

By the way today topic is “How much time it takes for Google to cache and rank a web page”

For the purpose I have done an experiment and I want to share the results with you all.

I have a health related blog, providing information on skin care. So let’s begin how it all happened.

1. Chosen a two word phrase keyword, which roughly gets 4200 searches a month and has a competition of 1883000 in Google and 15150 while searching with quotes.

2. Wrote an article of 550 words and posted on my blog.

3. Submitted the link to digg.com

After 5 minutes when I checked, I saw that the article was cached by Google. Then I checked the ranking of the post for the keyword and I was amazed to see that the articles was ranking on number 7 on the first page and the digg.com listing was ranking on number 4.

I knew that this was just a temporary ranking and it will come down. So next day I have done around 25 Social Bookmarking of the blog post and again checked the ranking few hours later, the articles was ranking on number 24 (on the third page). After that I have left it as it is and now after a week the blog post have gained a stable ranking on the second page of Google on number 14.

I have decided to do some blog comments for it and then observe its effect on ranking.

I will update you all with the results.

Do you all have done any such experiments, if yes please share with us all.

Do not forget to follow me on twitter for updates.

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Hello friends, this is my second post on the topic of increasing Adsense revenue, if you missed the first one, you can read it here at: Steps to Increase Adsense Income (Ecpm) Part 1

Some of the points we have discussed in the last post, some more are here:

Search engine optimization: SEO is a very crucial factor for increasing visibility and higher rankings in search engines, so proper optimization of every page on your website is necessary. You need not be a SEO expert for this, but you must be aware of some basic things like, title and Meta tags, proper URL structure etc. If you are using wordpress then you can use different free SEO plugins available. Like All in One SEO Pack

If you like to read more about on page SEO factors, you can read it here:

On Page SEO Elements Part 1
On Page SEO Elements Part 2
On Page SEO Elements Part 3

Unique content: Always prepare unique and interesting content for your readers, write in a natural flow and do not insert keywords where it is not necessary, use synonyms and related keywords. This way your users will engage more on your website, increasing page views and more chances for your ads to be clicked.

You can read more about content preparation here:

2 Simple Steps for Preparing Great Content

Account age: Webmasters have different opinions on this topic, but according to my experience, Ecpm depends on the age of your account. In first few months, Google serves less paying ads for your account and if you maintain your account reputation for some time, they start serving better paying ads. So in my opinion account age matters

And at last but not least, always test alternative ad placements, different color combination and ad units and analyze your data. Use the best combination and enjoy higher earnings.

Best of Luck to you all.

Do you all know some more legitimate ways to increase Adsense Earnings, do share with us all. Post comments and feedback

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If you are using Google Analytics, you would be well familiar with the word bounce rate. Let us see what the definition of bounce rate according to GA is?

According to Google Analytics:

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.

You can read the original explanation here at What does Bounce Rate mean?

In a simpler sense, a user visits your website either through your listing in the organic SERPs or through clicking your paid ads and exits from the same page, where it lands without visiting any other page on your website is called bounce and the percentage of bounce is known as bounce rate

There may be two factors which causes this to happen.

• The visitor might be searching for a very small and to the point (say one word) information and your page is highly relevant for what he is searching for, he got what he wanted and quits. For an example, if someone searching for “where was the president George Bush born” and lands to your webpage and finds the answer in the first few lines, there are 99% chances that he will quit the next moment as he has his answers handy.
• The second case is, the visitor does not find what he was searching for and this is the reason for most of the cases of bounced visitors. A visitor searching for information on topic”XYZ”, lands on your webpage and doesn’t find it and pushes the back button without waiting any more.

This is the main case of bounced visitors and you should take every step necessary for reducing it.

You can test different elements on your webpage to reduce bounce rate and increase visitor engagement with the website. I have written some posts regarding how to chose different elements for your webpage and how to prepare great content for your visitors, which you must have a look, it may help you minimize your bounce rate.

Now the question is whether bounce rate affects your organic rankings?

Different SEO’s have contrary views over this topic. Some say yes and some No. But I have experienced that a high bounce rate definitely affects your organic rankings.

Think it in this way. Google always try to provide high quality and relevant results to its users for their query, why would they list a webpage for which they know that users do not like it for a particular query?

Or take it in another way with an offline example. Suppose you are a consultant whose job is to refer people to the persons (list a number of webpages) who can provide solution to their problems (query). Will you keep referring them to a person about whom people complain a lot of time that they didn’t provide the solution they needed. The obvious answer is NO, you won’t.

So now you can think over this that bounce rate really affects your organic rankings, so apply every effort to reduce it.

Do not use blackhat ways: Some webmasters install some malicious script which disables the Back button of the browsers once their website is open, or some other script which blank the referrer when they hit the back button in their browsers, so that the user appears a new one to the search engines. Never try these shady methods, as sooner or later you will be banned for your malicious activities.

In coming posts we will discuss different factors for reducing the bounce rate.

What is your opinion on “bounce rate and organic ranking”, please let us know by posting them in comments.

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Spying and intruding into other’s privacy is a very bad habit and punishable by law in many states… but it is vital as well as necessary for your online business.

What does it mean by spying your competitors?

As we all know that to reach at the top there are two ways. First one is to follow the basics, input your hard work and wait for the time when you come at the top. Second way is to spy on those who are already at the top, find out their strategy and implement the same for your business but using better tactics.

Hard work and persistence is no doubt a sure shot way to get success and patience is virtue we all know. But if you ask me which route I will take. I will surely take the second one because life is very short and I cannot give 3, 4 years to visualize my success.

For all of you who are interested in the latter one, today I will discuss some points on how to spy your competitor and reverse engineer their strategy and get to position number one on the organic search( especially Google), overthrowing them out of the game.

Can you think what would be the value of keyword “weight loss” or “car insurance” at the first position of Google?

Let’s check… for the purpose I am using www.semrush.com

Let us take two examples, fist one is “weight loss”, if we check Google the number 1 rank for this keyword goes to website www.webmd.com , now check it in Semrush.

We get the following data. The average CPC for keyword weight loss is $2.63 and the search volume is 450k. Now do the simple math 450k x $2.63. According to Semrush the website is getting search engine traffic worth $15584k.

Our second example is “car insurance”. While I was checking the ranking I got www.progressive.com on number 1, now checking it with Semrush, it is receiving organic traffic worth $24967k.

The data from Semrush may not be perfect, but if we assume only 10% of the figures, you can easily calculate what the worth of being number 1 on Google is.

So I am quite impressed with your argument… now which things I would like to spy on?

Basically you would like to spy on keywords they are ranking organically, keywords they are using for PPC, their daily ads budget, sites which are linking to your competitor,

Organic keywords: find out the keywords for which your competitor is ranking organically and the traffic those keywords attract. After analyzing these keywords you can plan your long time strategy for SEO, starting with the long tail keywords of main phrases and gradually using the short tails.

PPC Keywords: The basic idea behind finding the paid keywords is if they are paying consistently for some keywords to appear on paid result then those keywords must be converting for them. After you compile the list of their paid keywords, view their landing pages. Then plan your strategy using those converting keywords and their long tail phrases. Design your landing page better than them and you will surely hit a jackpot. Also look their daily PPC budget, the more the better.

Backlinks: Find out how many backlinks your competitor have, which sites are linking then and what the anchor texts are used in their backlinks. For this purpose you can use www.backlinkwatch.com and you will know the anchor text of the backlinks, their PR and whether they are follow or Nofollow. You can also use Yahoo Site Explorer for getting the backlinks data for any website. Never depend on the Google backlinks for a website, as Google displays numbers much less than the actual.

Other online tools you can use:

Keyword spy

Spyfu

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You have done basic research for your new website, finalized your keyword list and booked a good domain name for your website. What now….?

Now the next main task is to plan different elements you will be using on your website like text, graphics, images, font and more… Let us take it one by one.

Choosing Text Font and Size: Choose fonts that suits best for your audience, for an example if your audience is young age group, you can chose any font with moderate size because they feel it easy to read to any font. If your audience is of older age group, make font size larger as they may find it difficult to read smaller sizes. Keep it simple and do not use fancy fonts until it is very necessary.

I have seen a website which was on the eye diseases topic and the font size was 8, which in my opinion the site users may find hard to read. So understand the need and act accordingly.

Choosing Graphics: Use graphics and images to clear your point but keep it as less as possible otherwise the webpage will become very heavy and other concerns may arise, from SEO point of view. Do not use images and graphics only for the sake of using it. Images which illustrate your point and gives clear message must be used.

Regard your audience, their age group and preferences: if you are targeting younger age group you can use flash or slides to make your point more clear. Similarly videos can be used for making your content better.

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What is image optimization: Image optimization is a process of sizing, naming and presenting an image in a way that it becomes feasible for search engines to find it, extract information from it and categorize it so that it can be presented in the image search results for a relevant query of a user.

There is a user perspective also which I will discuss in a minute.

As present, search engines are unable to read any information in an image or graphic and it will take the technology some time when automated bots such like of Google’s or yahoo’s can read the pattern or layout of an image and extract information from them.

So there are some elements which are used to inform search engines about the details and content of an image. Such elements are image name, image alt tags, image title attribute, image reference tag … and some more

So basically image optimization is done to inform search engines about the content of an image, it has become more important because nearly every search engines have lot of image searches and if your images are well optimized for a particular query of keywords, there are chances of getting a lot of traffic through image search alone.

Just have a look how many options Google offer for image search.

You can search for any type, any size or any color of image, guess how would be they categorizing these images… YES right by using all textual factors related to an image (This is my opinion, as I know with my experience, however actual elements considered is only known by Big G)

Now we will discuss some important points about image optimization.

Using proper name: Use proper and relevant names for your images. Many image capturing devices like digital cameras, webcams, scanners etc name images in their saving terminology like DSC302.jpg or scandl%12.jpg etc. This is an improper way to name images. So the correct way of naming is using relevant keywords. Example if you have an image of olive tree, name it like olive-tree-image.jpeg.

Using Proper Format: There are lots of image formats for images and graphics which are used for formatting images. It is better to keep your images in .JPG format and not in .GIF, as the former is standard for images and latter is the standard for graphics. Further discussion about image format is out of scope of this article and if you need to learn more visit here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_file_formats

Using ALT tags: Use proper alt tags which are relevant to your image, do not try to stuff your keywords. Just keep it simple and clear. If you are naming your image as discussed in point 1 above, you can simply keep the alt tag as your image name. But make sure to not use same ALT tag for two or more images on a single page.

Make your images folder accessible to search engines: Make your images folder, the folder where you store your images, accessible to search engines.

Using TITLE attribute: Title attribute add meaning to an image, so use it but here also follow the same old rule, do not stuff keywords and use same title in two or more images on a single page.

Using Image feed: if you have a very large number of images on your website (generally product based websites) then you can also make an image feed just like sitemap and submit it to search engines.

Wherever possible put images in between content.

Keep the number of images on a page to minimum.

While naming the images, in ALT tags and image TITLE attributes used words like pic, picture, photo or image along with the relevant keyword.

User Perspective: The points we have discussed above are mainly for search engines, now we will look some image optimization factors which is related to user experience.

Do not use big and bulky images on a page and it makes the webpage to load slower, which is very irritating from user point of view. An average user will not wait for more than 10-12 seconds for a webpage to load, in this way you are losing a genuine visitor.

The quality of the images used must be above average, do not use distorted or fade images

Always use images which are relevant to the page content.

Do not use scraped images; use your own or use stock images. If you use images from other website without their permission, you will dilute your authority and there are chances to hook in copyright infringement.

Image Optimization Plugins for wordpress: There are plugins available for wordpress users which they can use for optimizing their images. Below are some of them.

SEO Friendly Images

WP Smush.it

You can also try Google Image Labeler

Are some points left behind? Post here to let me know and I will include it in the post..

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If you are not new to internet marketing world, you would probably have heard the most popular saying in the internet marketing world “Content is King” and really it is the ace in a pack of card.

But an ill structured, non-targeted and information less content is similar to a joker between the aces and kings in a pack of card.

So what is essential, the content must be targeted to the audience, in the language the niche speaks and must be valuable.

Below are some points if kept in mind and taken care of, you can prepare very good content for your website, which not only your audience will like but will have high chances to become viral establishing your authority.

Know your targeted audience: The first and very important fact is “know what your audience needs”. I have seen many newbie and intermediate internet marketers and bloggers, who write in a way that resembles that they never tried to know the need of their audience and they write just for the sake of writing. So you please do not try the same and provide valuable inputs.

Basic problems of the audience: Try to find out the basic needs and problems of the audience of the niche you are concerned. Do not bluff and always do your best to solve problems or atleast provide simple steps to find solutions. Heyyyyy……. What does it mean …..? Let me try to give you an example.

For an example: if you do not know clearly about any specific topic, no matter, provide them various links to authority sites, where they can find solutions. Never think that you will loose your visitor forever, no not at all, rather you will gain trust in the eyes of your visitors as well as search engines because doing this you leave a message that you are committed to provide solutions.

So note a point in your mind that always keep the requirement of your audience handy before you write content. You can get a feel about their requirements by visiting different forums and blogs in your niche.

There are two very common things which will appear in your mind when you start writing (how I know it? Because I have also traversed the same route before I started to know all this) first is “what I am going to write is well known among my niche” and the second is “what I am going to write is not known by anyone” …..   Both these doubts are just myths. So never think of all this and always try to provide real solutions for the problems (problems doesn’t means to provide medication, it means to be informative on the subject you write.)

Age group, demographic factors: Age and demographic factors must be kept in mind while preparing content. Why? Because a concept which a teenager can understand in a simple way, an old age person cannot. So you need to find other ways to make the person understand.

So understand the demographics of your audience.

Targets of the niche: Targets in other words we can call “needs” must be kept in mind. Got confused….? No need to …..! A target of the niche means what your audience prefers – text, video or audio. So provide them with the solution which they can easily use.

Use easy ways to create content: use the most informative and easy way to create content. Content never means only chunk of text, it may be in many other forms e-book, audio, video, music. Slide show presentations.

Gone are the days when technology had limited capabilities and exposure, we are now living in such a world where technology has made every form of media feasible to common audience.

It is better to create a 10 minute audio or 15 minutes video, than to create 150 pages of content of text. The aim should be to give you message clearly to your audience. Also keep in mind your audience age group and their preferences.

So always think that which type of content would be most suitable on the topic you want to convey as well as your audience would like to read and then prepare yourself in the same manner.

Apply these points as I discussed with you in this post and you will realize that you were missing a lot in preparing content for your audience.

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A website is nothing if it does not receives traffic, no matter how good it is or how valuable services and products it offer. So traffic is lifeline of any online business, not only online but off line business also need traffic, suppose you have a mega store but no visitors. So what’s the profit in it if there are no buyers?

Now back to our topic and that is traffic generation for your website.

The best way to generate targeted traffic to your website is search engine optimization and for that you need lot of relevant links.

Today we will discuss two easy and effective way to attract targeted traffic to your website, if done right.

Forums posting: Forum posting is an easy way to generate backlinks and traffic. My suggestion for all of you is to join at least 5 forums related to your niche and actively participate in discussions. Provide solution of the problems which members are discussing about.

Join 5 forums and use one forum for one hour a day. That means you visit each forum once a week.

If you will actively participate in forums you will be benefited in several ways.

You will get relevant Backlinks to your website, through signature links or links in the posts.

With time members will take you as an authority on the subject and will listen to your words. You can use your reputation for pre selling some offers, but please make sure you never try to hard sell, because people like to choose and not to be forced to buy some thing and never refer any poor quality product because it will diminish your authority

Forums act as a platform for people of single mental orientation who discuss a core subject. In this way you can get ideas for preparing content for your website. Pay attention to details and try to extract about the topics people are talking about and prepare your content for the same. In this way you can develop a lot of content for your website, which in turn will give you more authority over the subject, better rankings and traffic.

Blog commenting: blog comments are another tool for getting backlinks and direct traffic. Find your niche relevant blogs, you can simply do it by Googling “your keywords” inurl:blog . Find a relevant post read it and try to extract the information it provides and then you can comment on the post. Remember never try to spam them, as the comments will never get approved

Think in this way, you have a blog with good traffic and authority and some one posts a comment like “hello nice information” with a link to his website, will you like to approve the comment… NO you won’t, so when you are not ready to approve someone’s creepy comment why would others do the same.

So contribute some valuable and useful content to the post and the chances of getting approved will be the maximum.

Many of you will be concerned that many blogs add nofollow tags to the links in comment. Do no worry, nofollow links are still crawled and counted but their link juice transfer power is less. You can read more about nofollow links here at: Off Page Elements: Alternative ways of link building

So starting using forum posting and blog comments today for your link building and traffic campaigns and if you will do it right, you will see good rankings and surge in traffic in coming weeks.

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The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) is a global non-profit organization serving the search engine marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it.

Their aim and  purpose is to provide a foundation for industry growth through building stronger relationships, fostering awareness, providing education, promoting the industry, generating research, and creating a better understanding of search and its role in marketing.

Recently SEMPO has conducted a survey of salary of SEM professionals, below are some key points

How the survey was conducted:

Twenty-two question survey (written responses included in some parts of the survey), Survey was sent to all SEMPO members through email, Information analysis and commentary provided by TMP Directional Marketing

How many in-house SEO/SEM Professionals Participated:

Over 600 in-house SEO/SEM professionals from the USA and Canada during the 2nd quarter of this year

Key Findings:

Most respondents state they report to a Director or Vice President and 39% of respondents had 1-3 people reporting to them. Most who participated in the survey work for companies with less than 1,000 employees.

Salary:

Individual with 1-3 yrs relevant experience – US$ 40k to 80k
Senior Manager – US$ 70k to $120k
Vice President (Large SEM campaigns) – US$160k to $250k.

Core Task of SEM Professionals:

Most survey respondents are working to improve ROI from search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns – but within the same budgets.

Advertising Budget:

SEM budgets are mostly below $50K or above $250K with few in the in-between area.

New Avenues:

Search engine marketers are increasingly engaged in related activities such as organic search engine optimization, social media, email marketing, affiliate marketing and other forms of advertising campaigns.

Please visit www.sempo.org for more information.

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