Have you noticed anything different lately when searching on Google? Google has recently added a new search tool called “Suggest”, which automatically gives users additional suggestions when they type in search queries. For example, if you type the term “web site development” into the search bar, Google automatically displays a list of other terms that may be related:

While this is likely to be very helpful to users as they perform searches on Google (I personally love this new feature and use it a lot), what does it mean for your small business?

It means that your business may have to adjust the keywords and phrases currently used on your site to include some additional general industry terms. As users become familiar with seeing a list of suggestions each time they search, they may be less likely to think of their own terms to search on, and instead begin to rely on the suggestions from Google.

The Suggestion List

How does Google determine which terms to display in its list of suggestions? According to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, Google looks at all of its searches, then lists some additional popular terms that contain the word that the user types into the search bar. Right now, it appears that the suggestions are fairly general, although they are based on the most popular searches related to each specific term. However, it’s quite possible that as the suggestion tool “learns” new queries from users, the list of suggestions that is displayed could change based on how users actually search and which terms become most popular.

But as you consider adding some general industry terms to your keyword mix, that doesn’t mean that you should abandon your existing keyword strategy, especially if it is performing well for you. Company-specific keywords, long-tail keywords, and geographic terms are still worth targeting, especially if these keywords continue to rank or show good search activity in your analytics. Yet, this could change as searchers become accustomed to using the broader terms in the suggestion list, so you will need to monitor your analytics closely to watch for this trend.

Tougher Competition

Over time, if searchers indeed prefer the broad industry terms that are displayed in the suggestion list, then you can bet that these terms are going to get even more competitive than they already are. Be proactive; as you see your monthly stats changing, make sure you respond quickly and don’t be afraid to update your pages to establish a broader industry focus rather than highlighting only your specific products and services.

To learn which keywords and phrases are most likely to be displayed for your business, you may need to do a little research. Go to Google and type in the most common industry terms that your customers use, then take note of what is displayed in the suggestion list. Do the same for the terms that your competitors use as their keywords, and also test your own keywords as well. The phrases that are displayed in the suggestion list are the phrases that you may need to optimize for.

A Change in Strategy

Another strategy is to build additional content pages that focus on the broader industry terms that Google Suggest displays to its users. Not only does this make your site more relevant to these terms, it also provides fresh content for your site which in turn gets the attention of search engine spiders that are always looking for new or updated content.

As search engines continue to evolve, improve, and change, so must your optimization efforts. SEO is truly not a one-time activity; it is dynamic and ongoing. With each new initiative (such as optimizing to include Google’s suggested keywords/phrases for your industry), you must monitor your analytics carefully to see the results of your efforts, and make adjustments based on those results. The more you are able to keep up with search engine changes and improvements, the more likely it is that your customers and prospects will be able to find your business when they search for the products and services that you offer.

The new Google Suggest tool may change the way users search for information, but it will probably be months before we know what effect it will actually have on keywords and the way in which web sites are optimized. But for now, small businesses would be wise to find out what broad industry terms Google displays, and include those terms in their ongoing SEO strategy – sooner rather than later.

By Lauren Hobson, President of Five Sparrows, LLC

In this article we are going to cover how to monetize your website, This is actually one of the most fun parts of building a money making website. Monetizing is actually how your website is going to generate an income, there are many ways to monetize a website but monetizing should be done last after you have found a theme for your website, after you have found your target audience, after you have your content, monetizing your site is the absoluet last step. The only way to monetize your site effectively is to have a clear vision of where your site is going.

What is Monetizing

Believe it or not this is actually the easy part. This is where you convert warm, willing-to-buy Presold visitors into income. At the Monetize level your visitors are eager and ready to buy, basically they have their wallets out and ready to purchase. There are many ways to add income streams to a website, your job is to guide your visitors to these monetizing outlets by using your content and then preselling to your visitor, preselling will raise your monetizing conversion rates.

Google Adsence

AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant ads on their website’s content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site ? or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts ? you’ll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages. It’s also a way for website publishers to provide web and site search to their visitors, and to earn money by displaying relevant ads on the search results pages. You earn money when visitors to your website click on the google links, Adsence is very effective to sites with large traffic and can generate lots of revenue

Affiliate Income

Affiliate income is also another great way to monetize your site, basically what you are doing is selling other peoples products for a percentage of the sale. Examples would be ebooks, wesbsites products, many websites on the internet today offer some kind of affiliate program because it generates sale for both parties.

Sell Your Own Product

By selling your own product you will make 100% of the profit from that product, the best thing is informational products because they can be created easily and sent to the consumer quickly and there is no overhead. If you create your own product you then can add an affiliate program to expand sales and pay others a commission for selling your product.

Sell Advertising

Once your website is established and receives good traffic, you can then begin selling advertisings spots on your website. You can charge for text links, banner adds and buttons on different pages of your website. This however only works with established websites with high traffic because the people how purchase advertising are looking to gain traffic through your site.

Promote An Offline Business

If you have an offline business you can promote it through your website, you can also promote other offline business by creating a deal where the offline business can pay you per lead.

Conclusion

As you can see there are many ways to monetize and add revenue to your website. We recommend utilizing many different income streams to your website, this way you have income coming in from all different angles. This way if one slows down the other can pick up the slack.

Albert

In this issue, lets talk about how to maximize your Adsense revenue based on your esiting traffic. Let me say that again – with the same amount of traffic, how can you increase your Adsense income? Here’s a few tips:

1. Use the “Large Rectangle” format

This format is the most effective among all other Adsense ad formats. In fact, i’ve personally tested it and I found that I can get up to 4 times more clicks on the large rectabgle ads than I can with any other format.

2. Make it Blend In with Your Site

Google allows you to customize you ads to make it match any website design. Take advantage of this, and make your ads look like they are part of your content, links or navigation bar.

3. Make it Stand Out

In contrast to number 2, this strategy makes your ads stand out from the rest of your blog content, with hopes that people will notice them and click on your ads. Instead on “blending it in”, you make it “scream out for more attention” However, this works only on certain blogs, but you can most certainly test them out to see if it works on yours!

4. Overcome “Ad Blindness”

The amazing thing with the human brain is that it can train itself to ignore information, especially advertising information! This is called “ad blindness” and it happens when the same person has visited your site so often that he doesn’t even actually notice the ads anymore. When this happens, you may mant to use tactic 3 or shift the position of ads on your blog to “disrupt” their mental filter and regain the lost potential clicks.

5. Target Your Keywords Properly

Make sure your posts are on topic, and put the keywords in the title of your blog post as well as in the content. When you do this, you’ll find more relevant ads displayed on your site, resulting in more people clicking on them. Poolry written, off-topic posts make poor Adsense ads. I hope you enjoyed those little tips, but remember it’s the little changes that make all the difference.
Here’s a collection of videos that will show you step-by-step how to maximize your Adsense income

I strongly recommend that you get a copy of those videos and watch them A.S.A.P.

For enrolling to the Google AdSense program, go to https://www.google.com/AdSense or www.adsense.com and click on the ‘Click here to Apply’ button. You will be presented with an enrolment form where you need to fill-in some details like your website information (URL and website language), the Google AdSense products that you wish to use (i.e. AdSense for Content or AdSense for Search), your contact information, your email address and your preferences. You will also need to select an account type (business/individual) for your AdSense Account and agree to the various policies, terms and conditions of Google AdSense program. The account type will not affect your revenues in any way; it is there just to determine if the payment is to be made in the name of a company or an individual. The email address and the password that you provide during the enrolment process will be required by you for logging into your account later on. Note that you will be referred to as publisher by the Google AdSense program; so when you return back to the Google AdSense website, you will be asked to enter your login details as an ‘Existing Publisher’.

That’s it. You can now submit your application form for Google to evaluate and get back to you.

The first thing that you need to choose is the Ad type (Ad unit or link unit). Based on the Ad type you choose, you will need to specify the type of ad (text, image, etc for Ad unit) or number of links per link unit too. Google AdSense program allows you to use a maximum of three ad units and 1 link unit per web page (and you must use both, in order to maximize your AdSense revenue).

The next thing is to choose the Ad layout. There are various layouts available but large rectangle (336×280) and wide skyscraper (160×600) are preferred over others (since they help get more impressions for you and hence help you make more money).

Customizing the colors of various parts of your AdSense ad is the next thing you need to do. Even though customizing colors is optional (as far as the Google AdSense program is concerned), it’s strongly recommended for making your Ads attractive and more effective. Your choice of colors must be governed by the look and feel of your website so that the Ad does not look out of place.

These are the essential customizations that you surely need to do before you can start using Google AdSense Ads on your website

Albert

Once approved you can start making money without having to do too much – just paste code that Google gives you into your web properties. This code creates ads on your blog and when someone clicks on these ads they go to the advertiser’s site. The advertiser is then charged per click by Google and Google pays you a share of the money. As easy as that, and all done for you as part of Adsense service.

I mentioned “contextual advertisement”, what it means is that Adsense is smart enough to deliver ads that are relevant to your content – automatically. Let’s say you have a blog about dog training, you’ll see ads about dog training on it. Google technology analyzes your content, decides what it is about and then finds the ads that are most suitable for your blog content.

By making Adsense ads relevant to your site, Google accomplishes 2 things: ads can enhance overall experience of a visitor to your blog, and because ads are relevant to your content and visitor, they are likely to get clicked on.

The best part is you’ll get paid and make money every time ads get clicked on.

Albert