Category Archivegoogle
google &seo Martin Lee on 17 May 2007
SEO Tips – Latent Semantic Indexing
In the past, stuffing your webpage with your keywords will help get your pages ranked highly in the search engines. Of course, what happened was that the search engines got smarter and such a trick no longer worked.
Instead, search engines now find out what your page is all about by looking for a series of keywords related to your keyword. This is called Latent Semantic Indexing.
The web pages on your web site should be related and focus mainly on a special topic while using different words that describe the topic. This can be achieved by using variations of your keywords and synonyms.
What this basically means is that you shouldn’t focus on a single keyword when optimizing your web pages and when getting links.
For example, if you are trying to get your website ranked highly for the word “football”, you might want to have some of these terms appearing regularly on your website:
NFL, sports, premiership, college football, fc, etc.
Applying a bit of common sense should enable you to think of some of these keywords. Another method that you can use is a simple google trick to find out what words Google consider related to your topic.
As an example, try typing the word “football” (without the “) into google. Look at the results you get. Notice all the words with “football” are in bold.
Now type in “~football” (without the “) into google (The symbol ~ is called tilda).
Lo and behold, notice that some of these terms are now in bold:
NFL, sports, etc.
These are actually the terms that Google considers to be related to your keyword.
All things being equal, having these words on your site will tell Google that your site is about football and help it rank higher in the search engine results.
google Martin Lee on 10 May 2007
Google Trends
Here’s a cool free marketing research tool from Google that you probably didn’t know existed.
Google Trends allows you to enter any keyword and see how it has been searched on Google over time. You can compare up to 5 keywords against each other. It also gives you the number of times your keyword appeared in Google News Stories.
Another feature of this tool is that you see the “demand” of your keyword over different cities and countries. Note that this “demand” is not based on the absolute number of searches for your term, but is based on the ratio of searches for your term coming from each region divided by the total number Google searches coming from the same region.
advertising &google Martin Lee on 30 Apr 2007
Free Google Ads – Is it Possible?
Advertising on Google Adwords (if done correctly) is a very good avenue of advertising as it allows you to reach a very targeted audience.
Imagine this – you can literally reach out to people who are searching exactly for what you have to offer. How more qualifed can that get?
Of course, you have to make sure that your website has a way to convert all these prospects to buyers/clients, otherwise you will be wasting your money advertising.
A few days ago, I came across an ebook with an incredible claim. The author mentions that he has used a secret (and legal) method to get millions of dollars of free google advertising over the past years.
So, I bought the ebook to see what the secret was. Here’s a summary of the secret:
Pay to get a top position listing on Google Adwords, drive traffic to your landing page, and offer many advertising slots on that landing page to offset your advertising costs!
Needless to say, I asked for a refund.
Nevermind about free Google advertisements. The thing for you to keep in mind is that if your cost per lead or cost per customer acquired through Google is less than the lifetime value of your customer, you should be throwing as much money at Google as they can take!
google &testing Martin Lee on 07 Apr 2007
Google Website Optimizer
About six months ago, I wrote about a new testing tool, Google Website Optimizer. Back then, it was still in beta and was only open to selected people.
What this tool does is to help you increase your visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by continually testing different combinations of text and image content on your website.
Instead of testing one element at a time, you can now test multiple elements simultaneously and fast-track your testing results.
A few days ago, Google has started allowing signups to use their website optimizer.
Normally, this type of software (or service) would have cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The amazing thing is that Google is not even charging a cent for you to use it. So, if you have a website and are not using something like this currently, I recommend you to try it out.
google &testing Martin Lee on 03 Nov 2006
How to Decide Which of Your Ad is Better
Sometimes, you might ask yourself this question, “Which version of advertisement or salescopy should I use for my promotion?” I will like to tell you an interesting story that might provide you with the answer.
A few days ago, Adam Khoo, a well known success trainer in my country, was seeking feedback on his blog about a sales letter for one of his programs. He had changed his salesletter and wanted to know which was better. Here’s how his new sales letter looked like:
Two lucky readers who provided the best feedback (in his opinion) would be given a copy of his program free. I decided to take part in the contest for the fun of it.
Before reading on, spend a few minutes to take a look at Adam Khoo’s sales letter and see what you can come up with.
It took me all of 10 seconds to look at his sales letter and a few more minutes of typing to provide my (winning) critique out of 100 over entries:
Well, you asked for a critique. Here goes�.
If the purpose of getting feedback is to improve the salesletter (ie increase the conversion rate), the whole exercise is futile. Why?
Each and everyone of our comments do not help determine whether sales letter A or B is better or worse. Individually, each of us might have a preference; but taken collectively, this opinion counts for nothing.
So what if 1 reader prefers headline A, 10 readers prefer headline B, and so on.
Even if 99% of your readers tell you the same thing, it might very well be the wrong thing. You wouldn�t know.
To see which sales letter is better, run them in parallel with a A-B test and see which one gives you a better conversion (making sure the sample size is sufficient).
That will be your better sales letter. At the end of the day, the market is always right. Why not listen to it?
You didn’t expect that, did you?
I got a free copy of his course as a result of being 1 of the 2 selected winners. 🙂
To end off, I would like to introduce you to this free website optimizer testing tool by Google.
It’s a powerful tool that allows you to do multi-variable testing on your website. This is the sort of tool that companies are paying thousands of dollars for and Google is providing it free of charge!
The flip side is that it is only open to selected people at this point in time. So, you have to apply to get in.
You will want to keep an eye on it to see when they will release it to the general public.
google Martin Lee on 01 Oct 2006
Google Analytics
Previously, I wrote about the importance of testing and tracking your online marketing and how you can do it.
Something that you can use is Google Analytics, a tool that is very powerful yet free.
At the time of that post, Google was suspending registration for the service. I did a check and found that it’s available again. So, if you have not created your Google Analytics account yet, you might want to do so now.
google Martin Lee on 25 Sep 2006
Google Maps and Google Coupons for Local Businesses
Today, I want to talk about how you can use Google Maps and Google Coupons to advertise your business for free.
In case you are not aware, Google Maps is a powerful and user-friendly mapping technology combining maps, local business search, satellite imagery, street-level search, and driving directions.
Google Maps is already available in many countries and in certain countries, Google actually allows you to add your business to the Google Local Business Center.
So, if a user searches Google Maps for a particular product/service, your listing will appear if it is relevant and in the area.
To make your listing stand out and attract customers, you can also create something called Google Coupons.
These coupons will appear alongside your business listing on Google Maps. Users will be able to print your coupons directly and bring them to your business to claim their discount.
As Google Maps become more and more popular, the value of the advertising that you receive will get higher and higher. So, if you have not added your business to the Google Local Business Center yet, you might want to do so today.
As with most new technology, the early adopters usually get an advantage.
At the rate Google is going, I think they are going to dominate many, many things on the internet.
google Martin Lee on 03 Jan 2006
A Marketing Booboo Google Made
Recently, I received a New Year’s card from Google. My initial thoughts were, “Wow, Google actually bothered to send a card to even a small customer like me.” Opening the envelope, I noticed that the card wasn’t signed. They didn’t even bother to print my name anywhere on the card. Apart from the printed “Happy New Year” in various languages, the card was totally blank.
So much for personalisation.
I found out later that for bigger clients, Google actually gave them a nice cordless mouse set with the Google name imprinted on it as a Christmas present. But again, they made the same mistake. Bemused clients received a box with the mouse and nothing else. No accompanying letter or anything else to explain why they got the mouse.
On the other hand, when I received my affiliate check from Ken Evoy of Sitesell, there was a nice accompanying letter to go with the check. The letter was addressed to my name and was even personally signed. No wonder the company had been growing at breakneck speed.
I hope you are not making the same mistake. How have you been treating your clients in all of your contact with them?