Tag: Google

Cyber Hackers Can Mess With Google – Are You Afraid For Your Business?

If you have been reading the news lately and picking up on all the commotion around hack attacks on some of the big guns like Google, Yahoo and Adobe you may be experiencing a twinge of anxiety over the security for your own business. You may have believed your network was invincible so this news could leave you feeling shaky. You have good reason to feel this way – according to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald the number of hackers tampering with private financial information belonging to Australian business is on the rise. Obviously using the internet and intranet for business has become a viable solution to accomplishing company objectives, but on the downside the criminal faction sees just as much opportunity.

Australia is a Frequent Target for Cyber Crime

Symantec, a data security firm reported that Australian and New Zealand businesses suffer 75% more security breaches than the global average with 89% of the companies polled in the last 12 months admitting at least one intrusion. Hackers are not necessarily going after the major companies where they can make off with large sums of money. Like any other thief, they go where the risk is low and they can get in and out of a system quickly and without detection. The fact is you don’t have to be at any particular level of business profitability to be targeted. Smaller companies tend to use less comprehensive IT security making them more susceptible. In general, hackers are interested in easy money.

Google and Other Large Corporations are Not Exempt

The threat does not always revolve around banking information or sensitive intellectual property. As Google discovered in December 2009, issues such as human rights are at stake in cyber attacks. The advertising and search giant was appalled that a highly organized effort dubbed “Aurora” was being made to hack into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human right activists. They managed to infiltrate only two accounts and were not able to see the account holders’ actual correspondence. The action put Google in the position where it felt it necessary to warn the Chinese human rights community of the attack and to prepare to withdraw business ties with China. Officials at Google did not directly accuse the Chinese government of being the perpetrators but they decided to review doing business with the country based its attempts to limit free speech on the internet. Google stated concern for the safety of the Chinese citizens and the potential for them to be interrogated and imprisoned.

There were at least 20 other large internet, media, finance and technology companies included in the attack: Yahoo, Adobe, Symantec, Dow Chemical and Northrop Grumman to name a few. It was accomplished through a technique called “spear phishing.” This resembles an attack against 100 IT companies in July 2009 where company employees were targeted with infected email attachments.

Small and Midsize Businesses have Minimal Defense

Most businesses are totally defenseless against these sophisticated attacks. They use instant messages and emails that seem innocent at first because the senders appear to be friends and trusted colleagues. The messages are fine-tuned to evade the anti-virus programs designed for these applications. Evidently the best practices for IT security that have successfully held attackers at bay for many years are no longer sufficient. There is an innovative caliber of attacks circulating around the globe using custom malware written specifically for individual companies. The hackers don’t seem to mind if it takes longer to get around the antivirus software in use by the large corporations. They continue painstakingly to tweak their malware until it is effective. Smaller companies that don’t have the budget for a large scale security have not stood a chance. The hackers have the ability to commandeer only one employee’s laptop and make it a gateway for total administrative access to the company’s entire network.

The security firm, iSec Partners that investigated the attack on Google and ensuing corporations recommend we make fundamental changes to the way we protect our networks. They say we have simply not been prepared for the level of sophistication demonstrated by the new cyber criminals.

Hacker Stories in the Australian News

Internet news sites report the direct effects of cyber hacking on Australia. Today Online posted a news article about a hacker called “Ghostbuster” that has been targeting Melbourne businesses as a response to violence against Indians. The person behind the attacks has been sending threatening emails stating Australian servers will be hacked until racism against Indian nationals is ended. The action came in the wake of the murder of a 21-year-old Punjabi student in January 2010. Several Melbourne businesses were victimized when their entire networks were thrown into chaos.

In the technology section of The Age is a report describing the effects on government websites by hackers associated with the group “Anonymous”, known for its attacks on Scientology. This is the same group that temporarily blasted pornography across Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s website. On the morning of February 10, 2010 a number of government sites were down. The attack was in opposition to the government’s plans for internet censorship. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was not happy with the fact that Australian citizens could not obtain needed services online and felt it was irresponsible on the part of the hackers.

In the Sydney Morning Herald one journalist mentions the statistics that there are now more mobile devices in the country than Australians. It is not unusual for an individual to own two or three. The rising use of wireless broadband provides accessibility and convenience for subscribers but it also expands the territory for cyber criminals. Currently there are more barriers to cyber hacking wireless devices than terrestrial networks, such as the cost of making a phone call. However with the advances in mobile device technology to the point where it can replace the need for owning a laptop computer the potential for being targeted by hackers exists. The actual devices may be secure but the Wi-Fi network, often free and faster for users in public places is a temptation for cyber criminals. You may believe you have connected to a site operated by an airport, hotel or coffee shop, but there is no way of knowing for sure who controls the IP address that now has access to everything in your computer or mobile device. It is not that difficult for hackers to present a fake website you feel you can trust that they can use to steal from your network at any time in the future.

Millions of dollars are stolen everyday from individuals and businesses that use the internet. We are warned frequently about viruses, worms and phishing scam but somehow we get caught anyway. The situation is getting worse as hackers become better adept at breaking down the unique systems designed to keep them out. If you are still experiencing discomfort about the vulnerability of your network it will pay off to attend to your gut feeling.

How to Read Google AdWords Reports

I was writing a pretty lengthy email to one of our clients tonight about how to read their Google AdWords report and realized that I would probably be writing this same email over and over again. But, as my business partner Harry Casimir likes to say, “never do something more than once, automate!”

Many of our clients are not technologically savvy, but I realize that even those who are (and this particular client is) might have trouble reading the default reports generated by Google. Maybe it’s their use of abbreviation or that some of the main elements of their reports are formulas, but I’ve noticed many of our clients at Unique ID have asked me to explain, in some form, their reports.

I am a huge proponent of Google AdWords, and like Google AdSense, it has revolutionized the web (but on the opposite spectrum) and it has led to the success of many of our web sites and the elation of many of our clients. But, as Action International explained at a recent Small Business Development seminar “You Must Measure Everything!” Many of our clients have requested detailed reports of their Google AdWords accounts. My employees and I are very familiar with the system, and consequently, the reports are easy to read, but for those unaquainted with the system I can understand their frustration. So I put together a simple guide to reading Google’s Adword reports (an explanation of each column of the report, names and prices have been changed to protect the innocent).

Date: The date or date range of the data.

Campaign: Arbitrary information that lets you know under what campaign the reporting information is for. In the examples’ case we only have one active campaign “Regionally Targeted”

Ad Group: Arbitrary information that lets you know under what ad group the reporting information is for. In the examples’ case we only have one active adgroup “Sounds.” In the case of other reports (depending on how your or your search marketing company have set up your account) there might be additional items.

Keyword Matching: The type of system the keyword was displayed on. Broad means Google’s search engine or search engine affiliates (companies that use Google’s software and utilities to drive their own search engines). Content means those sites that have agreed to run Google’s ads through the AdSense network.

Keyword Status: Shows the current status of the Keywords for that month (active, deleted, paused, etc.).

Keyword Min CPC: The minimum cost per click that was paid for term(s). This is just the absolute minimum Google charged for the specific term (most likely based on competition for the term you were bidding on).

Current Maximum CPC: Current maximum cost per click. This is the item that is adjusted to increase or decrease our terms rankings. This is the maximum amount we are willing to pay Google for a single click for that term. Most of the time this is edited on a Ad Group wide level so every maximum cost per click should be the same. You can edit each keyterm individual and the report may reflect that.

Impressions: The number of times an ad was shown.

Clicks: The number of clicks we received.

CTR: Click through rate, clicks divided by impressions. This is one of the biggest measurements of the success of an account. A high click through rate means our ads and keywords are very well matched and targeted. Our standard measure for CTR is 0.5% or 1 click for every 200 impressions.

Average CPC: Average cost per click. The average price you paid for a click for that specific term.

Cost: Clicks x Average CPC (cost per click).

Avg Position: Average Position, or the position on Google the ad appeared at. Typically a higher position means a higher CTR. And alternatively, accounts with higher click through rates typically receive better placement.

Conversions: the number of direct web contacts received through google. These are the number of people that fulfilled every step, they searched for your term found your ad relevant, clicked through to your site, and either signed up or purchased something. Click through rate is only a measure of web leads or contacts, some visitors might have been ‘converted’ through the telephone or direct email.

Conversion Rate: Conversions divided by clicks. If you had 3 people click through to your site for “chicage killgrass7” and 1 person actually contacted you through the web contact form you would have a conversion rate of 33% for that term.

Cost/Conversion: Cost divided by conversions. This is done on a per term basis and also as a total at the bottom.

Google Maps VS Yellow Pages – Part 1 of 2

This is a comparison of Google Maps (Google.com) and Yellow Pages (YellowPages.com) for the consumer. The second article is a comparison for the business owner. However, it would serve the business owner well to take a look at the consumer presentation because the things that affect the consumer can have a major impact on the business owner.

The easiest way to compare these two services is to take a look at a real world situation and see how the two entities stack up. Now if you are saying, “Wait a minute, what are you doing comparing Google Maps with the Yellow pages? They aren’t even the same thing.” That’s understandable. At first glance they seem different, maps and yellow pages.

Maybe Google made a mistake. Google Maps was previously know as Google Local Search. In Local Search you could look up businesses and get phone numbers and directions. Google probably changed the name to Google Maps because Maps is a much broader term and encompasses all that Google is doing with their maps. Bottom line, Google Maps is an excellent phone directory.

So, our real world scenario. Let’s say that we are looking for a cosmetic dentist is Santa Monica, Ca that takes Saturday morning appointments.

Let’s start by navigating to YellowPages.com. We are greeted with a pleasant website and what immediately jumps out at us are two text boxes. One says Find and the other says location. I’ll begin with a general search. Under Find I enter Dentist and other Location I enter Santa Monica.

Instantly the YellowPages returns a new web page with eleven different categories. I’m in luck. One of the categories is Dentist – Cosmetic Dentistry. I check the box and click the Find button at the bottom of the page. I’m then greeted by another page and at first I’m a bit confused. I see one dentist listing on the right and this dentist is in Thousand Oaks, easily more than 25 miles away. This certainly isn’t what I’m looking for. Wondering if I entered the correct information my eyes begin to scan the screen and in the left column I first notice a list of cities, Agoura, Agoura Hills, Beverly Hills, Calabasas, etc. My thoughts are it should be easier than this. I’ve already entered data and I’m two clicks into the search and I don’t seem to be very close to the finding a dentist in Santa Monica.

Then at the top of the column on the left I notice that I can refine my search and there is text in black letters that doesn’t look like a link but says Santa Monica Listings Only. I click on the link and go to my third web page and I see a list of dentists. The top dentist looks like a paid listing. The phone number is listed with a link to automatically dial it from a mobile phone. There is also a link to the dentists website, a banner ad and links to more info about the dentist like the products and services that he offers and how long he has been in service.

Beneath the paid listing are the regular listings which seem to be listed alphabetically. These listings include the dentists name, the address and the phone number. There is also a link to a map and more info.

At the very bottom of the listing is a link to send the info to a mobile phone (nice). Thre are also links to Map It, Email it, Get Directions, Save the Listing and Save a note if you have a YellowPages account (very nice).

So far there is enough information to make a call. The phone number is listed. But I want to find a cosmetic dentist so I click on the Dentist name. This opens up a new web page that has the same basic information plus some Business Details which contains General Information, Maps and Directions, and User Reviews.

The same menu for sending info to mobile, emailing, directions etc is also on this page.

Let’s now look at the same search on Google Maps and compare the two. I navigate to maps.Google.com and am greeted with a rather familiar looking interface since I do all of my searches on Google anyway. There is only one search box so I simply enter “cosmetic dentist santa monica” and click Search Maps.

Google immediately returns the top ten search results. The dental offices are listed on the left side of the page with alphabetically lettered place markers and a large map is on the right side showing where each of the dental offices are located.

I already feel better about Google. There was one search box. I didn’t have to enter the business category in one box and the location in another. Also, I have instant results and in the right city. I didn’t have to select from a menu of different types of dentist and then refine the search again by city. At this point Google seems much easier to use.

Like the Yellow Pages there is a paid listing at the top of the list. However, it’s obvious that this listing is a paid advertisement because it has a different background color. This clearly separates the paid listing from the organic search results. Beneath the paid listing are the top ten search results lettered from A to J.

These listings aren’t alphabetical and seem in random order until you learn that Google returns results which it thinks are the most relevant to the search words used. A listing consists of the name of the business, the address, and phone number. If a dentist has a customer review there is a blurb from the review beneath the listing.

If you click on the business name or the lettered place marker a large information box almost resembling a cartoon bubble launches from the corresponding place marker on the maps. This place marker contains the same basic information about the business plus a link to the businesses website if the business has one.

This is great. If there is a dentist that looks appealing I can click on a link to his or her website and get much more information. True, the paid dental ad on YellowPages.com had a link to that dentist’s website but none of the other dentist had a web link. That’s probably because at businesses on Yellow pages have to pay a premium to get a web link. Since this service is free on Google, more dentist will have web links which mean there will be much more information for consumers.

If you click on the More Info in the information box a new menu appears that has some of the same information provided by YellowPages.com like reviews and details, but there are also four features here that YellowPages.com doesn’t have; photos, video, user content and web references. Of the four I particularly like the photos and video. Although not many business are using video yet, more are sure to catch on to this opportunity and provide a wealth of information about their business.

In summation I like Google maps more than YellowPages.com. It is easier to use, you can get the exact information that you want with fewer clicks, it allows the business owner to present photos and videos. YellowPages.com is good. A nice clean professional interface. But it’s more time consuming to initiate a search, often requires too many clicks to find the exact information you are looking for and doesn’t allow regular businesses to link to websites unless they pay a premium. Two features I really like on YellowPages.com is the ability to send a business listing to a mobile device and the abilitiy record personal notes on a business listing.

Internet Marketing For Small Business – Part 2 of 5 Steps to Succeeding With Google AdWords

Continuing on from my last article ‘Internet Marketing For Small Business – Part 1 of 5 Steps to Succeeding With Google AdWords”, here are the final steps to ensuring a successful Google AdWords Campaign.

2. Understanding Quality Score:

Once you have added your keywords, Google will tell you your quality score. Its important that you have a good to great quality score in your keywords (usually rated out of 10), if you get a poor or OK quality score, it means you have done something wrong. It could be that you are bidding on the wrong keywords, that your landing page is not specific enough for those keywords or Google does not think your ad is related to your keywords or that the page you are sending people does not have those keywords in it.

The quality score will be determined from a number of things:

  • You need to have a high CTR: A high quality score must be over 1% and this will also depend on how your ads are showing up. If your ad is appearing on the 2nd or 3rd page, then this will mean your quality score is lower but if you are in the top 5 or 6 positions, your CTR should be over 1%. Therefore you need to work on getting that CTR as high as you with a baseline of 1% as the CTR. You should always get a CTR of over 1%, even as high as 15% and the way you get a high CTR is by testing. You write 2 different ads and see which ones performs better. Usually after 30 to a 100 clicks, you pick the ad that gets a higher click rate and write a variation on it. You then go on and write another ad that is different to that one and see which one performs better again (beating the control). When you have found a theme that performs very well, you can tweak your ads by adding a question mark, quotations around it, switch the descriptions lines or even change your url. You can do any of these things to tweak your ad so that you can get a higher CTR, thus a higher quality score.
  • Its Not A Bidding War….Most people when starting out with Google AdWords usually say “I want to be in the top position, at number 1 and I am willing to pay more than anyone else to be there”. This is the wrong way to go about it. It should not be a bidding war, it should be a fight over who is the better advertiser, that is what Google really wants. Google wants you to write an ad that gets the highest CTR so that they make more money ie. the more clicks, the more money you pay them. So if you can write a better ad than your competitors, Google will be very willing to reward you for that. They reward you by charging you less per click and putting you in a higher position on the page. Lets say your ad gets a 2% CTR and your competitor gets a 1% CTR, it probably means you are going to pay half as much per click and be ranked higher than your competitor because Google will know the user is having a better searching experience. Hence you should always have two ads running and check which ad is performing better. If one is performing badly, pause it, write a better ad and see if you can beat your better performing ad.

3. Tracking:

AdWords is probably the best system for tracking that exists. It is very easy with Google AdWords to set up your keywords and track how well they are performing ( i.e. by making you money). What is most important is to track whether the clicks are making you sales or converting into leads or sales. If your clicks are not converting, you are obviously just wasting money so it is very important that you track down at a keyword level which ones are making money for you. This is called keyword conversion tracking and there are a couple ways of doing it. The best way is to have Google do it for you. Google has some keyword conversion tracking code which they will allow you put it on your thank you or finished page and they will let you track a sale or a conversion.

The other way you can track conversions is by assigning a specific URL to every keyword (help can be found at the Google AdWords Tutorial). The better you understand how to track conversions, the better your results will be with AdWords. You will find that as you get more clicks on your campaign and by tracking everything, different keywords will perform very differently even though they may seem very similar. For example ‘dog training’ maybe very different to ‘train my dog’, you may find that one of them may convert much higher than the other one.

On another level, you can track conversions through the success of your ad campaigns. Some ads may perform better than other ads, for example one ad may have a price and the other may not, this means anyone that clicks on the ad with a price knows that they have to buy something when they go to that page – that ad will convert at a higher percentage than if you did not have the price on the ad. It will probably have a much lower CTR but also a higher conversion rate. This is really something that needs to be tested on every campaign to see if you are getting a return on investment because in the end the goal is to make the greatest amount of money. Track everything!

4. Bidding:

Over the years bidding has changed, it use to be bid low and then raise your bid and to see what the lowest point was. That is probably not the wisest thing to do anymore – at least not right now. Right now what I suggest is start by bidding high, what this does is allow you to get a good position on AdWords and a good CTR. As you establish the CTR, Google will recognize that you are a good advertiser and then you can lower your bid everyday to what Google is actually charging you (whilst maintaining your high CTR). What you need to figure out is whether you are getting a good returns for the money you are actually spending so if you are spending a $1 and getting $2 back – you know its worth continuing the campaign.

5. Last words:

Please don’t get emotional attached to a keyword because you ‘like’ the keyword or believe it should work. Do not expect to learn everything upfront and then go implementing a Google AdWords campaign effectively. If you have your own full time business and love what you are doing – then get a professional in to run your own PPC campaigns.

Tips How To Make Money With Google AdSense, Facebook, A Writer And Selling Offline Products Online

One of the best known ways to make money from a website is through Google AdSense. However, only few know exactly how to use it, how to maximize it properly, and eventually make a decent income out of it. Because Google AdSense will literally make money for you without you doing anything with it, it is one of the few programs online you can set and forget. You know Google AdSense; the question is do you know how to earn from it?

To make money from website, you can sign up your site or blog for a free account at Google AdSense. Once you did, Google will start putting contextual ads to it – ads that are relevant to your site. For example, your site or blog talks about weight loss, posted contextual ads are also related to weight loss. Ads that appear in your site are relevant to your area; so if you’re based in US, the ads are based in the US.

These are carefully worked out for you so that you can make money from website. Every time someone clicks to the ads that appear to your site, you get earn credit into your AdSense account. It may be just a few cents per click, but if your site holds high traffic, you are likely to get more than a few clicks to the ads. It would help if the ads are attractive to your visitors.

Since the appearance of the ads affect how visitors respond to the ads, it would be helpful if you change the color or text of the ads. Experiment on it and choose which one you think would fit best. If what you have is blog, there is a limit to which you can employ changes. Regardless, Google AdSense is one of the passive ways to make money from website.

There are several ways to make money online, but did you know that you can make real money using Facebook? Facebook has more than 800 million users and still growing, making it the most popular website in the internet. Since the basic element to make money online is traffic, Facebook becomes the most convenient way to do business online for its “built-in” traffic. Even you can make money on Facebook with just about anything.

So how to make real money on Facebook? You can consider two things: bring your existing business on Facebook or open a new one. Whatever your business outside, you can it bring on Facebook. Just look at the different companies that have transferred their marketing money from SEO to Facebook marketing.

Giant companies like Nike and Pepsi all have Facebook fan pages which you can do for your business as well. Your page may not get 11 million likes, but it can definitely receive instant traffic and exposure to whatever brand you are promoting. And because you can tap the social network’s young, active and viral crowd, a good Facebook marketing campaign can be picked up by anyone and spread like wildfire and can lead your business to make real money. This situation is always favorable to you.

There are a few things you can do to make real money on Facebook: sell items, develops apps, advertise, and offer services. Pull out from your strengths and get ideas from what you do best. Then develop it as an online business. You’ll be surprised how people within your existing network will respond and help you promote your business.

Writing is probably the easiest way to make real money online. Freelance writing, article writing, e-book writing, blogging and technical writing are just a few things you can do. Freelance writing usually involves creating articles out of a certain topic that will be used to promote a certain website or to generate more traffic to the site. Depending on where the job order is coming from, you can get from $3 to as much as $150 per article.

Most websites need high quality articles and are willing to pay serious bucks out of it-this is where you can make real money online. Some may sacrifice quality and pay less. Some require short and simple write-ups. Others demand academic discourses.

Because websites need to feed search engines with fresh and new articles that are related to their websites, the demand for article writers and bloggers is endless. More and more websites being launched everyday that need articles. As a writer, this is nothing but a great opportunity. Should you wish to take writing as a career or as a serious way to make real money online, there are qualities you should possess.

To become successful as a freelance writer and make real money online, there are certain criteria that must be met. First, you should be able to write unique, quality, and original articles. Second, you should deliver articles on time, have a basic understand of keyword density, and perfect grasp of the English language. Finally, you should have a natural talent in writing and writing should be your passion to make the job easier.

There are countless ways to make money on the internet. All you need to do is to become more creative and unique. But how can you be unique if everyone else is doing the same thing? The article is focused on making money online by selling an offline product and taking it online.

Have you ever seen a product offline that really caught your attention that you have never seen selling online? If you know where to find it, have you considered selling it online? This is what we mean by being creative and unique. Getting a hold of this product that has not really taken off online is one of the best ways to make money on the internet.

You can do it several ways. Two of them include buying product or a range of products from a company and get discounts or becoming a sales agent and take a percentage from every sale. Ultimately, your option depends on how the company will agree with your plan to take the product online, but surely you can make money on the internet. And if you’re an exclusive online distributor, the entire market is yours.

Whichever way you approach your business, make sure you have a clear agreement with the company. Do ample research on the product. It’s easy to get caught up with the excitement, especially if you can make money on the internet out of it. But make sure to find as much as you can about how you can maximize your profit when you sell the product online.

Dany Cooper

Easy Steps to Create a Google Email at Your Own Dot Com Free – Own a Dot Com for Free

This used to be impossible to do without paying for your own domain name, therefore, having an email at your own dot com costs.

The key to owning your own dot com email is getting a free domain name. Once you find this, setting up the email will be easy. Google just recently launched its Google Apps service providing smart business applications for email, documents, sites and more.They are willing to host your domain name for free and take advantage of their business services at no cost.

There are several companies that say they offer free domain names. Web hosting companies give free domain names as part of their hosting package. Others are just redirection services. What they really provide is a sub domain of a very short domain name. Try using this service and you won’t be able to host the domain name in any web hosting company. Why? Because you don’t really control the domain.

In order to have full control of the domain name, one must be able to control its cname, a, mx, and ns records. If you own a domain and try to host it in a free web hosting service, the host will ask you to point your domain to their name servers. Google apps will ask you to change the cname record to what they will provide. Google can also give their mx records for you to copy and paste in your domain management.

We need to find a free domain name service that supports full DNS control and domain management. One that provides free DNS and MX services.

Once you have full control of your own domain name for free, you can now sign up for a free web hosting service. Point your domain to their name servers, modify the mx record to the one provided by Google apps and presto, you got yourself a Google email at your own dot com.

All these are now possible and easily doable. Own your dot com for free and create an email address at your own dot com free.

Let’s slow down a little bit. These are what you need and look for:

1. A free domain name. You must have full control of this domain. Find a service that provides full DNS control and domain management. One that is not merely a redirection service.

2. Sign up for a good free web hosting company. One that provides own domain hosting for free. Take advantage of what they offer like large disk spaces, 100gb to 300gb bandwidth, easy to use website builder, and a Fantastico one click script installer. This is where you will host your new domain name. Get their name servers and go back to your domain management to point your domain name to the web host’s name servers.

3. Sign up for Google Apps using your domain name. Google will ask you to activate email by providing their MX record.

4. Log back in to your free web host member’s area and at your control panel, you can modify the MX record. Enter the one provided by Google.

Once completed, all you have to do is wait 24 to 48 hours for these settings to take effect. You now have your new domain name, a good web hosting service, and your Google email at your own dot com all for free. Why not build your website from here and start a new confident journey to an online business. Or just simply have fun.

Using Google AdSense For Extra Income!

I have been using the Google AdSense Program to generate extra income online for some time now. I have gained a lot of experience from using the program. I feel it’s become necessary to share the pros and cons of the program with those that may be considering using it in this article. But first, I need to explain a bit what the program is.

What is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense is an affiliate marketing program. In Google AdSense, Google acts as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would simply sign up with Google and provide the latter with text ads pertaining to their products. These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser’s website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google AdSense program.

In Google AdSense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest. The ads that Google would place on your site would generally be relevant to the content of your site. This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.

The Google AdSense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis. The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this amount to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount. Google AdSense checks are usually delivered monthly if you earning reaches $100.00. Also, the Google AdSense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows them to monitor the earnings they actually get from a certain ad.

Now that you understand what Google AdSense is, here are the pros:

1. They are great for webmasters creating content websites. It used to be these webmasters worried about how to cover the expenses of running their websites. With Google AdSense, these worries became a thing of the past. All they have to do now is write their content and add AdSense to it and make money.

2. Google AdSense makes the internet better for the users. Webmasters can now concentrate on publishing quality content. Quality content makes the internet better for the users.

3. Once a webmaster creates quality content, it can generate income for years to come. All the webmaster has to do is update the content from time to time and the income will keep coming in.

4. If a webmaster has the time, the webmaster can publish multiple websites. You can use one Google AdSense account on multiple websites. You don’t have to go through the hassle of applying for another account with Google.

Below are the cons of the Google AdSense program:

1. The AdSense account can be closed by Google at any time. There are horror stories of webmasters waking up and seeing their account closed. They all of a sudden lose their source of income.

Usually, one of the reasons that makes Google close an account is click fraud. The problem is that the click fraud my not be committed by the webmaster.

2. The Google AdSense program does not provide residual income. So, you can’t continue to reap the reward of your hard work over and over as you do with residual income programs.

3. Most content websites depend on search engines for traffic. When the search engines shuffle their ranking algorithms, the traffic may drop. This drop will result in less traffic and income.

4. Creating content can be hard work. You’ll need to keep adding content to keep your website interesting. Without this, you visitors may dry up, which will decrease your income.

There you have it! You now know the pros and cons of the Google AdSense program. It’s up to you to decide if you want to use it to earn extra income.

Expert Tips To Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

So do you want to optimize your Google My Business listing? Do you know what it is, how does it actually work for your business and why do you need it? Well, if you are a master in SEO, probably you are aware of the term but if you are new to it and don’t have sufficient knowledge about it, so, this article is for you. Basically, Google My Business Listing is submitting the website within Google’s search engine to improve ranking and it is very much important in all manners. This directory displays your business working hours and provides directions to reach you through Google Map and allowed the clients to give reviews about your products, services and their overall experience with you.

It is extremely helpful for your business as it allowed the visitor to read your reviews, so, they can make their decision whether to work with you or not. And now when you understand its importance and benefits for your business, so, it’s high-time to start optimizing it to get the great outcomes. The following expert tips and tricks help to boost up your profile, which drives a huge traffic and increase your conversion. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started.

  • Fill In Your Complete Information: In an order to make it more attractive for the searchers, it is highly recommended to fill in the complete details about your company. And make sure you keep it updated if there is some change in the future. To guide the right direction for the visitor, you should provide complete details, including your company name, website URL, hours of operations, contact numbers, address and a short description of your company.
  • Pick A Proper Business Category: Moving to the next tip that helps you optimize My Google Business Listing is the right niche for your business to enable a search engine to understand on what products and services you deal in. It clarifies the search results and helps you get the right traffic locally to your page or website.
  • Write A Meaningful Description: Your customers will come to know about your products and services through your bio. So, make sure you write a meaningful and detailed description about your company, which pull in visitor and turn them to be your customer.
  • Encourage Customer Reviews: No doubt, people look for the reviews before getting connected with your company. So, make sure you encourage your existing customers to give their feedback about their experience with your company, which further help to win the faith of the new customer.

The Value of Google Places for Local Business and Map Ranking Factors

So as search engine marketers, we all know the value of Google’s local 10 pack, 7 pack, 3 pack, whatever you want to call it. But just how valuable is it and what are the factors that search engines use to determine local ranking? This is all what we will talk about in today’s entry.

For those of you who may not know me yet, my name is Matt Parks. I’m an online marketing consultant who helps small, medium and even global companies build appropriate online marketing strategies and enhance their brand awareness through competitive traditional and non-traditional advertising techniques.

Now for what you’ve been waiting for… the good stuff…

So, you may ask… Just how valuable are the local map results for my company? Well there is no simple answer to that question. Each company should have a custom built strategy. For instance, if you own a local Thai restaurant and want to increase your daily foot traffic, local listings will greatly help your efforts. On the other hand, you own a specialty shoe store that does 100% of your business online, local listings are just not for you. Google and other search engines developed their local results pages to assist users in finding small business owners with brick and mortar shops, retail stores or restaurants, and get quick information about them – such as hours, short reviews and even menu items and sale dates.

So, we’ve whittled a few of you out of the mix now. What’s next? How do I get premium ranking with these listings?

Ahhhhh. So you want to know the magic trick huh? Well, first you need to have a listing. You can create one by logging into your Google account if you have one, and selecting the local business center icon under your settings. If you don’t have one there, just type into Google: “local business center” and follow the easy to use, step by step listing creation wizard. When creating your listing, it is very important to make sure all the information you provide is correct, including phone number and address as before you finish, you will be required to verify by telephone or snail mail that in fact the listing is yours. Now on to the pot of gold. Lets go over the top ten ranking factors for local listings…

1: GENERAL IMPORTANCE OF CLAIMING LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING – You have to have a listing first.

2: LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING ADDRESS IN CITY OF SEARCH – The closer you are to the IP, the better.

3: ASSOCIATING LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING WITH PROPER CATEGORIES – This is a must, create new categories if you need to, just don’t try and keyword stuff.

4: PRODUCT / SERVICE KEYWORD IN LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING TITLE – Use your correct full name, but add a keyword if it fits right. ie: Garden Palace – Chinese Restaurant

5: PROXIMITY OF ADDRESS TO CITY CENTROID – Don’t use a fake address, but if you are corporate, a UPS box (no P.O. box, only physical address) near the middle of town couldn’t hurt

6: PRODUCT/SERVICE KEYWORDS IN LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING DESCRIPTION – Keep it short and sweet.. Remember, you are trying to appeal to the user/searcher.

7: LOCATION KEYWORD IN LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING TITLE/DESCRIPTION – Garden Palace of Nashville – Chinese Restaurant

8: ASSOCIATING PHOTOS/VIDEOS WITH THE LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING – Not as important, but try and at least upload a logo.

9: PRODUCT / SERVICE IN LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING CUSTOM FIELDS – Undetermined how much this helps, but they are provided, so use them… But don’t OVERUSE them and stuff em’ full of keywords.

10: ASSOCIATING LOCAL AREA CODE AS PRIMARY LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING NUMBER – Local numbers perform much better, may not help with ranking, but it does with consumer trust.

An extra bonus: Make sure information in your listing is consistent across the board.. ie: YellowPages.com, CitySearch.com, etc. as Google uses these Data Sources to add trustworthiness to your listing and gives you ranking bonuses due to it being more “relevant”.

Well that’s about it.

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