Google – Do You Love It, Hate It or Just Love To Hate It?

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Cathy Henry

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When you sit down to talk to internet marketers about Google, there are usually three different opinions; those who love it, those who hate it and those who just love to hate it. What do I mean by that?

Get into a discussion about Google with a seasoned internet marketing veteran and you will soon discover the definite dividing lines. For those, like me, who love Google and all of the products and services they offer, chances are you will discover that they are making a decent living from everything that is offered to them. From SEO to Adwords and Adsense to the webmaster tools, there are so many useful applications that you can put into practice and become successful online. The trouble is, you have to be able to follow rules, put in the time and energy and really make a business from your efforts. Those who are able to do that generally love Google.

Then you talk to the next fraction and they truly hate it. Most often though, you find out that at one time they were making some pretty decent money using at least a portion of what Google has to offer, but then in the next breath, it was all taken away from them. Yanked out from under their feet with no warning and no means of redemption. Typically, these are people who are constantly trying to outsmart the search engines, bending the rules until finally they snap. At that point Google slaps them hard and takes everything they have worked so hard on away leaving them at a loss to know what went wrong. The funniest thing is, even though they hate it, they still will use some of the products, at least the ones they have not been banned from yet.

Then the last group of people are the ones who sit on the fence somewhere in the middle. They know what opportunities Google is offering them, but they haven’t quite figured out how to put the puzzle together yet. So they love and hate it at the same time. It is these people who are on the brink of either going one way or the other. If I have to give anyone bit of advice it would be to knuckle down, do the work, abide by the rules and eventually it will pay off.

When you start trying to take shortcuts, trying to find ways around the rules and basically, getting lazy, that is when you will get into trouble. I would venture to guess that almost everyone who is trying to make money from the internet, unless you are an absolute newbie, already has the knowledge about how to do it, what they lack is the drive and ambition to actually do the work.

If you are an absolute newbie and you need tips and information, go to someone who is making money from Google to learn from. Don’t have a mentor who cannot follow rules as he will take you down that same path he has walked. The fact is that Google owns about 70% of all search traffic and cutting your business off from that is pure madness.

So for those of you who love to hate Google, it is time to make a decision. Do you or do you not want to succeed? Success only comes with hard work and doing things right the first time. Because with Google, there is no second chance. It is one or the other.

Related Posts:

SEO For Home Page vs Internal Pages – Which is Best?
The Google Dance – What is it and why? – SEO FAQ
Site Indexed By Google – How Long Does It Take? – SEO FAQ
Google Search – Advanced Search Strings Tutorial
Custom Google Search Codes or Strings For SEO

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Twitter Marketing – Let’s Talk About Free Tools and APIs

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Cathy Henry

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Twitter marketing is almost impossible to do on a large scale without the use of tools. There are hundreds of tools available, some free and some premium, but which ones are right for you?

Before using any third party tool or API, first you must check to be sure that it does not break Twitter’s rules or terms of use policy. You can review these rules here. http://support.twitter.com/entries/76915-automation-rules-and-best-practices Even though there are many very good and very useful applications available, there are just as many APIs out there that can have a very negative impact on your Twitter account. Using the wrong one could result in getting your account suspended or terminated and you definitely do not want that.

When you see notes at the bottom of someone’s Tweet that says “posted via Flickr” you know that the person is using an approved tool to post. The site has taken the time and gone through the oAth process and Twitter has granted them approval. If it says “posted via API” it does not necessarily mean it is a bad APP, it just means they have not been oAth approved. These are the ones you have to really take a look at to make sure they do not break the rules.

Basically, you want to avoid the mass following and un-following tools as they definitely do break the rules. So how do you get new followers when you are just starting out?

Two very good places to start are wefollow.com and search.twitter.com. wefollow is a site that lists the top users within different categories. So you can do a search with your keyword and find out who is the top person within your niche. Following the influencers within your market is always a good beginning. It only stands to reason that the people following them are also interested in your products or services. Then you can begin following their followers. search.twitter.com is Twitter’s search engine. It will allow you to do keyword searches for users who mention your keyword in their profiles.

Once you begin amassing a following, you will need tools to help you update your accounts more efficiently to save time. Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are both very good tools. They will allow you to not only manage your Twitter account, but also Facebook and other social media sites from within one application. Hootsuite, which is one of my favorites, also allows you to schedule posts and track their effectiveness.

Every market is different and you will want to monitor your updates to find the ones that get the most response. Tracking will allow you to better understand what time of day is best, what types of updates get the most response, etc.

So there you have it. Three tools that give you a great advantage and make your social marketing streamlined and more manageable. Remember, these are social sites, meaning it is not all about you and your business. It is about interacting and becoming a valued member of the community. Tweet your customers right and they will Tweet you with their loyalty.

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Google Wave, Google Buzz and Now Google Me? Another Attempt at Social Networking

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Cathy Henry

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Eric Schmidt of Google has finally admitted that there is indeed a new social networking product to be launched by Google this fall called Google Me. We have all speculated that Google will try to give Facebook a run for the money when it comes to the share of social networking but what exactly will this new product be like?

Eric has hinted that it will not be similar to Facebook, but it will compliment the existing Google products to add a social element to them. Since they have recently been on a spending spree buying up game developers and related businesses, you can bet that they recognize the apps Facebook offers as a big part of the popularity. Since purchasing Zynga, you can bet that Google will be attempting to romance Farmville and Mafia Wars away from their exclusivity contract with Facebook.

Schmidt did not release many details, but hinted that the social aspect will be more about reporting your activities to your friends. Since it knows more about your internet activities than anyone else on the face of the earth, it can compile that activity and report how many friends check out a specific Youtube video or app download or just about anything else.

I am not sure if that will be a particularly popular feature with so many being concerned about privacy. Will Google Me be a hit? They are investing millions into it, but if we look at the track record when it comes to attempts at social networking, the odds are not good.

In part, I think it has to do with the Google reputation. People just don’t trust Google anymore. They flaunt their power and disregard privacy issues. Although they are the most powerful force online, and no one can deny their skill at search, but you have to wonder if they shouldn’t just stick to what they do best instead of trying to get into a power struggle with Facebook.

Is Google Me going to be a big flop or a big hit? Only time will tell, but let’s hope it doesn’t fizzle out like Buzz or Wave.

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Custom Google Search Codes or Strings For SEO

Posted on September 14, 2010 by Cathy Henry

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Below are some of the most useful custom Google search strings (codes) you will find anywhere. Using the principles from my Google tutorials on advanced search terms, you can combine a series of search operators to create a custom search string to dig into the web and receive tons of valuable information at no cost.

These are some of the search strings I use regularly and I hope you will find them useful too. Please do not copy my codes to your site or to your products. Instead, feel free to share the link to this page with your readers or subscribers. They will appreciate you for sharing this resource with them.

Note: for these codes, you should have a browser add-on such as SEO Quake, Quirk or SEObook (this is what I use) so you can easily tell what the PR is and other relevant info about the sites that appear in the search results.

So let’s get started.

Search code for finding the hottest topics to write about or create products for:

This search string will bring up the newest articles on ezinearticles.com that receive the greatest amount of traffic. I have used “tutorial” as my seed keyword, but you can use anything you like. “how to” or “steps” or “guide” also work very well when you are looking for hot topics to write about or hot niches to explore.

intitle:”tutorial” site:ezinearticles.com “Article Submitted On:**,2010″ “This article has been viewed 2000..99999999″

Search code for finding sources for relevant High PR links:

This next search code string will help you find High PR blogs to leave comments on. You can swap out the .gov for .edu or .com or any other extension.

site:.gov inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “your keyword phrase”

Similarly, you can use the following code to find High PR forums to participate in. Again, you can swap out the .gov for .edu, .com or any other extension. Use your SEO browser add-on to find the very best forums, join a few and participate with your links in your signature.

site:.gov inurl:forum “your keywords”

I’ll be adding more of these custom search strings over time so do be sure you bookmark so you can come back.

Related Posts:

Google Search Guide – Advanced Search Strings Tutorial

Google Search Guide-Basic Search Strings Tutorial

Google Search Guide- What Is Broad, Phrase and Exact Match Search?

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Google Search – Advanced Search Strings Tutorial

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Cathy Henry

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Now that we have covered some of the basics in Google search, it is time to dig deeper and get more specific and more advanced in our search. Having great search skills will give you the ability to find any information you are looking for the first time, thus eliminating a good bit of time from your research tasks.

Advanced Google Search Operators or Codes:

site: You use this as a prefix to a url when you want to search only one site or even if you want to eliminate searches from a particular site. This code is also beneficial to see what pages are indexed in Google from your own site. To use this string, you just type site:www.domainname.com. Do not put a space after the site: code. If you are looking for something specific within a site and you can’t find it by visiting the site, all you have to do is type: keyword site:domanname.com and the search engine will search that site for the keyword you are looking for. If you want to do a search but you do not want to get results from a particular site, you can use this string: keyword -site:domanname.com and Google will send you all the results except those from that site.

link: This is another domain prefix code that you can use to find pages linking to a domain name. This is particularly helpful in determining how many links Google sees as being pointed to your domain name. It is also a good one for checking out the competition. To use this, you type in link:www.domainname.com without an spave after the :.

cache: This is a code that you can use if a site is down for maintenance or is no longer in service. Google stores a cache copy of every page it has indexed. To see an old version, or to check to see what version of your site is currently in Google’s cache files you just type cache:www.domainname.com and it will display the file it has stored. This can also be handy if you are purchasing an aged domain that is no longer available. You can take a look at the old version to make sure it wasn’t a “bad neighborhood” site.

inurl: If you are doing some research and you want to search to see how many people are competing for a particular keyword, you can do a search to see how many pages have the keyword within the url of their website. To do this, you just type inurl:keyword and it will return the results of every url that is using that specific keyword either in the domain name itself or in the page name. To search for an exact phrase you could type inurl:”keyword phrase”

allinurl: This is another way to do the inurl but with multiple keywords. You would type allinurl: dog training tips. this would give results of sites with all three of those words (in any order) in the url.

intitle: This code is great if you are researching information or for checking to see how many pages are competing for your keyword phrase. You can type intitle:keyword or intitle:”keyword phrase” and Google will give you the results for all pages using your keywords in their meta or page titles.

allintitle: This operates in the same way the allinurl code does. When you type allintitle:keyword phrase, you will get results with pages all of the words in the title.

Special Note: The “allin” versions of the search codes cannot be combined with other search operators, but the other versions can be. When used in combinations, you can refine your search to gather almost any bits of specific information imaginable.

Related Posts:

Google Search-Basic Search Strings Tutorial

Google Search- What Is Broad, Phrase and Exact Match Search?

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Google Search-Basic Search Strings Tutorial

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Cathy Henry

Now that you understand the basics of Broad, Phrase and Exact match, it is time to learn a little more about some of the basic search operators or Google codes that you can use to refine your search query a little more.

Basic Google Search Codes or Operators:

- (hyphen): Using a hyphen when doing a search can be very helpful if there is more than one way to use a word. For example, the word backlinks is also often typed as back links or back-links in many articles and websites. If you just type in backlinks in the search field, you will only receive the sites using this spelling. Similarly, if you type in back links, you will only get results from pages using this spelling. But, if you type in back-links, it will return sites using all three variations of the word.

~(tilde): The Tilde is a very useful operator. This is also known as the synonym code. When you use this, you will get the results of your keyword, but also the results of other synonyms. So if I typed in Seattle ~house, I would also get results for Seattle home, Seattle residence and Seattle domicile.

+(plus): When you are doing a compound word search and one word in particular is important, you can add a plus sign in front of the key word. For example, Let’s take that search string above and add one more operator to is. Now type in Seattle ~house +downtown. Now the search results would show us results about any Seattle homes but only if they are downtown.

| (pipe): The operator for “or” is the word OR (must be capitalized) or you can use the | mark. This is used if you want results for multiple words. For example, You could be looking for shoes and you might be interested in various colors. So you would type the search like this: brown|black|grey +shoes. You could also type it as: brown OR black OR grey +shoes. Both would deliver the same results. The search engine will look for shoes in any of the colors you have specified.

-(minus): Although the hyphen is used to join two words as described above, it can also be used as a minus to remove negative words from your search query. So lets say you wanted those shoes, but you did not want them to be suede. You could type the search as brown|black|grey +shoes -suede. This would tell the search engines you wanted results on all of those colors of shoes but none in suede.

*(asterisk): You can use the asterisk in your search as a kind of fill in the blank. Let’s say you want to search for something, but you forget what the full phrase is. You could type “One fish two fish * * blue fish” in the search query and Google would automatically fill in the blanks and send you the results for One fish two fish red fish blue fish.

More Google Tutorials:

Google Search- What Is Broad, Phrase and Exact Match Search?

Google Search – Advanced Search Strings Tutorial

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Google Search- What Is Broad, Phrase and Exact Match Search?

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Cathy Henry

For many, searching in Google is a mystery and finding the exact content they need takes hours of scanning through pages. If you are like them, and have not learned how to use special codes or “operators” to define your search string then this tutorial will be a revelation to you.

Basically, when you type words into the search field, Google will then blast out into the web crawling all different sites for the words you have typed into their search. Because the spiders are just bots and not intelligent beings, they can only do what we ask them to do in a mathematical or systematical way.

That is why sometimes we get results that are not what we are looking for. To cut down the search time and increase the relevance of our search results, we can give the bots clear instructions, beyond the basic words, of what we want them to find for us.

Broad Match Search:

A broad match means that you have typed the words into the search field without any specifics or operators. So let’s say I was looking for: external hard drives. In a broad match, the search engines would deliver results for each individual word as well as the combination of words together on any pages. This is why you get such a large results from broad match. It is not as specific about what you are really looking for. Any page with external or hard or drives would appear in your results.

Phrase Match Search:

By adding an operator to the search phrase, we can narrow down the results to be a little more specific. [external hard drives] will give us results that include all of those words on the page. They may not be in the same order as you have typed them. This just tells the search engine that the page must have all three words included.

Exact Match Search:

To get an exact match to your phrase, you simply put quotation marks around the phrase. “external hard drives” will deliver you results specific to that exact wording of your phrase.

Related Posts:

Google Search-Basic Search Strings Tutorial

Google Search – Advanced Search Strings Tutorial

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Where To Get High Quality Back Links For Your Website

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Cathy Henry

Inbound links are unarguably the number one way to get your site boosted up the search engine results. Aside from on-page SEO, this is the second most important thing you must do to get your page to rank well in search engines.

All links, however, are not created equal. One way links from sites that the search engines consider to be quality, trusted websites will carry much more weight than ones from newly created or lower authority sites. It only stand to reason then that you should be striving for connections with the best sites. High PR links are not easily obtained which is why they are so valuable.

There are ways though, that you can get large numbers of backlinks with no cost involved. Yes, there will be a time investment on your part, but building links is a time investment that produces results.

Where do you find High PR links? There are three places to start. The first, and easiest is on Web Directories. Yes, they are still effective from an SEO standpoint. The key is to find the directories that the search engines like. How do we know which ones they are? All you have to do is look at their page ranks for clues.

Obviously, the higher the page rank, the more benefit it will be to your website. A convenient place to start is from a list of directories that someone else has put together for you with the PR indicated. That way the bulk of the investigative research is already done for you. All you have to do then is start submitting your links. I highly suggest you do this manually and not use an automated software. You will have much better luck getting them accepted doing it manually.

Another source for getting easy inbound links is from forums and user groups. This also requires a significant time investment, but the payoff is well worth the time spent. The key is to find a well respected forum within your niche that already has a high page rank. You can either pay for lists or you can be lucky and find someone who will provide this list for you.

Another way to gain High PR backlinks is to leave comments on blogs. This one is a bit more work and a little trickier to get the links approved, but you can reap the benefits of an active blog and it’s authority status.

The main thing when it comes to placing links is to be original with each one. Do not place the same wording everywhere as this does not look natural to the search engines. Another key to success is when placing blog comments, make it very relevant to the post you are commenting on. Refer to something specific within the post so the blog owner knows it was not a spam comment and that you actually did visit the post.

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to spend time setting up generic comments in an automated comments software because they very rarely ever get approved so you are wasting time that could have been used gaining more valuable links.

List of Over 700 Free Directories To Submit Your Website To

Sources for free High PR Backlinks (4-9)

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Google Instant – Creating Instant Insanity For The SEO Community

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Cathy Henry

The latest Google innovation is the release of Google Instant search results. I have heard reactions such as “it’s the death of SEO” to “we will have to SEO for letters and syllables now”. Come on people. Is it really going to have that much of an impact?

If you do not know what Google Instant is yet, just go do a search. You will notice that Google will start populating the search results as you type. This is similar to the Google Suggest” feature they recently added, but taken one step further.

The death of SEO? This makes me laugh when I hear it. If I am searching for “the best hot dog stand in NY city” Do you really think that I will stop typing when the search results show hotels? No, I will continue typing until the results I am looking for show on the page.

All the search engine is doing is using it’s existing data to populate the results with the most common terms that are searched, the same way that the suggest feature does. People who are looking for something specific are still going to keep searching until they find what they are looking for.

Yes, it may mean that you have to do a bit more work on shorter-term keyword phrases, but remember that Google still is going to use the local search and every other feature they have added in the past when delivering their results to their customers. If I live in Toronto, and I do a search, they are still going to show me Toronto based businesses first in the results. This has not changed. So if I am looking for that hot dog stand in Toronto, even though it is populating the SERP for hot dog stands as I type, the Toronto results will still be shown to me first.

The only place I believe there might be an impact is in the amount people will spend on Adwords. The unrelated pages that are shown as you type will have Adwords ads on them and they will be counted as impressions for the advertisers. This may mean that your CTR will be greatly effected and if you are paying for impressions rather than clicks, your bills will either skyrocket, or your impressions will be shown to totally untargeted traffic.

If I had an Adwords campaign going for hotels, and I suddenly was paying for ads to people searching for hot pants, hot dogs and hot babes, I think I would be a little ticked! I am not sure yet how Google plans to remedy this. You can bet they will rake in the dough until they do.

So, my suggestion is to keep doing what your have always done to SEO your pages. Organic search will not really be effected by this latest addition of Google Instant, but keep a close eye on your paid advertising campaigns.

Related Search Engine News Posts:

Google Games? What Is The Reasoning Behind Google’s Latest Buying Spree?

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Google Games? What Is The Reasoning Behind Google’s Latest Buying Spree?

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Cathy Henry

There has been a great deal of speculation lately about Google coming up with a social platform to challenge FaceBook for the leadership of the social internet scene. Although Google has had a few attempts at social sites, so far they have not produced a winner but is that about to change?

In August, Google made 5 acquisitions. SocialDeck, a social games company based in Toronto was the newest feather in their cap. Earlier in the month they acquired a San Fransisco company named Slide. Slide is a social games developer. They also purchased Jambool, which is a payment processing platform used mainly for the selling virtual goods to the social gaming community. Their fifth acquisition was a company called Like.com. This is a visual search shopping engine.

I find it rather amusing and intriguing that they would purchase a company with that name when the “Like” button on FaceBook has just recently been in the news. It almost feels like they bought that one just out of spite for the name alone.

There is no doubt that Google appears to be on a mission. The focus on social gaming is clear. What they plan to do with it is anyone’s guess. The fact that social gaming is a big part of the attraction on FaceBook would have to make you wonder if these recent purchases is one piece of the social networking puzzle that Google is putting together.

Will it be a social site for the masses, an MMORPG or perhaps a social gaming site for the Android? Whatever it is, let’s hope it shows more promise than Google Wave, Google Answers or Google Video. When Google Video flopped, they spent the money and bought YouTube. If this newest development flops, will they buy FaceBook?

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