Optimization Tips

You probably heard about social book marking and tagging that has been receiving a lot of traction lately. This is where the people are in charge of what is being displayed on a site. They keep track of news, urls and so on.

Now this a young student launched a very bold idea to empower the people with the right tools for them to build a search engine together. A search engine where people can find information on a search term along with url results. I personally think this is a very bold idea. An idea that will make every search term or keyword make sense with full of information. That is why I gave a quote to their press release when contacted. Bold idea indeed.

Why am I talking about it?

Two things. I will get to the second one in a minute but the first one is mainly about search engine optimization. This site allows you to purchase a keyword URL of any keyword that is available. A keyword being a search term of some sort. Imagine the potential you will get when you own a keyword like Mortgage on such a site. That is if you deal with Mortgage financing or something similar to that. There are huge benefits to owning this keyword because you get to place you own ad on that page. Again, this will send you hits and it will rank you high on other search engines.

Second, this is a unique idea of selling the actual keywords to people. Like the MillionDollarHomepage idea, I think this will attract a lot of advertisers who want to spend only $100 for a whole year of free advertisement! So go an buy some good keywords while the price is cheap. On a forum at www.StartupNation.com, I found a forum post from the founder after 30 Minutes into the launch.

See what he has to say:

"I've sold over 50 keywords URL within the first 30 minutes. Please signup as an affiliate to make serious money. This idea is unique and is getting a lot of attention. And also buy some keywords while they last."

I couldn't get a hold of this student for any further comments at this time. But this is what the news release had to say. You can visit the site through www.oozm.com. I will keep you posted.

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TORONTO, CA (oozm.com) May 9th, 2006 – OOZM is moving towards improving information accessibility through an innovative new search engine that allows the people of the system to play a valuable role in defining the system, OOZM President & CEO Jey Duraisingam announced today.

"This website package is all about improving access to information, and to do so more efficiently, accurately and more transparently," said Duraisingam. "As the need for social networks and social bookmarks grow, it is time that these complicated search engines open up their doors to the people and allow them to decide what they want to see on the first page of their search results page." OOZM will provide their users with the unique ability to:

• Improve access to information at their finger tips through social listings and rapid review of information by other users
  
• Ensure that the information given on the first page of any search results page is in fact generated by the relevant people who use it everyday
  
• Acknowledge the valuable role people play on the internet by granting them the full authority to change the information presented on the keywords page
  
• Reduce the number of clicks a user has to click before finding valuable information by providing them with valuable information along with the recommended websites
  
• Strengthen transparency and accountability in the Search Engine Market by giving people an important role in URL listing decisions.
  

"All of these new functionalities are designed to benefit millions of people who use search engines to find information. And all of the users of OOZM will save time by finding accurate information with just one click," Duraisingam said. "There will no longer be the click syndrome, where users get to a site full of spam and they then have to click back to find something moderately useful. This time consuming cycle needs a closure."

"The system brought forward by OOZM is bold and promising," said Mark Travis, President of the DotsMedia Group of Companies. "The system introduced today recognizes that people are critical to the success of any search engine."

"This system will greatly benefit people who do not have much time to spare with bogus information," said Joe Clark, an independent Search Engine Guru. "People, particularly those in corporate world with no time, will have improved access to information they need on any given topic and they will now have a role in the decisions being made on website listings."

Today's initiative by OOZM is what people need in a system that is so large and complicated that information of value is truly a blessing.

People are talking about Google and Yahoo's instant search results with information on each URLs.

Now there are talks about a search engine with information on a search term. Who is behind this and what is happening?

Here is what I found at oozm.com.

A search engine by people like you. We are days away from the launch day. We have been receiving numerous request from people to get an idea of what is being developed by these well known developers.

We don't want to keep you in the dark, so here goes:

OOZM is

* a brand new search engine (not your traditional google style search engine!)
* a brand new URL directory listing
* a system which will be defined by people like you
* a system where you can add a valid url within minutes to any given keyword!
* a system where you can find information on your searched keyword (for the first time in history!)
* a system where you control the advertisements
* a system where you control the contents and url listings
* a system where .....
* basically a new search engine like no other.

Sources that I was able to tap into said that some smart brains got behind to tap into the search engine market.

Search engine market is growing each and every year. Yesterday (Friday) I was listening our local radio which said that in tech sector, everybody is scared of Google. What makes Google different?

Many things to learn and many things to see. I saw this so I thought I should bring it to you.

It is simple, you should write because this is a way of communicating to others. To let others know what you are thinking. By doing this, you let others know what you know and what you can offer them.

So where does this take you? It takes you in a path so that your words are visible to others through search engines and so on. So when customers are searching on a search engine for a specific topic and they come across your article, they found a resource (your article) which talks about what they needed to know. Boom, you solved their mystery! You build that trust with them and before you know some of them will be your future customers. The customers who will be eager to buy anything you have to sell!

The way it works is that when you submit an article to an article engine like adzines.com or other article directory sites, that engine feeds your articles to many other sites. This is because these engines act as a resource for content to sites which can’t produce fresh contents on their own! Yes, at this time, your article becomes a golden resource for other sites to use and that increases the chance for some visitors to find your sites. So in your articles, you should indirectly mention some of your work or sites as an example or a resource link so they can follow it. This in turn increases traffic to your site.

So not only you build links back to some of your sites from other sites, also you gain the trust of many people. These people in turn will be your customers one day. So start writing today and you can submit articles at site such as adzines.com, articlefactory.com and others.

Ask away if you have any questions.

After all we are human beings and our target market is full of human beings. Why do we trust what our friends and relatives are doing and follow suit? Since all human beings have the tendency to act as those around them, why not use the same influence when it comes to internet marketing? Influencing others is a method that many of us utilize indirectly with marketing however only few of us takes it to the extra mile to leverage the most of this powerful tool. We are all vulnerable to this powerful influencing mechanism, termed “Social Proof”.

Everybody’s doing it then I can do it too. This is the mentality that many of us have when it comes to making a choice in our life. Why do we do this? We do this because we all like to make the right decision when it comes to spending or making a life long commitment. If ten other people make the decision to purchase purple kittens then you believe it is socially acceptable for you to purchase a purple kitten as well. This is social proof and it is a powerful marketing tool.

If you manage to convince a potential customer of yours that there are hundreds of people lined up to buy your product then it would be fairly easy for you to convince that potential customer to purchase your product. They believe you because they believe that many other people have either purchased your product or is about to purchase it. You just earned their trust by letting your potential customer know of what others think of your product.

Here are few ways that you can utilize this:

• Have a traditional testimonial section for your product. In this section you may want to post few comments and feedbacks you have received for your product. This has been around for a long time but this does not really hit a home run when it comes to marketing. People are used to this so you will have to make that extra step.
  
  
• Have some other site do a case study on your product. Give free samples to some people and have them do a case study. Take the case study and post it with your product. This tells your potential customer what experience others had with your product and what the recommend. This is good if you get a case study done by a credible source.
  
  
• Create a sense of “hype” or “urgency” for your product before and after the launch. Limit the quantity of your product and work on influencing your audience that this product is so huge and it will be sold out within days of launch. Let them know how many people are waiting to take a peek at it and how many wants to buy it from you. This influences them to make a choice to purchase your product because everybody around them seems to like it too.
  

The more people you engage to believe in your particular product then more acceptable your product becomes. There are many ways in which you can utilize the power of social proof.

Have the right product and use social proof with the right motives, then this can be a powerful marketing tool for you. If you like to read further on social proof or human influences, I would recommend reading "Influence: The Psychology of Persuassion" by Robert Cialdini.

Recently Google held a webinar for AdSense publishers. Google released their ad optimization tips to the public. The transcript is pretty lengthy, so I've decided to break it down for you with few important tips:

Ad Location - "the middle, above the fold location perform best." Also "if you have an article page with a long body of text, the bottom of that article is actually pretty successful"

Ad Formats - "the top three formats are the 336x280 that you see on the page; the 300x250 medium rectangle; and then the 160x600 wide skyscraper." Additionally "the wider ad formats are doing better than the other ones and the reason is that they actually take up fewer lines. And so with every additional line, you have a chance of losing that interested user."

Ad Colors - Pick colors that blend well with the site. Matches the background color, and compliments the site. Make them feel like a part of the site. They give an example where a customer went from blended background to yellow, and clicks dropped 65%

Ad Blindness - if the colors stick out too much, readers may immediatly identify them as ads and not even look at them. Also frequent readers may stop reading ads so you could alternate positioning and colors to get their attention. "The more you blend in with the site, the less chance that ad blindness will occur."

Experiment - this was a big theme in the webinar echoed by all experts. Use channels to test different colors, positioning, and formats to find out what works best. They show that you can more than double your revenue just by finding the right color, position, format combo.

Image Ads - If you want to maximize revenue they recommend turning them on. I personally disable them in my account, because I find them too distracting/annoying to the user. Yes you may increase your CPC, but you will probably decrease impressions over time.

Link Units - Don't take up much space, and also "allows the user to refine what they're interested in. So if they may not be interested in specific ads on your page, they might be interested in a particular topic, and by clicking on a link unit and a link in the link unit, they'll be able to specify that they're interested in that specific topic and get a lot more options and variety on the ads that might appear." I also bet google remembers what they click on and then tries to generate better ads for the page... just my speculation.

AdSense For Search - You can use this for your site search, and you get a percentage of ad clicks.

Don't click on your own ads - Big mistake against Google's terms and conditions.

Impression Counter - Google confirmed that Page Impressions are counted when a public service ad (or alternate ad url or color) is displayed.

Your site is unique - all these things may not matter, the best location, format, and color is different for every site. So again, go experiment.

This is a question that probably runs through every webmaster's brain cells each and every minute or maybe each and every second. However, there are people who understand that there is really a value in looking at a long term solution than a quick short solution. I am one of them who get it. Today I sat down and decided to put my thoughts into words for you.

What is a short term solution for driving traffic to your site?

Well a short term solution can be defined as a "solution that gets traffic to your site if and only when you keep spending numerous hours or pay others each and every day". In other words, the short term traffic stops after you stop spending valuable time or money.

There are numbers of ways to drive short term traffic to your site. Such ways are:

1. Pay someone like Google to advertise on their Google AdWords. You will be guaranteed to receive traffic to your site and if your sales pitch is good, you can even make money. However, you will be spending money for each and every single click.

2. You can buy bulk traffic from other sources. This will cost you much cheaper than the above example in terms of number of visitors per dollar spent. But it does not really means that all the visitors are looking for your product. So you will not convert all traffic into money but it can work if your product line is diverse.

3. You can sit around posting in forum posts and sending emails out to your lists to bring in traffic. Webmasters spend numerous hours sending out emails or posting in forums to bring people to their website.

As you can see, all these methods will work well in short term however once you get yourself occupied with something else or when your money runs out, you will not be bringing in any traffic.

Why should you pay money when you can secure a long term free traffic to your site?

What is a long term solution for driving traffic to your site?

A long term solution means that you spend some time now to sustain a steady flow of traffic for the future. It should only increase as days go by and not decrease. Well there are many ways for you to make sure that your long term goals are safe. I am only going to go through few of them today.

1. You probably heard the term "Blog", which really means weblog. It is a way for people to share their information directly with others. A daily journal is what I would call it. Go to sites like Blogger.com and create a blog for your self. Start writing daily and in that blog you can insert links to your other sites. If you have your own sites, you can also create a blog there. Search engines love fresh contents and they will find your blog.


2. Write articles!!! Write an article everyday about a topic you love. Similar to blogging but you take this articles and post them on article distribution sites. Your articles will soon reach many sites that are hunting for contents! Guess what? All the links you placed on that article is now sending visitors to your site!!! And it doesn't stop. It only grows.

I am not going to get into more details on this article but there are literally hundreds of ways to increase traffic to your site.

So how do you figure out a search engine and search engine ranking techniques? Well, if people know about this, then they will be making millions of dollars.

So what do you do? You run tests. That's right, you run test on different unknown, not listed keywords to see how they work out. Then you adapt to the best technique that is working for your main site that you are trying to bring in traffic to sell a product or what so ever.

You run few different optimization tips as explained on that site to test it out. So run tip 1 on one site and then tip 2 on another site for few weeks and see what is making sense. Track your visitors. Always to see where they cominng from and which campaign is working. This way you can scrap your campaign that is not working and then keep enhancing the one that is working.

People make mistake when they don't track their visitors. They will run the same old campaign that is not bringing in traffic for days after days, but what is the real point?

Please send me your questions if you need any further clarification.