Search Engine Optimization Philippines

A Mike Lopez Search Engine Optimization Blog
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When will all these SEO contests end? It’s like they’re popping everywhere like mushrooms. But who am I to blame them? It’s a good way of gaining lots of attention and building backlinks to sponsor’s websites as well.

Guess what’s the new keyword? It’s SULUMITS RETSAMBEW. At first I thought it was some Indian phrase until I realized it was just WEBMASTER STIMULUS in reverse. I told you they’ve got it backwards!

Anyway, good luck to all participants – especially to my friends.

By the way, if you want a sudden boost in SEO, try sponsoring your own contest.


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I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw 4 different sites having the same content rank one after the other on Google for the search phrase “how to send tons of traffic to your adsense site“.  I always thought that Google is strict about stuff like these but it appears that there’s a fluke in their system.  Here’s a screenshot of the search results I saw at the time of this posting.

4 Sites having Duplicate Content Rank Top 1 to 4 on Google

The URL of these 4 sites are:

  1. http://www.netseek.net/articles/7-Powerful-Ways-To-make-Money-From-Adsense-Using-Only-Free-Tools.asp
  2. http://websitetips.com/articles/marketing/adsensemoney/
  3. http://www.dcvinc.com/adsense/index.html
  4. http://www.cyberindian.com/web-marketing/google-adsense/7-powerful-ways-to-make-money-from-adsense.php

Does this mean that Google is only strict about duplicate sites and not merely duplicate content?  Or is it just possible that no other sites rank well for this particular search term that all these 4 sites occupied the first 4 slots of the search results?

Whatever!!!


Making money with Google AdSense is easy they say and I agree with that especially if you only want to make a few cents to a few dollars per day.  All you need to do is put up a website which can be as simple as a blog, slap in your AdSense code in it and keep it updated.  With all the hype about blogging nowadays, your blog is bound to have some visitors sooner or later and some of these visitors might just click on the ads on your site.  The moment they do that, you earn money.

But you can actually do better.  There are people who earn 4, 5, 6-figure incomes just with AdSense.  If they can do it then why not you, right?  Well, right.  Ready to find out how to do it?

Well, it all starts with search engine marketing optimization.  To optimize your search engine marketing campaign, you’ll need to do and remember a few things.

  1. Remember to focus on your topic.  A blog focused on a particular niche is more likely to make higher earnings than blogs with random topics in them.

  2. Remember to research for keywords relating to your topic.  Instead of doing this each time I write a new blog post, what I do instead is keep a list of 5 to 10 keywords on my topic and work on each of them within a one-week span by writing blog posts for each of the said keywords.
  3. Remember to include your main keyword in every blog post your write and include one to two other related keywords as well.  This will help boost your site’s ranking for your main keyword while covering related keywords as well.
  4. Remember to build links to your website and new posts.  You can do this each time you write a new post or on weekends.  It’s your choice.
  5. Remember to link to other websites related to each blog post you write.  This builds credibility.

But how do I do that in real life?  I don’t really want to tell you but I’ll tell you anyway (you should be paying me for this, hehe).  Ok, here goes nothing…

  1. I go to the Google AdWords keyword tool and type in my main keyword.  What better tool to increase your AdSense earnings than using the tool used by the advertisers, right?

  2. After typing in my main keyword, I sort the results by Advertiser Competition.  Chances are, the more competition, the higher the bids they pay for their ads.
  3. I go through the top 20 list of keywords and check them one by one on Google to find a “good keyword”.  To me, a good keyword is one that doesn’t have websites listed on Google’s top 10 with the keywords I typed on their title tag.
  4. I research for topics that match my “good keyword”.  I do this by going to article directories liek EzineArticles, make a search for my “good keyword” on their site and reading the articles.  This way, I get fresh ideas on what to write about.  Note that I don’t just copy the articles, I just use them to “wake up” the author in me.
  5. I write a blog post using the “good keyword” as my title and the information I learned from my research as my content.  I also include relevant links to Wikipedia and other blogs.
  6. To build links and some initial traffic, I submit the newly written blog post to Digg, Sphinn, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, my Facebook profile, and Twitter.  After that, I serach Technorati for related blog posts and write decent and useful (emphasis intended) comments in them.  Of course, I put my the URL of new blog post in the “Website” field of the comment form.
  7. I sit back and enjoy my work.

If you do this at least once daily then you’ll soon build enough traffic to your website for your topic and when there’s traffic there’s money.  Always remember that when it comes to improving your AdSense earnings, traffic is always important.  Traffic + Adsense = Money <- remember that formula.

So, that’s how search enginer marketing optimization can help improve your AdSense earnings.


Search Engine Marketing Optimization

Dec 12 2008 03:08am · No Comments
 Mike Lopez · SEO 101

Let’s do this search engine marketing optimization guide really quick and simple so you don’t have to waste your time reading but instead start doing some real work and start bringing in real traffic to your site. Search engine marketing a.k.a. SEM has been the buzz word in the search engine optimization a.k.a. SEO world for years and yet many still don’t know how to do it right.

Let me tell you what I’ll do. Instead of telling you the details, I will instead tell you the basics and send you off to the right direction. Ok, here we go…

Search engine marketing optimization can be summarized in just two points.

1. Good, keyword rich content

Do your keyword research.  Don’t be lazy and stop whining about how boring it is to research for keywords because it is absolutely necessary.  If you find yourself to be complaining all the time, then maybe search engine marketing optimization is not for you.  My favorite tool for keyword research is Keyword Discovery.

After you’ve done your keyword research, then it’s time to write your content based on those keywords.  You can either write everything yourself, hire a professional writer, or use a software that will generate a good rough draft for you.  Yes, such a software actually exists.  It’s called Instant Article Wizard Pro.

2. As many incoming links as you can

This actually is the more boring part but if you neglect to do it then all your effort in creating good keyword rich content will be next to useless.  You can build links by submitting to free directories, writing articles and submitting them to article directories, exchanging links with friends, exchanging links with related websites, posting comments on other blogs and so on.

Once again, there are of course tools that can be utilized to make things easier for you.  One tool I use which helps me a lot is SEO Elite.  If you’re not using it then you must give it a try.  It helps you find link partners and submit articles to directories.  As for link exchange, I strongly recommend paying for the 3WayLinks service as it makes link exchanges easier and more effective.

If you do diligently do these two simple things then I’m pretty confident that you’ll get more traffic from your search engine marketing optimization campaigns.


Eat, Drink and Breathe SEO

Dec 11 2008 01:38pm · No Comments
 Mike Lopez · Search Engine Optimization

If you have a website and you wish to have lots of people visit it then you have to eat, drink and breathe SEO. By this I mean, you must always keep search engine optimization in your mind whenever you create new websites and update your existing ones.

You have to think and do search engine optimization everyday until it becomes second nature for you to:

1. Research your keywords
2. Research your competition
3. Write keyword rich content
4. Build links

Yep, do all those on a daily basis and until you find yourself to be thinking of SEO every minute and dreaming of it in the night. Then don’t forget to add some spice to it, otherwise it’ll get boring really fast. For the spice, I mean read other SEO people’s blogs and subscribe and participate in SEO forums.

Lastly, always experiment. Don’t forget to try out new things and keep that creative mind of yours going. If you think if something which you think “might work” then give it a try. If it works, share it with others so they too will share their fresh ideas with you.

Cheers!


SEM for Dental Practitioners

Sep 12 2008 08:54am · 1 Comment
 Mike Lopez · Search Engine Optimization

This is a sponsored post.

Search engine marketing or SEM is now a common buzz word in any business hoping to do some business via the internet. A wide range of offline industries are now taking advantage of the online marketplace in making both leads and sales and for a good reason. As far as I know, the internet is the cheapest way to advertise and if done properly, it has long term effects on ones business.

A good example is the dental industry. More and more dental practitioners are either paying experts or doing stuff on their own in an attempt to discover the best online marketing strategy for dental practice. Take note that online marketing is not just about getting people to come to your website. It’s also about conversions. In other words, how much in terms of percentage of your online visitors are turning into customers?

As opposed to the typical e-commerce store where visitors can directly purchase product through their computers, internet marketing for dentists can be a bit trickier mainly because a dentist does not offer a product that can be physically delivered. Rather, a dentist offers a service that requires a physical appearance by the customer on the dentist’s clinic.

So, how can internet marketing help a dentist make sales? The solution is not to think in terms of sales but rather in terms of leads. Remember that the key here is conversion and conversion is not necessarily a sale. A conversion can simply be an appointment. With that in mind, a dentist’s website must therefore have a way for people to set an appointment with the dentist.

How can that be done? Well, with a little help from skilled programmers (like myself), creating an online appointment system that can be “plugged in” to a dentist’s existing website can be easily created. With such a system in place, any dentist can now take advantage of the net in boosting their sales.

Need a programmer? Email me at mjglopez AT gmail DOT com.


Click through rates or CTR is often mentioned when talking about Pay-per-click or PPC because better CTR results to lower Cost-per-click or CPC. Now, before you get confused with all those terms, let continue to what this post is all about.

Free search or organic search is said to be the best way to get traffic to your website. All you need to do is optimize your website for your targeted keywords and you get instant free traffic. Furthermore, it is said that the number 1, 2, 3 and 10 spots are the best spots to be on the search engine results mainly because 1, 2 and 3 are the first thing that the searcher sees and number 10 is the last that he sees when he scrolls down.

While that’s mostly true, I also noticed one thing while checking my Google Analytics report for my science blog. I noticed that I’m getting quite some traffic for the search phrase “why is the sea color blue” so I went to Google and did a search for that phrase and this is what I saw.

Free Search and Good Click Through Rate

My website “Mike’s Science and Nature Blog” wasn’t on any of the sweet spots mentioned above. It was ranked as number 5 for the search phrase mentioned and yet I’m getting lots of traffic. If you take a good look at the screenshot above, you’ll probably notice why. Just in case you didn’t notice it (or maybe you don’t have enough time to take a good look at it), here’s why…

* Item no. 1 is about HTML color codes
* Item no. 2 is about why the sky is blue
* Item no. 3 is a Wikipedia entry on the color blue
* Item no. 4 is about a list of stuff on the moon
* Item no. 5 my website, is exactly what the searcher is looking for

The result therefore is that my site gets visited even though if it’s only number 5 in the SERPs. While the first four may still be getting traffic from that search phrase, I believe that my site is probably getting more traffic then them for this particular search phrase.

In other words, I get more click-thrus because my site delivers what the searcher is looking for even though it’s ranked only at number 5. In other words, it’s not just about ranking but also grabbing a person’s attention with your page title and meta description/page content that brings in the wanted traffic. The same can be said if the first 5 websites are all about the same topic but one of them has a more attractive title that grabs the user’s attention.

In the end good copywriting especially in titles still helps a lot in free search traffic as it often equates to good click through rates.


How to Check if Google has Blacklisted a Website

Jul 18 2008 01:55am · 1 Comment
 Mike Lopez · SEO Q&A

There are times when the guys at Google chooses to blacklist a website for various reasons and if you own one of these websites, then you might want to know how to check if Google really blacklisted it. There is one command that will check if your site was blacklisted and that is the “site” command.

All you need to do is:

1. Go to Google (google.com)
2. In the search box, type site:yourdomain.com

If Google doesn’t return any page then that means that the site is not indexed by Google. If you’re sure that the domain has been previously indexed then chances it has been blacklisted.

That’s how you check if Google has blacklisted your website.


How do you make yourself invisible on a Google search? While most people want their sites to come up on Google when searched, there are those for some reason who want to stay invisible. There is actually more than one way to do it.

1. You can simply request Google to remove the site from their index. More info on that can be found here.

2. Add “Disallow: /” on your robots.txt file. More info on robots.txt here.

3. Remove your website or the individual webpages.

4. The previous 3 solutions require that you have direct access to the content you want removed. In cases that you don’t, all you have to do is email the webmaster of the website containing the reference to you and ask them to remove it.

So, that’s my answer to the question “how do I make myself invisible on a Google search?”


How Much is Google Website Submission?

Jul 15 2008 06:25am · 2 Comments
 Mike Lopez · SEO Q&A

So, how much is Google website submission? Before I answer that question, I wish to inform you that I’ve decided to put up a Q&A category to this blog for the simple purpose of answering questions about or related to search engine optimization.

Now, back to the question. Google website submission is free. To do submit your website to Google, you can do one of the following:

1. Go to http://www.google.com/addurl/ and submit your site there.
- or -
2. Have your website linked to from another website that is already in Google.



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