Note: Please understand that this information is for Google AdWords Landing Pages – not Landing Pages in general.

Affiliate marketers know that Landing Pages are the best weapon they have. Those who do not use it either do not understand the concept or are just plain lazy. More often than not, it is the latter. Affiliate Marketers see that others do not use it and so, they dont bother with it too. You see, laziness is contagious.

To have an effective Landing Page, we need to understand what the Landing Page is for. A Landing Page is not just a duplicate of your sales page. It is not a page renamed to run a PPC campaign. It is, on the other hand, a page that focuses on selling the product or service. This is why all the elements of effective design are usually stripped out on this page.

When visitors come to your site, your Landing Page should give them only two options: To Buy or To Leave. There shouldnt be any other option aside from that. Do not distract them and make the mistake of giving more options to choose from. If you want them to subscribe for more information, create a name squeeze page. Keep your focus and remember that Landing Pages exists for only one reason to make a sale.

Below is a list of what I do when I create a Landing Page:

Webserver/Configuration – You do have a good host, right? The domain has its down IP address? A clean domain, clean IP address, with no ties with link farms, spamming, etc. is vital to your success.

Headline – This aspect is often greatly misused. The thought of, I must cram as many keywords as possible into my Headline for maximum performance is a thought process hooked on failure. Here is a tip that makes absolute sense, but so many people do not do it. The headline on the page should match (somewhat) to the keyword phrase being targeted.

Example: The keyword discount widgets could have a headline of: This is the Place for Discount Widgets. That alerts the visitor that they are indeed in the right place. Just by changing the headline to one that is relevant to the search causes a drop in CPC and can cause an increase in CTR. Or worse, you can get Google Slapped.

Font Face, Color & Size - Avoid having a distracting and cluttered look on your Landing Page. Having four to five different fonts on your page create a messy look that people would love to hate. While having different fonts for your headlines are fine, having different fonts in your body text is distracting. Do not even think about doing this. Use only one font for your body text.

Test results show that Times New Roman is the best offline print font and because of this, it has become the default font on the internet. This, unfortunately, is a big mistake. It turns out that Times New Roman causes rapid eye fatigue which makes it one of the worst fonts online.

The best fonts for online use are Verdana and Arial. Of the two, I would recommend that you use Verdana as it consistently outperforms every font. It reduces eye strain and increases readability. Remember to use a standard font at all times. Also keep in mind that not all computers may have the font that you use. If you want a standard headline font, it is best to create it as a graphic so it will look constant on every computer. You definitely want your message to have the look that you intend it to have.

You should always aim to make your text readable. The standard size for text is 2 and it is advisable to put dark text on white background. In fact, black text on a white background is preferred. Landing pages arent supposed to show off how cute you can be. Landing pages are supposed to sell. This is serious stuff and requires you to put on your best face.

There is a reason that the top companies choose dark text on a light background. It isnt by accident, it is by design. Follow their lead.

Dont Let Search Engines Crawl Your Landing Pages – Many marketers want as many pages in the search engine indexes as possible. Dont do this as I mentioned above.

Place your landing pages in separate folders and exclude those folders in your robots.txt file. If you dont want to display those to competitors, you can instead put a placeholder file for the index.html page for the folder, or exclude the directory list from showing to a visitor. Another option is to put the exclusion in your .htaccess file or in your IIS control. The reason that you dont want these pages indexed is because the text is often a mirror of your sales pages and you dont want duplicate content indexed by Google.

Make the Links Easy to Find – A cool CSS file that allows you to make the links change colors, add or remove underlines is fine so long as you do not put them on your Landing Pages. Put them on your site if you wish but never on your Landing Page. This will only confuse your visitor and you do not want that to happen. Always use standard linking practices. If a potential customer cant distinguish between text and a link, you are going to lose. Your priority is to get them to buy.

Use standard linking practices so there isnt confusion. If a potential customer cant distinguish between text and a link you are going to lose.

The standard colors for links are as follows:

Unvisited Link – Underline in Blue
Active Link (when the mouse hovers over the link) – Red
Visited Link – Purple

The above information is from the W3C, so it is official.

Do not mess around with standard linking practices. I have conducted a lot of testing and the standard linking practices have always had better conversion ratios. This is because the visitor experiences some interactivity with your page and the link catches their eye.

Make sure you are always using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to do your formatting. If you dont know how to do CSS, you need to learn or find a webmaster that does. It will pay off with less time changing all of your pages individually instead of just changing one file.

Color Scheme – Always match the product or service you are selling with the colors on your page. For example, soothing yellows, greens and blues are best for skin care. Choose your colors carefully as they will either bring the visitor in deeper into the sales process or turn them away. Never use pink for a site for men either as a primary color or even as a secondary color.

If you are confused as to what color to use, review the sites of your competitors. It is usually a great place to start. If you are still not sure, test.

White Space – Many designers avoid white space as this has been referred to as negative space. Unfortunately, this is not high school art class. You are selling here, remember? White space is good. White space is your friend.

The effective use of white space brings perfection to a Landing Page. Without it, the message is lost. Text becomes unreadable and the graphics and other important elements become washed out. White space is more than just a background color. It is part of your conversion design.

Over the years I have seen a lot of various background designs on Landing Pages. Floral designs on iPod sites, vacation pictures as backgrounds, and even a woman and her cat as the background. Please. Do not use them. I will say it again. White space is your friend.

Page Width and Page Height – Above the fold is a term that came from the newspaper industry. It referred to ads and information that was above the folded area. Testing results have found that 86% of the people who picked up a newspaper at an airport, train station, office waiting room, never flipped the paper over. They only looked above the fold. The same is true online. What is surprising is that of the people who dont scroll down, 6% of them do not scroll down because they dont know how.

Yes, you read that right. They dont know how.

The scroll bar is your enemy. If your landing pages scrolls vertically on a 1024768 resolution, then you need to redo it. And if you are forcing a visitor to scroll HORIZONTALLY, you are making one of the worst web design mistakes of all time. All your important information, including your Call to Action must be above the fold. Period.

Page Theme – The aim of a Landing Page is to sell a particular product or service. So, if I am doing a search for left-handed golf clubs or a Hawaiian vacation, I expect to see a page about those topics. If you want visitors to buy, then give them what they want. Do not be lazy and dont dump them on a cookie tracked version of your home page either. If your content does not match their search, they will most likely leave.

Stress Benefits, Not Features – Knowing the benefits of a product will make your visitors want to buy. While it is nice to know the features of a product, very few people care about it. Stress the benefits of the product or service and you will increase your conversions.

Call To Action – Most new and inexperienced sales people fail to provide an effective Call to Action. They assume that visitors know what to do and fail to ask for the order. The thing is they dont always know what to do. It would be to your benefit to explain what you want them to do in an easy to understand language, or an effective graphic. A Buy Now is a Call to Action and often a very effective one.

Registering – Is your landing page built to force a visitor to register to get the information they want? This can cause a higher bounce rate in testing. However, by adding a preview of the information they will be receiving, the bounce rate dropped and in a few test cases, dropped significantly.

Affiliate Landing Pages - If you are an affiliate, dont make the mistake of just copying the text from the merchants site and putting it up on your site with a click to order button like a doorway page. Google only allows one affiliate advertiser. However, you can get around that rule by creating unique content (because you have used the product or service you are selling and you have your own opinion on it, right?) and then referring them to the merchants site through your affiliate ID. This works VERY well, and you dont get nailed with the Google Slap either.

Since you are an affiliate, make sure the visitor knows that it isnt actually you they are buying the product from, but someone else. This is easily done in the text when you are explaining how you use the product or service and the benefits you receive.

301 Redirects – If you are selling a product as an affiliate do NOT make the mistake of placing the link directly to the merchants site on your landing page. Why? Google looks for outgoing links on the page that go to external sites. This is also a measure of the page quality. Instead, link to a page on your site and then 301 that page to the merchants site. Example:

<a href=http://www.yourdomain.com/widgets.html>Buy Now</a>

Redirect 301 /widgets.html http://www.merchantsite.com/buywidgets?affID=123

It just makes for a cleaner site, and if you ever change merchants, it is a simple change in your .htaccess, instead of every affiliate page on your site.

Behaving Badly - Popups, pop unders, spyware, disabling the back button on the browser, etc. have seen rises in CPCs, but not in a consistent basis, but I would highly recommend not using them.

The Five Second Test – Show your landing page to a friend, spouse, sibling, etc. Turn off the monitor after three seconds and ask them what the page is about. If the majority of them cant tell you, you failed. The page should be crystal clear what it is about and again, it must match what the ad is promoting! This can be the most difficult and frustrating process of creating landing pages, but if you do it right, it will be the most rewarding.

Do you want to win? Have the lowest possible cost per click? Low bounce rate? Then roll up your sleeves and start putting forth the effort that you have avoided doing. Now, what if you have a great landing page, but your CPC is still too high. Just contact AdWords support and they will look at it for you to ensure you arent tripping a filter. But just make sure you really do have a solid landing page before making that call to avoid any embarrassment.

Amit Singhal, from Google, did a 50 slide presentation back in 2004, regarding the Challenges in Running a Commercial Web Search Engine.

Why am I covering it now? First, a member sent this to me to comment on, and I think it is rather interesting to see where things were then compared to five years later. Heres a hint: Not much has changed.

Question: How many queries are unique?
Answer: Over half

At first glance, you would look at that and think I have to do a better job of getting more keywords since users search patterns are not consistent.

Wait. After looking at the data from about 60 sites, here is an example from one of my typical sites.

108k visits from 28k keyword queries. Looking at it this way, it looks quite diverse, however, looking at the Top 100 queries, 56,656 visits came through. Which means about 52,000 visits came through the remaining 27,900 queries.

Am I optimizing for 28,000 keywords? Not even close. So how do you improve your chances of coming up for many of the phrases which may never come up on an analytics report or during keyword research.

If I can quote Dan Thies, Use modifiers aggressively.

What are modifiers? You already know them, but probably by a different name.

Examples of common modifiers are:

• best
• buy
• cheap
• discount
• wholesale
• online
• accessories

Modifiers allow you to expand your keyword set. So instead of having just blue widgets, you would have discount blue widgets, blue widget accessories etc. Geo Targeted (San Francisco, bay area, Chicago, etc.) would also be classified as a modifier.

Having modifiers, even not next to your keyword phrase can allow you to rank for phrases that you never dreamed of which may lead to sales. So use them throughout your page, or even at the bottom of the page. I often use the method of putting Related Search Terms at the bottom of an article and listing additional targeted phrases with modifiers and it works quite well since the modifiers and keywords are within the body of the document instead of in the navigation, gutter or footer.

Here is an example from one of my sites of keywords I am getting traffic from, not great traffic mind you, but it is traffic that converts. None of the keywords listed were phrases I targeted with SEO, the page just ranked for those terms based on modifiers.

Of course, modifiers are different from industry to industry. In the above example, I targeted review and ratings as modifiers. The rest just naturally ranked well based on the content on the page. You should see the same evidence on your sites as well. Make sure you go one step further and check your conversions. Chances are, you are converting for some of these long tail or unknown phrases, and you may not be #1 for the term. Some fast SEO on the term can land you a top spot, or an indented listing and more sales.

Other tidbits:
- Users give a 2-4 word query
TRUTH: Of my test domains, an average of just one query of the Top 100 over a one year time period is 5+ words.

- Most users click only the first few results
TRUTH: This is more and more true as paid search takes up more and more real estate.

- Few users go below the fold (what is actually visible without scrolling down)
TRUTH: My click through data is showing that less than 4% of click throughs occur BELOW the fold, which is usually spot 7 or lower. Being in the Top Ten isnt good enough anymore and it is getting worse.

- Far fewer users ask for the next ten results than before
TRUTH: If this was true in 2004, it is far more true today. Less than 2% of clicks occur from Page 2+.

The last I checked, were still in a recession, but despite the recession and the news of all the layoffs, business is pushing ahead. Some analysts state that the news of layoffs is a sign of worse things to come.

Me?

I love hearing about layoffs. Ive been laid off and while it was tough, it was a throw you in the water to see if you will sink or swim experience. People are laid off for two main reasons: poor performance or they make too much.

I have spoken with a lot of people in charge of some big companies, and when you get them in a setting away from their office and the stress, the feedback is nearly the same:

Were going to be just fine. We purged our company of those who didnt want to work for a full day. They felt they were entitled to a paycheck just for showing up. We will still meet production numbers even with 5,000 less on the payroll.

Those are sharp words, but they are true. Back when I was with WordPerfect, we ballooned to nearly 6,000 employees, but due to competition from Microsoft and shrinking margins, there were massive layoffs and three years later we had just over 500 employees.

Why was it with 5,500 fewer people, we were able to sell more packages and release more products than we did before? Seriously, there were 11 buildings to house all those workers and in the end we were in just one, yet we not only met the old production numbers, we out did them.

It all comes down to having the right people, people who want to work and love what they do. Even if you are a consultant, the company who hired you wants the same too.

So what should you do? A Needs Analysis. If you own your own company, you are going to perform one on your company, if you are a consultant, you are going to perform one for them. Might I suggest performing this service for your client free of charge.

Am I crazy?

Maybe. But in these tough times, offering something of value (the needs analysis) to something you value (your customer) is never a bad decision. Plus, your goal is to get more business from your customer, and you cant get new business if your customer goes under.

We all know that you cant help a customer until you know what he or she needs. You cant provide a solution until you actually know what the problem is to solve. Determining what they need to solve this problem is key – and often, the customer doesnt even know what their actual problem is. They might know the symptoms, but they dont know the root.

Doctors diagnose a customer (patient) by asking Where does it hurt and administering tests. Rainmakers diagnose customer problems by asking questions and LISTENING intently to the answers and reading body language (or listening to voice influxion on the phone).

Asking questions randomly is going to solve one thing: wasting everyones time. You must be prepared. Asking general questions such as, What are your goals? or What are your challenges? is also a waste of time. Honestly, what do you expect to get as an answer to What are your goals? If it was me, my reply would be To make more money than I spend.

During tough times and high stress, think like the makers of Tylenol. They are, in a word, brilliant in how they market their product.

Their tag line is a simple, Feel better, Tylenol.

The #1 benefit they have marketed is, Use our product and feel better.

Is there anything more powerful?

Stress, Anxiety, Noise, and life in general all weight heavily on you or your client. If you take those away, what is the outcome?

Exactly. It is the best outcome. Since that is your goal, how do you get there. With one simple question.

What keeps you up at night? or What is your biggest stress right now?

The answer is where you attack with a series of follow-up questions until you know exactly the root of the cause and can formulate an action plan from there.

Here are some questions I have used in the past and make sure you take great notes:

- What have you tried? (remember that just because they tried it doesnt mean it wont work if you try again with a slightly different approach)

- What would you estimate this problem is costing you a week? (never just ask what it is costing them, get it in a time frame everyone can understand)

- If the problem remains unchecked, what will it do to your company in 30 days? (this compounds the seriousness of the issue and gives a timetable every consultant can work in – 30 days)

- What is your timetable? (when do they want a solution?)

- What is their budget for this problem? (this is key, as this is how you get paid. If it is high priority, their budget will reflect this. You also need to compare their budget to fix the problem in comparison to how much it is costing them a week. For example, if the problem is costing them $20k a week and they say their budget is $10k, theres a problem. In 30 days, they will lose $80k. You could propose to fix their problem for half of the loss, or $40k).

- Who else are you talking to? (Find out if you have any competition on this project).

Your meeting needs to be one hour or less. This is why preparation is key and the right questions are asked. Respect their time and you will be rewarded. Spending all day at their offices will just bog down the process. Get in, ask your questions, get out. Formulate a plan of action and win the business.

The directory list has been updated and posted in the back office. And here is a comprehensive list of all the directories that had their PageRank change in this update.

Dropped in PageRank

A Web Directory (-1) 0/10
All Web Directory (-1) 3/10
Art Weblinks (-1) 2/10
Clasione (-1) 3/10
Cluboo http (-1) 2/10
Cream Directory (-1) 0/10
Demotte Directory (-1) 1/10
Directory Buddy (-1) 1/10
Directory List (-2) 0/10
Go Guides (-1) 5/10
Gooony (-2) 0/10
iBrain (-2) 0/10
King Bloom (-3) 0/10
Links Match (-1) 3/10
Most Popular Sites (-1) 3/10
Objects Directory (-1) 3/10
Open Here (-4) 0/10
Seek On (-1) 4/10
Seek Pick (-1) 0/10
Shoula (-1) 2/10
Site Folders (-1) 1/10
Starting Point (-1) 4/10
Sun Steam (-1) 3/10

Increased in PageRank

A1 Directory Search (+1) 3/10
AbiLogic (+1) 4/10
ABiz Directory (+2) 2/10
Absolute Directory (+1) 5/10
A Direct 2 Z (+2) 6/10
Around the Web (+2) 2/10
Business Directory (+1) 1/10
Click 4 Choice (+1) 5/10
Clickey (+1) 6/10
Cyborg Info (+1) 4/10
Velnet Search (+1) 3/10
Directory One (+1) 4/10
Directory Storm (+1) 4/10
Euro Find (+1) 3/10
Fast Paths (+1) 1/10
Gokodo (+2) 2/10
Goongee (+1) 5/10
Info Web World (+1) 3/10
King of the Web (+1) 3/10
KwikGoblin (+2) 2/10
Link Now (+1) 4/10
Little Directory (+1) 3/10
Managed Names (+2) 4/10
Network Room (+2) 2/10
Nintra (+1) 3/10
One Way Link (+1) 4/10
Portal Boost (+2) 4/10
Red Reach (+1) 2/10
Search Ave (+2) 2/10
Seek On (+1) 5/10
Seekzap (+1) 4/10
Sezza (+1) 5/10
Smart Links (+3) 4/10
Spheri (+2) 6/10
Sporge (+1) 5/10
Way 2 Find (+1) 4/10
Web 10 (+3) 3/10

Q: Tell me more about Google SiteLinks. How do they determine which links are used?

A:

I have tested SiteLinks algo pretty hard and the one thing I have learned is that the algo is NOT easily influenced. In other words, attempts to “steer” Google to the links you want included doesn’t work on a consistent basis.

As far as getting certain keywords to appear as SiteLinks for your domain, it has mostly to do with your site being “the” landing spot for that search. It isn’t as easy as you might think. For example, I am getting a Mac this weekend. It is my ritual, a new laptop every Labor Day, and this year, I’m going Mac … let’s see if it sticks this time.

If I do a search for “Apple” … apple.com has SiteLinks. However, it does NOT have SiteLinks for the following phrases: iPhone, iTunes, iPod, Mac. The only phrase I could get to come up for Apple.com with SiteLinks was “macintosh”, and that was really one of my “last gasp” phrases to try.

So, as you can see, even the large companies have issues when it comes to getting the right keywords tagged with SiteLinks for their domains.

Q: Does the geographic location of the web host matter for search? Organic? Local?

A: I had a great discussion about this with three Google engineers. The actual location of the server does not matter. Even though there is some “chatter” that it does matter, the choice where to host is clearly yours as a business owner. However, where people tend to get into trouble is the TLD (Top Level Domain). For example, if you had a web business in Portland, Oregon, it wouldn’t make too much sense to have a co.uk domain would it? And the same is true the other way around. If you want localized traffic, and you’re in the UK, get both the .com and .co.uk domains. Build out the .co.uk and 301 redirect the .com to your localized domain. This way you keep your brand, but you are far more likely to get localized traffic with the proper TLD than without it.

Tip: If you are in the US, you don’t need a local host to rank well locally. Your “dot com” doesn’t need to be hosted in Portland if you are also in Portland. You can host in Miami and rank just as well in the local search.

Q: What changes is Google working on right now?

A: I was able to get some info when a group of Googlers thought I was an employee by accident. The biggest issues was a new filter they are working on which would “kill half the businesses here tonight.” The individual who said that was pretty young, and I have learned over the years in this industry that young people like to talk and say bold things in order to get attention and have a feeling of “betterment”.

I don’t believe that statement for many reasons, first, he has no clue about the level of people at the party … as SES attracts mainly newbies. And I followed this comment up with a few Google engineers that I am good friends with and they basically laughed it off. I was on the Organic SEO panel with Aaron (he’s on Matt Cutts’ team) and there are no big filters being worked on currently.

So what is being worked on?

1) They just launched some new features with Website Optimizer which now allows you to remove criteria without having to create a new campaign.
2) Webmaster Tools will be adding a function in the next 30 days to allow you to view the domains which are linking to you and their “order” of importance. Note: I would be VERY surprised if they really did order them by importance as Google is very protective of their data and ranking algorithm.
3) “Universal Search” will continue to be a priority.
4) Ridding the index of Search Spam is one of the top priorities and will continue to be.

Q: Why does a page bounce from #5 to #20 and back to #5? Is this an algorithm alteration?

A: This can either be different datacenters being hit based on traffic levels or your ISP (if it is a national ISP) connecting to different datacenters. It could also be caused by either the domain or the page not having enough authority and getting small “bursts” of links but they aren’t enough to sustain it at #5, therefore it slides back to #20. Due to the complexities of the algorithm, it is too difficult for us (Google) to make a determination of ranking changes for just one keyword phrase.

Q: How should video be SEO’d? If they were going to put video on their own personal site, what would they do to ensure it ranks well for the targeted keyword phrases?

A: Google is adding by this weekend (according to talk at SES) about 70+ pieces to their algorithm. Most of the additions are in the video / Web 2.0 space. I talked to A LOT of engineers about this and you know that glazed look in people’s eye when they have NO CLUE how to answer a question, but they keep talking? This is what happened when I asked this one. They knew all about video, but wouldn’t give any specifics. I am testing this right now, so when I have some solid data, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, if you use YouTube (owned by Google) to post your video and then embed them in your site it gives you some of the best tags for video right now.

Q: What gives with Froogle showing up in the #3 spot?

A: The engineer I spoke with was obviously new, as the name “Froogle” threw her off … as it no longer goes by that name. Instead, it is known as “Google Products” and including these results in the SERPs is based on the Universal Search process which has been implemented inside of Google for some time now.

Their plan is to continue to test and to see how the SERPs are reacted by the users. That is one thing Google does very well. Instead of trying to guess what people want, they present it, test the reaction and then they make changes accordingly. There have been many changes Google has implemented over the years, that were quietly removed because they were negatives in the user experience.

Know this: Google is NOT going to sit still, they will continue to change things, test and see what makes for a better experience for the end user.

Q: Why does Google show a different number of indexed pages? For example, doing the “site” command returns 1,600 pages, however, scrolling to the end the number is 350.

A: This is a mix of both pages in the Supplemental Index and duplicate content pages. Mostly, the issue is duplicate content. While Google has removed the ability to actually see “only” pages in the Supplemental index, it does still exist.

It is recommended that if you have a high range as given in this example that you analyze the information in your Google Webmaster Tools account. Chances are good there are issues with duplicate Titles and/or Descriptions which are the main reasons for duplicate content.

Over the last week or so there has been a TON of press about the new Google algorithm change with brands – even some going as far as to saying it is bigger than Update Florida. I wouldnt go that far, because that update literally killed many markets. This one, not so much. But lets break this down as I have had a week to really hammer on it in my testing lab.

So what changed?!?!

Report: Google has flushed their index and rebuilt it again based on brand strength. Last fall Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was quoted as saying Brands are the solution, not the problem and now brands are shooting to the top of the SERPs.

Reaction: Everyone who is not a brand is freaking out that SEO is now dead again.

What You Should Do Right Now: Sit back, take a deep breath, and know this: the sky isnt falling. And Im going to show you why you dont need to panic. SEO is far from dead.

Lets start out by defining a brand.

Definition of Brand: A company that is well known in certain markets. Examples:

Running Shoes: Nike
Photocopies: Xerox
Tissue: Kleenex
Jeans: Levis
Bandage: Band-Aid
Coffee: Starbucks

The sheer power of brand awareness is when the actual competitors product is called by the name of the branded company. For example, you dont ask for a tissue if you are going to sneeze, you ask for a Kleenex. If you get cut, you dont say, Do you have an adhesive bandage? No. You ask for a Band-Aid. And if youre old enough, making a photocopy was referred to as Making a Xerox copy.

With that out of the way, we can agree that branding is important and nothing will change that. Lets now look at the actual algorithm change. Well use RankPulse to track these changes as it has been the choice tool in all the Blog posts online.

Okay, so what can we learn from this example? We see that Orbitz and Delta both came into the Top Ten in mid-January. Right at the same time, which is when this shift occurred. I could give you a few dozen examples, but take my word for it, around mid-January there are new entries by branded companies in the Top Ten SERPs for highly competitive keyword phrases. My question is, if this issue is really as big as Update Florida, why did it take five weeks for the SEO community to report it?

Thats easy. Drum roll . Its because the keyword phrases which are impacted by this algorithm shift are NON-COMMERCIAL phrases. In other words, they are phrases which are not money producers. To prove this, I set up eight CPA campaigns. All targeting keyword phrases which were affected by this shift. I dumped nearly $1,500.00 on this test and the conversion rate was awful. Even with simple CPA offers which just had a name and email address field, the conversions never came close to breaking even.

Resource Tip: Use the Detecting Online Commercial Intent tool from MSN adCenter Labs.

Did it affect all keyword phrases? No. Just the big ones and mostly the one-word terms like gifts and electronics which no one in their right mind would bid on in the PPC space. For example, type in running shoes and Nike is no where to be found or wrinkle cream and you will see many review sites right at the top. And I did a complete sweep of my affiliate sites and I have no significant movement of the keywords which drive most of my revenue.

Bottom Line: Non-converting keyword phrases are phrases the seasoned online marketer ignores.

Updated Testing Results: As many of you know, I am an affiliate marketer first. It is how I make my living. Not by speaking or this membership, but by working in the trenches, just like you. And one of my favorite short cuts is to hijack keyword lists from competitors and run a PPC campaign to see which ones convert. And amazingly, in looking at my data over the last eight months, it is consistent that only 6% of the phrases convert to the point of breaking even.

Why is that?

Lots of reasons. As David Bullock would say, it has a lot to do with your offer. A keyword phrase which converts for another site, may not convert for your site because you have a different offer, a different price point, or even a different product. Dan Thies is big on anything that can be measured can be improved, so just because it failed doesnt mean it cant work if you send it to another page or to another offer.

All good points, so why am I harping on this? Simple. I dont want to see you get distracted by the noise in the marketplace, especially during a fragile economic period. Concentrate on what works, on what sells, and how you are delivering your revenue. Maximize it and slowly spread to other areas and test new options.

Other Take Aways:

- 40% or more of your traffic should be from non-search engine referrals.
- Work on your list building. Are you continually building your list and contacting them at least once per week with solid information followed up with an offer? If not, you need to be doing this consistently.
- Relationships. Do you have solid relationships built with at least three high-profile bloggers who could send out a plug for you within 72 hours? In other words, if your rankings went away tomorrow, do you have relationships in place where you could survive the short term until you figured out your ranking issue?
- Do you contact your current customers at least once a month with additional information/uses of the product they purchased from you or up sell offers for additional products?

While this algorithm shift should affect your business exactly 0%, it should force you to sit down and ensure you have a plan in place in case your Google traffic blows up and you can continue business as usual. And dont tell me you have good rankings with Yahoo! and MSN as your backup. 15% of the organic click-through market is not going to replace 75%. You need a real plan – a realistic one.

First things first – lets define the Supplemental Index. The best way is to take it straight from Google

A supplemental result is just like a regular web result, except that its pulled from our supplemental index. Were able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index.

If youre a webmaster, please note that the index in which a site is included is completely automated; theres no way to select or change the index in which a site appears. Please also be assured that the index in which a site is included doesnt affect its PageRank. For tips on maintaining a crawler-friendly site, please visit our webmaster guidelines.

Reference: Googles Webmaster Help Center

Does that make sense to you? Most people read that and say, Huh? Its okay, but let me make it crystal clear for you. Google has two indexes: The Main Index and The Supplemental Index. The Supplemental Index is an area where there are pages that Google had difficulty in the following areas: completely indexing, the page is stale, or a variety of other issues. You can also look at the Supplemental Index as the last holding ground for a page before it gets dumped from Googles index completely.

How can you tell if your site has pages listed in the Supplemental Index? There was a Google hack:

site:www.domain.com *** -view

But Google killed the access in 2007. How do you know which pages of your site are in the Supplemental Index? Ive taken the guess work out with my Google Supplemental Index Locator, or GSI Locator for short.

Lets talk about what the Supplemental Index (SI) is not and also to clear up a major misconception: it is NOT the Google Sandbox that new sites get thrown into. This is something completely different and sites young and old get pages thrown into the SSI, even I get pages in the SI. And it isnt always on purpose.

Pages in he SI used to rank just fine in Google, but they did not display correctly: just the URL. No Title. No Description. But that was then, this is now. Pages in the SI dont rank well, period. This is why you want to get your pages out of the Supplemental Index – especially if you run an aggressive AdSense campaign. Having just one page in the SI could be costing you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a month.

What are some of the main reasons pages get into the SI? Lack of internal links. For example, when Google performs a deep crawl on your site, it compares the pages it found with those in its index. If there are pages in the index that GoogleBot didnt fetch in the deep crawl, Google knows that those pages are no longer accessible through an internal link – therefore, Google sees them as being phased out by you. Those pages are then moved to the SI.

Of course, this is just one of the many ways you can get pages into the SI, and it is one of the most common according to my testing and feedback from members.

Myth: If you have pages in the SI, those pages contain SPAM elements. You should clean up your site.
Fact: Untrue. Pages do not get placed in the SI for SPAM. They get removed or penalized from the index for SPAM, but the SI is not a repository for SPAM.

Here are the test results and what you can do in order to get your pages, or your entire site, out of the SI. I have included the main reasons why pages get placed in the SI, the methods I used to get the pages out, and the success rate of each. The success rate is based on the status of the page 30 days after making changes.

1. Page not updated. Pages that have not been updated in one year or longer have a 68% chance of being placed in the SI.

How to get out: Update the page so the file size changes plus or minus 1% (42% success rate). This wasnt as successful as I thought it would be, and it has gotten worse. There are many forum posts and articles out there that state this is all you need to do to get out. Testing shows differently. You have to do more.

So, I made a solid update which included: Changing the heading tag, updating the Title, and significant changes to the body content. You may want to invest in a major or complete rewrite of the article. Since the article hasnt been touched in a year or more, chances are very good that things have changed and the article is out of date. Now, what if you do a complete rewrite and there is no change in the file size, do you need to make more changes? No. File size is not the issue here, it can be the same and there will be no difference in the success rate. The issue is new content. (93% success rate).

2. Direct Link Missing. The page in question no longer has a link directly from the home page or a main category page. Pages that lost their link within the site itself (these arent backlinks) have a 72% chance of being placed in the SI.

How to get out: Get a link on the home page or a main category page to the page in question (95% success rate).

3. New Site. The site is new; it has been online for six months or less. Even though this is not a Sandbox issue, there was a success rate of 29% by following the steps in the New Member Welcome PDF. While the rate is low, it will help you in other areas and you will be better off in the long run.

Do you want the complete prescription? See below:

Complete Prescription
By following the information below, you will have a 96% chance of getting ALL of your pages out of the SI in 30 days or less. Keep in mind this will take a solid effort from you and it is time consuming, but it will pay off in a big way as your traffic levels will spike by getting out of the SI.

How am I so confident? Because of the 400 Supplemental Pages I tested with on 47 different domains, only 16 pages remained in the SI. That means I am 96% sure. That is confidence.

Change the Title. Make it more compelling, update it, and treat it like an advertisement. Remember, you are after a click through here. You may consider using the pipe symbol | instead of a hyphen in the Title, as I have seen some good movement by doing this, plus, it seems to command attention and improve click-through rate. Do not have more than one Title tag.

Domain Name/Server. Make sure your domain is either on its own IP address, or you control every domain on that IP. If you still virtually host, kick the habit and get your own server. Only have one domain? Get with some friends and go in on a server for all of you to share. Dont virtually host. If you want to take back control of your business, this is where it starts. One of the main reasons do to this is sharing an IP address with a mentally disturbed webmaster is just asking for trouble.

Robots.txt. Verify your robots.txt file is compliant. View my robots.txt to get an understanding of what your file should contain.

Crawlability. How easy is your site to crawl by a search engine? Do you use dynamically generated content? If your URLs have lots of &, %, etc. then you may have quite a bit of trouble. The good news is there are mod_rewrite scripts available to handle the problem and make your site more crawlable. See the Mod_Rewrite Tutorial for more info.

CSS. Ensure that your CSS file is an external file. Do not place any hidden text, hidden code in your CSS file. While GoogleBot cant detect many CSS tricks, the number one reason for bans on sites with CSS Tricks are competitors filling out SPAM reports. Dont take a chance. With your CSS as an external file, make sure that you place it in a separate folder and exclude that folder from being spidered in your robots.txt file.

Heading Tag. Change your heading tag. If you dont have a heading tag (either a 1, 2 or 3) add one. Do NOT under any circumstances, have more than one H1 tag. Why? For the same reason the front page of a newspaper will have two headlines. It isnt effective.

Content. Severely modify the content on the page. Look to update the text, and new relevant content. Change the formatting. Make sure you use CSS, so you dont have a slew of font and other formatting tags that tend to bloat the file size. That is a bad thing.

Directory Submissions. Submit your site to all relevant directories in your category/industry. One of the most effective directories that we have tested with is GoGuides.org. Testing has shown this is a HUGE benefit to your site. Especially with Google. Best of the Web Submission.

Press Release. Submit a press release and have the release posted on a major news feed such as Yahoo! News. Why Yahoo!? Because Google actively spiders Yahoo! News.

Which press release to use? The best one for your money is PRWeb. Dont get suckered for the free press release distribution networks. While the statement promotion can be found that is free is true, the statement all good promotion comes with a price tag is also true. Promote your business the right way; it will pay off in the long run.

ALT Tags. Change your ALT tags so they are not optimized for the search engines, but instead they should describe the graphic.

Meta Description. Ensure that you have a unique, compelling Description Meta Tag, the Keyword tag is optional.

Character Set Tag. The character set tag is recommended, although it does not affect the SI.

XML Sitemap. Create a Sitemap, and use the Google Webmaster Tools.

Link Campaign. Launch a link campaign which assigns 25 or more links to your home page and/or subpages. Make them solid links – and not garbage links. Work at this. Make it pay off. Ever wonder why you do a back link check on a solid site and they have a PR6 with 40 links and you see another site with 400 links and a PR4? There is a reason for that. It is called quality.

The above tips will allow for more of your pages to be removed from the SI and also give your site great long-term benefits with the other search engines as well.

And those are good things.

ok this is working flawlessly

its quite simple, the code I have produced in older posts look for it, and then you add the code in a html file..

another example, 1st line on www.sexaddicts.us

As you can see people will click on the 1st line of video’s.. so I am getting hits all the time on my adsense.

Currently averaging approx 200 per blog I have this on per month

Another example:

Just remember to keep your CTR DOWN, post your adsense on legit sites on posts, my CTR IS ALWAYS LESS THAN 1%

Search Engine Cheat Sheet Posted

The Search Engine Cheat Sheet which was originally posted in the On-Page Factors eBook is now posted in the Tutorial section and it has been updated.

There were a few updated changes, here they are:

The displayed characters each engine accepts changed:

Google increased one character from 65 to 66. Here is an example of the new longer Title tag:

Yahoo! is currently 71 characters as evidenced by this example:

Microsofts Live.com shows 70 characters:

What does this mean? Basically that you have one extra character to play with when creating your Title tags. I just posted the information from Live and Yahoo! to show how the other two engines are currently behaving, but Google is still your main focal point. Since they are the lowest, you target that number.

Why?

The testing numbers are stil accurate. Titles which have ellipses (the three dots at the end) have a lower click through rate than Titles which do not.

Simply put, Video SEO is the art and science of ensuring that your video content attracts as much traffic as possible.

You have basically two options: You can host the videos on your own site or use Amazons S3 servers, or you can post them on YouTube and embed them in your pages.

Important Tip: If you post your videos on shared service like YouTube, make sure you read the Terms of Use. Often, by posting the video on their server you are transferring ownership of the video to them.

Where do viewers discover video online?

44% – Discover Randomly
43% – Via Sharing
43% – Via Video Websites
39% – Via Search Engines
27% – Via Marketing Email
4% – Via RSS & MRSS Feeds

Fact: 38% of users who search Google in 2008 were served VIDEO as part of Universal Search in the SERPs.

First Generation Video Search Engines:

• Depends primarily on Metadata and on-page text
• Most are moving to Second Generation
• Examples: Google Video, AOL Video, TruVEO, Yahoo! Video, Live Search

Second Generation Video Search Engines:

• Use Metadata, on-page text, UGC (User-Generated Content: Comments, Annotations, etc.), and advanced recognition technologies (speech, visual, facial, OCR, etc.)
• Examples: Blinkx, ClipBlast, VideoSurf, VideoCrawler

SEO Tips and Tricks for Video

• Search Engines cant read the video content, so it is recommended NOT to do a full transcript of the video, but rather a Cliff Notes summary of the content. Why? Instead of just having someone read the full transcript, which could be boring without the visual support. Plus, the summary can be an enticement to view the video, which could lead to conversion.
• Video search engines need to be told what the video is about using Metadata and On-Page text, just as you would a normal page with a few wrinkles.
• If possible, have multiple video formats available: flv, mov, mpeg, mp4, etc.
• Include the word video at the end of the filename along with your main keyword phrase. Use hyphens to separate words.
• Use In-File Metadata which will include: Metadata Title, Author, Date and Description.
• Keep in mind that video search engines arent real good at indexing Metadata right now, but they are getting better at it.
• Use only 1 video per URL and use unique URLs
• Place your videos in a folder just off the root, dont place them many levels deep.
• If you you have a lot of videos, you may consider using a subdomain (i.e. http://videos.yourdomain.com/).
• I dont recommend .tv extensions right now. You may want to register them, but dont use them for video just yet. The brandability is still poor.
• If you want a new domain for your videos, you might consider using your keyword term with video or media
  at the end. (Example: IndiaTravelMedia.com).
• Use embedded players, dont use pop-up players, they are annoying and many have pop-up blockers.
• Make sure your navigation includes a link to your video content.

Tips to Make Your Videos Viral

• Allow visitors to grab your embedded code to use on their sites or blogs.
• Include social bookmarking tool links (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.)
• Enable comments to invite conversation.
• Allow users to subscribe to your videos (so you can get them back with future video releases) via RSS/MRSS
• Use internal linking to promote your videos
• Use MRSS Feed Syndication

http://www.blinkx.com/rssupload

http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/submit

http://www.reelseo.com/submit-videos-rss-mrss

Google Video Sitemaps & XML Feed

Google has XML Sitemaps for Video. eMarketer projects that 87% of the total U.S. Internet audience will watch videos online by 2011. Guess who dominates in the video search market? Yeah, Google.

If you use the XML function, which I highly recommend, make sure you provide a thumbnail URL so you increase the likelihood your video is included in Googles video index.

• If you want your users to be able to watch your videos on Google video, make sure to set the player to Autoplay so that users will be shown the video after they click on the result.
• When you submit a Video Sitemap to Google, it isnt only searchable in Google Video, but on other Google products as well. This can help you DOMINATE the video landscape.

How can you dominate? Well, think of this. We have all seen the famous eye tracking study of the SERPs, but have you seen the one when video thumbnails are presented to the user?

Now, if that isnt an eye opening experience, I dont know what is. Check out how much more of the page is getting the users attention. This drives the point home that people are heavily attracted to images. This is why you need video to dominate the SERPs.

A Page Layout Example

1. There is plenty of text around the video to give SEO support so the engine will know the theme of the video content.

2. Write an effective and compelling Title

3. The description needs to work hand-in-hand with the Title to gain interest from the visitor.

4. The video should be embedded with Social Bookmarking icons, rating option, Email to a friend, the link code and embed code to allow for the video to go viral.

5. Include a transcript, but not a full transcript. Keep it to a Cliff Notes summary.

6. Allow comments to bring life into the video posting.

7. Use cross linking for other related videos or related content on your own site or network of sites.

8. An option would be to include Vertical Channel Content, but this is optional.

9. Contextual ads can be used to monetize the site, but it is a good idea to have them tucked away to not distract from the real reason they are there – to watch your video content and become hooked.

10. Tag cloud. Keywords are placed here to raise awareness more for the video search engines indexing the page.

More Video Tips

• If you have a long video, break it up into many shorter videos. Visitors are more likely to click the Next button than they are to sit through a long video.
• Adobe Premiere Pro and OnLocation are solid desktop solutions for video editing.
• Link to your video from your site
• Send the link to your new video to your subscriber list on YouTubew