Beating Adwords - Pay Per Click Internet Advertising - Pay Per Click Campaign

By Andy Theekson

The competitor analysis I refer to here is not to be confused with the Competitive Analysis applied to a business to determine a unique selling proposition or a Competitive Advantage.

The competitor analysis to which I refer is that which when applied to a web site makes it possible to determine what improvements are necessary to a web page and web site in order to compete with competitors holding a place in the Top 10 Search Engine Results.

Anyone who has a web site quickly discovers that unless they have a listing on the first page of search results for a particular search term, they stand little chance of getting any significant free traffic from a search engine.

Competitor Analysis when applied to a web page means that you can establish how much to optimize a page in order to compete against the top 10 competitors for the keywords that have been targeted.

It also means not wasting time overly optimizing pages that don’t need to be and avoiding an over optimization penalty that can be applied by a search engine, resulting in a worsening, not an improvement in ranking.

Competitor analysis compares a web page against each of the 10 competitor’s pages in the top search engine rankings for many 10’s of important ranking factors. It can advise what the page doesn’t have, what it has too much of and suggests what can be changed to improve ranking.

Competitor Analysis On-Page Factors
A typical competitor analysis looks at Keyword Quantity, Keyword Density, Keyword Prominence and the Number of Words & Characters in each of the following areas:

Page Title, Meta Keywords, Meta Description, Body Text Overall, Body Text - First Sentence, Page URL, H1 & H2 Headline Texts, On Page Link Texts, Outbound Link Texts, On Page URL’s, Outbound Link URL’s, Image ALT Tags and HTML Comment Tags.

Competitor analysis is also not constrained to just factors on a web page, but can also be used to assess off-page factors.

Competitor Analysis Off-Page Factors
Links to a site are now more important that ever in determining whether a top 10 search engine ranking can be achieved. A typical off-page competitor analysis will therefore consider each of the following:

Total Incoming Page Links Keywords in link URL’s Keywords in Link Texts Other terms used in links .edu links .gov links DMOZ links Yahoo Directory Listings Deep Link Ratio Site Age

From all this analysis it is possible to establish what factors are likely to have placed the analysed web pages in the Top 10 search results and what is required in order to compete with them and gain a top 10 ranking.

The analysis may also include an assessment of the keywords used by a competitor determined from the page content. Keywords in the keyword meta tags are not used because they are unreliable for determining what keywords a competitor is actually using.

Competitive analysis provides a lot of data with which to make a decision on what is required to compete with competitor web pages holding a top 10 ranking.

However, what should not be overlooked is whether the time, resources and knowledge is available to compete with those sites already holding a top 10 ranking.

It may be more cost effective in terms of time, effort and resources to compete initially for a keyword phrase that has less competition and against web sites not so well entrenched in the Top 10 search results.

Andy Theekson is the SEO specialist at the search-engine-optimizer.com providing advice and services to small and medium sized web businesses on web design and search engine marketing. Further details on applying Competitor Analysis and example reports can be found in Competitor Analysis - Beating the Competition.

This is something that I do on a regular basis. You really want to do this when you start a new website or when you get on the top of the index.

If you have started a new website and have done all of the things that you need to do when starting a website you really should find out where you are listed on the major search engines so that you will know if your new website is going in the right direction or not.

In the beginning it will take time to find where you are positioned however it is well worth taking the time to do this.

There are a few ways to check where you are and how you are doing. You should do all of them when doing your evaluation. What you will want to do is to search your main keywords and keyword phrases as follows. Type these in the search field on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Run these three searches to see where you are listed. The allintitle you should be able to find somewhere right away providing that you used a keyword or keyword phrase that is not very competitive. If you are using a competitive keyword or keyword phrase you probably don’t have a very good keyword and you won’t be able to compete in the first place.

Click on every page of the results until you find your site using the above criteria. Use a spread sheet and type your position on each search engine no matter what position it may be.

It will probably take you some time the first time that you do this but after that you should be able to find your site pretty quickly for each of the search engines providing you document the results for each.

Check your position every day to see if your position has improved or has gotten worse. If you find that your website is improving, you will know that you are doing the right things to get your website ranked toward the top of the search engines. If it is getting worse then you will know that you need to make some changes to get it going in the right direction.

The thing that you need to understand is that your site will fluctuate up and down on the index. This is quite normal. What you want to look out for is that it is not heading in the wrong direction on a continuous basis.

Once you have found your website on the index of each search engine it won’t take you long to find it after that providing that do this on a daily basis. This is well worth doing and it will save you time and get you on the first page of the major search engines much quicker.

If you are already on the top of the search engines you definitely want to do this to make sure that you stay there. Things can change really quickly on a search engine index and if something happens to your position you want to know about it when it happens so that you can make whatever corrections necessary to get back on top.

While optimizing your website with good keywords is an important part of your search engine strategy, I do think however, that too many webmasters spend way too much time tweaking it to death. I don’t think that this is a good idea nor do I think that it is beneficial to their website. All that time spent on one thing while neglecting the rest of their marketing strategies in the long run is hurting their online business. So much time is wasted getting those keywords just right actually hurts the quality of the content on their web pages.

I know that most of us are taught to find a main keyword and build your website around that keyword. I know that’s what I did in the beginning. I think that’s a big mistake because it takes away from the quality of the content on the website because too much focus is put on the keyword trying to fit it in to get that web page optimized for the search engines. I’ve seen so many websites where you can tell that the website was built around specific keywords because so much of the content is really hard too understand and that it doesn’t make much sense at all. You can actually pick out the keywords because they are used so many times. While you need to use your keywords throughout your content, you don’t need to overkill them. Using your keywords too often will actually hurt you with the search engines more than it will help you.

There’s a better way to optimize your website without hurting your content. I have found that the best way to optimize a web page is to use just one keyword that is super targeted to the content on that web page. Use the best keyword that you can possibly find and put it aside for the moment. Using a good word processor go and write the content for your web pages. Forget about using your keyword or writing any html tags altogether until you have finished writing the content. When you have finished writing your content, read through it to make sure that it makes sense. Also check to see if your content doesn’t already have a keyword that you may have already written unintentionally that may be better than the one that you have already chosen. I have found many great keywords by going through this process. It is advantageous to check to see if there are any hidden gems sitting there in the already written content.

If there is not a better keyword within your content, you can now go back and start inserting your keyword in the body your web page. The main objective when doing this is that your keyword blends in with the content in a way that it makes sense. You will probably have to make some changes so that it does blend in, and that it does makes sense. Of course you will need to put your keyword in the normal places. It should appear in the title, description Meta tag, keyword Meta tag, heading, and the body. The body is where the keyword is most abused by webmasters. While the keyword needs to appear throughout the body, it doesn’t need to be there hundreds of times. Using your keyword two to three percent of the time within the body is more than sufficient.

Repeat the above process for all of your web pages. You will find that you will have a well optimized website that makes perfect sense.

The last and probably the most important thing that you need to do when you are finished is to forget about doing any more optimizing. It takes time to see if your chosen keyword will be of benefit or not. If you use a super targeted keyword it will be. Forget about it and go focus on the things that you need to get done with your online business that you may have been neglecting.

If the only SEO that you are doing is optimizing your web pages and leaving it at that, then you probably are not going to get much traffic to your website. SEO is a lot of work and takes time and patience to see any real results. Too many webmasters spend all of their time and efforts optimizing, and probably over optimizing, their web pages and overlooking the rest of SEO which is just as important as web page optimization.

SEO is not just about popping keywords all over your web page. SEO requires many other components to be effective. I know that I will be giving many who are reading this rehashed SEO information that many webmasters already know about but I think that it’s worth saying again for those who don’t know about these strategies. Besides, just because people know about them doesn’t necessarily mean that they employ them. Are you doing everything that you should to optimize your website? That’s a question we should all ask ourselves and address the answer accordingly.

The first thing in your SEO strategy should be consistent and well written content that is related to what your website is about. I know everyone and his brother have said this already. Still, most websites out there have little, or no, content on them at all and most never update the content they do have. They just upload their web pages and do nothing after that. Those websites will sit in limbo forever or until the website owner decides to update his or her content. Adding fresh content to your website on a regular basis is a must.

Quality back links are important but they must be from websites that are relevant to your website. Submitting to directories is a good way to get good back links to your website. There are thousands of them on the net and you may want to consider submitting to a fair amount of them. Find directories that have high page ranks and submit your link to them. The higher the page rank, the better. Chances are sites with a page rank of 5 or better get a lot of traffic. Just be sure to submit to the category that is the most relevant to your website and do not use software to do your submission because most directories require a code to prove that you are submitting directly from their website. There is no software that I know of that can get around this. There are too many ways to get back links to give all of them here but here are a few more good places to get good back links.

There are so many ways to get really good back links to your website. You just need to find them. What I have given you here will keep you busy for some time to come.

I’ve given a couple very important SEO ideas here, which is really not the point of this post. The point here is that getting your site known through good regularly updated content and from other avenues is just as important as search engine optimization for the search engines themselves. The more often you update your content the better the chances that your visitors will return to your website and the more people who know that you exist the better the search engines will rank you.

Some quick notes while this is still fresh on my mind. If you have contemplated hiring an SEO service here’s a few things to keep in mind before you go ahead and do so.

Run searches that are SEO related such as SEO, web page optimization, search engine optimization, etc. to see what comes up. There are plenty of people out there that offer this type of service.

Do some homework before you decide on which SEO to go with. I wouldn’t even consider an SEO service that is listed in the ppc section. I’d have a problem with a service that needs to use ppc to be found. If they can’t rank on the search engines for their own site how can you expect them to get you ranked? I’d stay away from this kind of service.

I wouldn’t hire anyone that isn’t in the top five of the search results for the searches that I run. They may cost a little more than the lower ranked services but it will be well worth it because chances are they are a lot better than the other guys.

Personally, I wouldn’t go that route because it’s not that hard to do it yourself. There is nothing mysterious about optimizing your web pages for the search engines. Besides, no one has your best interest at heart more than you do.

It seems like a lot of people think that there is some deep secret to getting their website indexed on the major search engines really quick. Most think that there is something special that some do to get their websites indexed really fast. I can tell you it is really easy to do and there is nothing special to doing it at all. What course of action that you decide to take will greatly depend on how long it will take to get indexed with the major search engines.

The site that you are reading this post from took 11 days to get indexed on Google. You can do it faster than I did, but to me, the way I did it is the best. You will see why as I explain the options available to you.

The number one thing that you should not do is use the search engines add URL feature. It is better for the search engines to find you than the other way around. Filling out those submission forms is nothing but a waste of time in my opinion because you will do nothing but wait and probably get nowhere.

Here are the two best ways to get indexed really fast without having to go beg other webmasters with a high PR to link back to you. Unless you have something of value to offer, you probably won’t even get a response. Don’t waste your time with something like this. There are better ways.

Here’s what the search engines do to find websites. They will go to a website that is already in their index and follow the links on the website that they are looking at to see where they lead. If there is links on that website that lead to an outside source then the search engine will go to the website where that link takes them. This process is known as crawling.

You may be thinking why that is important to you. Well it’s very important because that’s exactly how the search engine is going to find your website when it crawls the already indexed website. The objective here is to get your website linked to the website that is already indexed which will result in getting your own website indexed.

The first way would be to link to a linking service. They are just what the name implies. They will link back to your website for a price. What you want to use are websites that have the highest page rank as possible. I wouldn’t link to anyone who has a page rank of less than seven. You only need to link to one site. Once you are linked to one of these sites you should be indexed with the major search engines within 72 hours. Sometimes within 24 hours. Link with them for one month only. You won’t need them after that. Below is a short list of linking services that you can check out to get a price of what it will cost you to get a link back from a website that has a page rank of 7 or better.

http://www.textlinkbrokers.com
www.text-link-ads.com
www.linkadage.com

One last thought about linking services. Try to find a website that is as closely related to the topic of your website as possible because it will carry a lot more weight with the search engines.

While using a linking service may be the easiest way to get indexed, it’s not the best way to go because it will cost you money to get indexed. If you want to get indexed within a couple of days it is probably your only option.

If you don’t mind doing a little work you will get your website indexed within a couple of weeks using this next method. This is what I used to get this website indexed with Google and the other search engines in just 11 days.

Write an article and submit it to a bunch of article sites. Make sure that you write about something that relates directly to the topic of your website. Your article does not have to be a literary masterpiece. It only needs to be informative and written in a legible way. If your website topic has an appeal to a certain group of people, it will have the same appeal in the form of an article as well.

Because most article sites are very highly ranked, you will get the same result as you would if you had linked back from a PR linking service. The search engine will treat that link back the same as they would PR linked sites. The only difference is, you won’t have to pay for that link.

The only reason that it takes a bit longer to get indexed using article sites is that your article will need to be reviewed and accepted before it will go live on the article site. Most will take from a week to ten days before your article will go live. Once your article goes live, it shouldn’t take more than a few days for your site to get indexed with the top search engines.

You’ll get an added benefit using article sites because article sites are there to give webmasters a place to get content for their websites. If your article is picked up and posted on other websites, you will get additional link backs to your website without having to do a thing on your part which will help you with your ranking once you are indexed.

Unless you are pressed to get your website indexed within a couple of days, submitting to article sites is the best option for the better benefits it will bring at no cost. The extra work is not that much. It only took me about an hour and a half to get it all in place. Considering what you get back from it is more than worth the extra time and effort.

Below is a decent size list of article sites. Submit your article to all of them because many of them will have your article live within a few days. The faster your article goes live on as many sites as possible, the faster you will get indexed with the top search engines.

Good Luck!

http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.amazines.com
http://www.articledashboard.com
http://www.article-directory.net
http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles
http://www.magportal.com
http://www.isnare.com
http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl
http://www.webarticles.com
http://www.webarticles.com
http://articles4content.com
http://www.article-buzz.com
http://www.free-articles-zone.com
http://www.newarticlesonline.com
http://www.articletogo.com
http://www.articleworld.net
http://www.impactarticles.com
http://www.articlealley.com
http://www.directorygold.com
http://dir.salon.com
http://www.articlefever.com
http://www.content-articles.com
http://news.collectors.org
http://article-niche.com
http://blogtelecast.com
http://superpublisher.com
http://www.articlecentral.com
http://www.article-directory.net
http://www.article-emporium.com
http://www.ebooksnbytes.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.internethomebusinessarticles.com
http://www.site-reference.com
http://www.stickysauce.com

I found this article and thought everyone here would enjoy it. It’s pretty funny!

How To Succeed At SEO (Not!)
By T. O’ Donnell

Here are a few tips to help a truly grrrreat site become even better. Try them all, you know you want to!

1. The Latest Grey-hat Wheeze.

Link farms, scraping, fake directories; whatever it is, get in there! If a newbie webmaster forum is buzzing about it, that’s the time to take it up. Put it on your main breadwinner, and wait for the hits to come in.

2. Over-optimisation.

Give the search engines what they want. Make damn sure they know what the page is about. Seven word image names, ten word ALT tags, hidden text, three H1 tags, that’ll tell the b*stards. Top of Google’s first page for you. Your clients swoon at your mAd skILLz. Respec’!

3. No Optimisation.

Google is run by Gods with brains the size of watermelons. Their algorithm is sentient. Whatever tricks you try won’t work. So don’t try any. And when your site gets booted in the next update anyway, defend their right to do so, piously.

4. Content Generators.

Life’s short. So much work, so many Stargate downloads to watch. Automate your content generation. Software is there to make life easier. Slap together RSS feeds, auto-generated text, free articles and Wikipedia pulls. Monetise with Adsense. Repeat for 300,000 pages. Is it time for that Pot Noodle? It’s _always_ time!

5. Reciprocal links.

Google loves links, and it’s too hard to get them unasked for. So ask! Send out 5000 emails cadging links to your .info domain. Don’t bother proof-reading it, they’ll only skim it. When they agree to a swop, you’ll be too busy to reciprocate. That’ll be a one-way link, then, ha ha!

Those sweeties at Google don’t mind reciprocal links. Lots of famous sites interlink, so yours should be OK too. WebDevDood on Leetwebforum.com said so.

6. Low original-to-duplicate content ratio.

People don’t read. Original content is too expensive to make. The Google algorithm ain’t all that. 200 words surrounded by the same header, footer and sidebars in a 20,000 page site will keep them coming back again and again. Have a pop tart.

7. CMS with same TITLE and no META description on each page.

There are so few pages on the internet these days that you can use any open-source CMS as-is. Just set up your forum, slap on the Adsense, let your visitors witter away, sit back and wait for the search engine lurrrve! You bad boy, have another Red Bull, you deserve it!

8. Because _they_ weren’t penalised, you won’t be.

So many webmasters say their site has X or Y, and Google didn’t mind, but funnily enough, _you_ got busted for it. Their content, backlinks, and site structure must be the same as yours, then, eh? Spooky!

9. Huge number of new links, in a short time, to a new domain.

DevWebDood says that if MySpace.com can get a million backlinks in a short space of time and not be penalised, then so can you. Just set up a travel or hotel site, join the Co-op and LinkVault, do a blog spam and watch your site race up the SERPs.

So what if it’s nowhere to be found next month? Better the fleeting taste of victory, than never having tried at all!

10. Got banned? Give ‘em Hell about it!

Write a long email to Google. State how great your site is, how they’re hurting your business, and how _you’re_ doing _them_ a favour by letting them list it. Admit no fault, it shows weakness.

Then get on as many forums as you can complaining about how the SERPs suck, how -> insert famous site here <- is doing just what you did, and _they're_ still in.

Google will be so hurt and ashamed, they’ll let you back in, and dial back that nasty update. You told _them_, all right!

I write these articles for fun. Pay no attention to my byline, and do not visit my site.

About the author: T. O’ Donnell http://www.tigertom.com/blog/ is an SEO genius, living in London, UK.

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COPYRIGHT: You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the byline above is included. You must publish the article AS IS. Do not modify, alter or edit it.

You are allowed to format the layout of the article for proper display in your website or ezine, so long as the text, hyperlinks and paragraph breaks are not changed or deleted. If presented in an HTML document, any hyperlinks present must be active, clickable, and go direct to the websites they represent i.e. no re-directs.

Notifying the author is NOT required, but doing so is appreciated, at http://www.tigertom.com/contact.htm

Here are 5 very costly mistakes that webmasters make when optimizing their web pages for the search engines. The search engine bots are getting smarter all of the time and bad SEO practices no longer go unnoticed. A poorly or incorrectly optimized website will kill your online business with the search engines.

1. Not selecting the right keyword.

It is very important that you use keywords that are targeted to the content on your web pages. Using keywords that are similar is totally useless and will send the wrong traffic to your website. Your keywords must be exactly the same as your website content.

2. Keywords Spamming (Using the same keywords over and over).

Never use keyword spamming or stacking. The search engines will downgrade and penalize your website for doing this. Instead, use keyword rich content on your web pages.

3. Using a free domain name or web hosting service.

Never use a free domain to host your business website. You want a domain that you can name whatever you want. You can’t do that with a free domain. You will have to use the free hosts domain name. Search engines generally will index free domains as a whole but not individual websites, which will do you no good. Spend a few bucks and get a real hosted domain that you can call your own.

4. Using hidden text to make your web pages more relevant.

Hiding the text within your web pages to make it appear that you have a laser targeted website doesn’t work with the search engines anymore. You will be severely penalized by the search engines for doing this. Even if you remove the hidden text it will take a long time, if ever, to recover from it. Don’t do it. It’s not only bad for your search engine ranking. It’s unethical.

5. Using keywords that have nothing to do with your website.

Putting popular keywords on your web page for the sole reason of attracting people to your website is a huge mistake. Using unrelated keywords can get your website banned from the search engines.

So many marketers don’t use the allintitle when running keyword research either because they don’t know about it or just don’t want to bother doing it.

What the allintitle does is it checks how many web pages have an exact keyword phrase in the title. There is no way that you can determine how competitive a chosen keyword or keyword phrase is unless you know how many people are using that keyword or keyword phrase. Using the allintitle will help you determine how competitive and profitable your keyword will be.

Keep in mind the less competitive a keyword is, the easier it is to get a high ranking on the search engines and the more profitable you will be. If you are using a keyword that 10,000,000 others are using you will have very little chance if any at all of being found and the chances of making money with what you are selling will be a lot harder because there will be too many others selling the same product as you.

Here’s how to determine whether or not your keywords will be too competitive or not. Of course you will have to get a list of your keywords before you can do anything at all. You can run keyword searches using the yahoo keyword tool or the new free wordtracker tool. I’d use the yahoo tool if it’s working because the yahoo tool gives you results by the month where wordtracker gives you them by the day. You can still determine approximately how many clicks a month by multiplying the daily number by thirty days.

Copy and paste the keywords that you find into an excel spreadsheet or any comparable spreadsheet. If you don’t have a spreadsheet notepad will do. Using a spreadsheet will make it easier to organize your keyword list but it is not essential that you use it. It just will be a lot easier using a spreadsheet.

What you want to do is go to Google and type in your keyword phrase using allintitle. Say that you are checking the keyword phrase “dog collar”, you would type it in the search like this allintitle:dog collar. To see this example in action Click here. If you look in the top right side of the results you will see that 158,000 web pages are using this keyword phrase in the title. The keyword phrase “dog collar” without looking at how many people have searched that phrase is probably too competitive to use. If you were to make a slight change to that keyword phrase “dog collar” and make it “dog shock collar” you will get a very different result. Click here to see the results for dog shock collar. As you can see the results show that 671 web pages use this keyword phrase and you probably will be able to compete with this keyword.

To determine whether a keyword phrase is too competitive or not, you need to compare how many searches were done for the keyword phrase, against how many results there are for the allintitle search. If the searches are higher than the web page results from your allintitle search, then you have a very good keyword phrase. If it’s the other way around, you are better off not using the phrase as it will be very difficult to get a high ranking for the keyword phrase.

Because the search engines place so much weight on the web page title when ranking a site it is really important to do this if you want to have any chance of getting a high ranking for your keyword phrases. The less competitive the keyword phrase is the better your chances are of getting a good ranking on the search engines. You also will learn a lot about the product that you are promoting by going through this process.