What to Write on your Blog and Why

Maintaining a ‘blog’ or news section on your website is a great way of updating customers about news, views and events from your business or industry. Not to mention it’s very search engine friendly and will keep your website well ranked (and therefore found) in Google and other search engines.

If you have a five page site and no blog, then you have five chances to rank in search engines. If you have a five page site and a blog with hundreds of posts, you have hundreds of chances to rank. A recent survey suggests that companies who blog receive 97% more inbound links than those who don’t. Inbound links are important because they signal authority to search engines, thus increasing your chances of getting found in those search engines. Read more

Why is my site not #1 on Google?

According to statistics, as of June 2008 there are over 103 million websites on the World Wide Web. With this kind of competition, you might think you need a miracle to be found in search engines. In fact, it just requires some hard work, time and some realistic expectations.

Which Search Engines Do I Need?

The first step to getting your website found is to submit it to the major search engines. Only three sites – Google, Yahoo!, and MSN – generate the results seen on all primary search engines. According to research, Google is responsible for nearly 50% of all searches, Yahoo 24% and MSN 10%.

With its dominance of the search engine landscape, Google makes its own rules for ranking sites in search results and changes them often. Some changes result from its own continuing research or from competitive pressures. Google also shakes things up to prevent large, well funded companies from dominating results permanently or to counteract the dynamic of people gaming the system to enhance search engine results.

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Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising model used on search engines such as Google, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser’s website.

Advertisers specify the words that should trigger their ads and the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click.

When a user searches Google’s search engine, adverts for relevant words are shown as “sponsored links” on the right side of the screen, and sometimes above the main search results.

The ordering of the paid listings depends on other advertisers’ bids (PPC) and the “quality score” of all ads shown for a given search. The quality score is calculated by historical click-through rates and the relevance of an advertiser’s ad text and keywords, as determined by Google. The quality score is also used by Google to set the minimum bids for an advertiser’s keywords. The precise formula and meaning of relevance and its definition is in part secret to Google and whose parameters can be dynamically changed.

The auction mechanism that determines the order of the ads has been called a “generalized second price” auction.

Further information on Google Pay Per Click Advertising can be found here.