Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Keyword Selection Secrets

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Choose the right keywords for your Web site with the free keyword selection guide available when you click here.

You may know that it is important to optimize your Web site for your keywords. But which keywords? The keywords customers actually use to search may not be what you believe them to be. And, some keywords may be too general to provide relevant visitors to your Web site.

It can pay to research keywords. My favorite tool is Wordtracker, and there are both free and paid versions.

Enter the term “Houston restaurant,” and you find that there were 43,472 searches for that term in one month. “Houston restaurant” might be too general, so let’s get specific. There were also 3,505 for “pizza restaurant Houston,” and 890 for “take out restaurant Houston.” Do a search for “Houston pizza,” and you find that there were 3,505 searches for “pizza restaurant Houston” and 3,550 for “pizza delivery Houston.”

If you have a pizza restaurant in Houston, you will want to include these terms on your Web pages. Include them in the title tags for your Web pages, in the headings on your pages, in meta tags and in the text. That does not mean just stringing together keywords in a random jumble. That means working words such as Houston, pizza, restaurant, delivery and take out into your content. Do not try to cram all of these terms on every page. Have a page focusing on delivery, another on take out, etc.

Meta tags are not visible when you look at a Web site. To see the meta tags for a site, while viewing it in your browser click on “View,” then “Source” or “Page Source.” You will see the underlying code for the page. Near the top, you will see codes beginning with “meta.” Look at your competitors’ sites to see what meta tags they use, but don’t assume theirs are good.

It is important to have your keywords in your title tag. It is even better if you can get keywords into your domain name. Put keywords in the headlines on your pages. Using keywords in graphics does not help, as the search engines will see a picture, not the words.

In addition to the title tag, be sure to include keywords in two other meta tags: description and keywords. Although most search engines do not place much value on the keyword meta tag any longer, it does not hurt to have a list of keywords there. Some search engines will display the description tag when your site comes up in a search, so make it enticing to get searchers to visit your site.

One thing you should not do is hide keywords. Years ago, a popular technique was to repeat your keyword over and over in text the same color as the background. The search engines are wise to that trick, and doing it now could get your site banned.

Using the right keywords throughout your Web site will help customers find you.

As the Idea Lady, Cathy Stucker helps entrepreneurs and professionals attract customers and make themselves famous. Get free marketing tips in Cathy’s newsletter. Subscribe at http://www.IdeaLady.com/

Profiting With Google AdSense

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The basics of AdSense are easy, but there are lots of tips and tweaks to improve results. Where you place the ads on the page, the type of ad units you choose, the format of the ads and more all play a role. For example, text ads often get better results than graphical banners. That is probably because people ignore banners as obvious ads, but the text ads look more like the rest of the content on the Web site.

In fact, making the ads blend in with the site content will increase the number of clicks the ads receive. This can be done by choosing colors that blend with the site’s color scheme.

There are three factors that influence how much you can earn with Google AdSense:

* The number of ad impressions (how many people see the ads);

* The click-through rate (how many people click on the ads); and

* The value of the keywords (how much advertisers bid and pay).

Although I have done better than I expected with AdSense, my goal is now to dramatically increase my AdSense income. The factor that is most easily under my control is the number of ad impressions. So, my first step is to focus on increasing ad impressions.

To do that I am:

* Inserting the AdSense code on more pages of my sites. I am now adding Google AdSense to all of my article pages at IdeaLady.com as well as at new sites I am launching.

* Increasing the number of content pages on which I can place Google AdSense. That means adding more article pages.

Yesterday morning I added Google AdSense to some additional pages at IdeaLady.com. In less than 24 hours, I saw a 50% increase in ad impressions. The best part? Revenues for the day were 50% higher than average, too. This is only one day’s result, however, it is encouraging to see results so quickly.

My next steps will be to continue adding content pages and ads, and to test ad placement and format to see what works best on my site. I will keep my Insiders informed of my progress as I have more data to share.

If you are currently using Google AdSense on your site, look for ways to increase your ad impressions. Add the code to more pages, increase the ad units on each page (within the Google Terms of Service), and/or add more content pages with ads.

If you do not have an AdSense account: http://www.google.com/adsense

It’s the Little Things

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I am always looking for ways to make my web sites work better. That means the sites should work well, be search engine friendly, help customers get what they came for, and make money. I am preparing to do a major overhaul of IdeaLady.com, but in the meantime, I have been making some “tweaks” to make the site better. Here are a few things you can do that don’t take a lot of time, but can make a big difference in your results.

Build credibility. Are you a member of professional associations? Display the membership graphics on your site. Do you belong to the Better Business Bureau? Is your site secure? Is it family- friendly? Give customers a sense of security that they will be safe dealing with your site.

Get rid of dead links. Links that no longer work frustrate your visitors and hurt your standing with the search engines. You can check for broken links using the the free or paid version of Web CEO: http://www.IdeaLady.com/article/web

Be a real person. One of my favorite cartoons shows two dogs at a computer. One says to the other, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” Consider adding a picture of yourself, your staff, your office, etc. to show customers that you are for real and you have a real business.

Add a viral marketing element. I hate the negative sound of “viral” marketing, but I love the results. Viral marketing means making something available that people want to get and share. Take a look at my resource page at http://www.IdeaLady.com/article/resources. One of the goodies I offer is a calendar and planner. I get emails every day thanking me for this and telling me how much people like it, so I know that not only are hundreds of people downloading it every month, they are using it, too.

Start using AdSense. Pasting a few lines of code into your web pages can bring you a continuing stream of passive income through Google AdSense. Learn more about getting started with Adsense and how to increase your profits at http://www.IdeaLady.com/article/google-adsense When I started with AdSense, I was hoping to cover my hosting expenses, but it has been much better than that. AdSense has added thousands to my bottom line with very little effort.

Look for simple things you can do that will make your site better and more profitable. These ideas will get you started.

Make a Good Impression Online

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When I want to know more about a professional or business, I do an internet search. Far too often, I find that they have no internet presence at all. No web site, nothing about the business, its owners or employees, its location or hours, the products and services it provides or anything else. If I can not find you in Google, you do not exist.

You may think that most of your customers do not use the internet, but think again. My mother would not be considered an “early adopter” of technology, but the first place she looks for information is online. If Mom is online, so are your customers—and you need to be there, too.

Start by having a web site. It does not have to be large, flashy or expensive. Many hosting companies, such as http://www.MyFavoriteWebHost.com/, offer template-driven sites for less than ten dollars a month. You simply choose the design you like, enter some text and click. Voila! You have a web site.

In addition to the home page, you might include an About Us page with information about the company and principals, a Contact page, and perhaps pages with descriptions of some of your products and services. You can always make changes and additions later, but get a basic site up now.

Once your site is published, help the search engines find it by getting links from other sites. To learn how, see http://IdeaLady.com/article/get_links

Even worse than turning up nothing is doing a search and finding negative things about you or your company, or something embarrassing you put online, perhaps years ago. Many teenagers are chagrined to realize that their MySpace profiles and blog posts will be discovered by colleges and prospective employers when their applications are evaluated.

Once something is on the internet, it may be there forever. However, if there is something negative or embarrassing in your online past, you can take steps to minimize it. Start by deleting it, if possible. If you don’t own the site where the offending information is posted, ask the site owner to remove it. Keep in mind that a deleted page may still exist in online archives, but it is much less likely to turn up in a search.

Push the old, negative page down in the search results by adding lots of new items for the search engines to find. Post articles to online article directories such as EzineArticles.com, add more pages to your web site, offer your content to other sites in your field, submit posts and comments to blogs, add your profile to sites such as Amazon.com, and look for other opportunities to put new information online that will bury the old.

Search for your name and your company name from time to time to learn what appears in search results. Google will send you an email when they find a reference to you online when you sign up for Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts

Take control of your online presence to put your best face in front of the world.

As the Idea Lady, Cathy Stucker helps entrepreneurs and professionals attract customers and make themselves famous. Get free marketing tips at http://www.IdeaLady.com/

Do You Squidoo?

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Update: Squidoo has been absorbed into Hubpages.

Squidoo.com is a new Web site that is made by users. It gives you the opportunity to share your passions, show off your expertise and even make a little cash. 

Squidoo.com is a new Web site that is made by users. It gives you the opportunity to share your passions, show off your expertise and even make a little cash. (Squidoo allows you to earn revenue through affiliate programs with Amazon.com and many other online merchants.) It is fun roaming around the site and seeing the pages others have put up, and making your own pages (they call them “lenses”) is easy.

I set up several lenses, but the most complete is my lens on mystery shopping: http://www.squidoo.com/mysteryshopping/ In a very short time, it made it to the top 100 lenses.