Google's Front Page - Don't Be Over Awed

Google's Front Page - Don't Be Over Awed
By Jim Patterson

I was doing a little research for an article or two on my favorite Internet Marketing Tool (Google) the other day when I noticed something rather encouraging to my own self image as an internet marketer and copywriter.

The articles I was researching were on SEO techniques and the keyword phrases I ran searches for returned some pretty large numbers of sites returned. And yet after I read every one of the results from the front page of one very competitive phrase, I only came across 3 valid ideas/techniques/instructions. My mind reeled:

How can this be! This is the front page of Freakin' Google!!

Most of these pages were simply what I call AdSense fodder. Rich in keywords and no doubt backlinked within an inch of its worthless life. When people don't find anything useful the site owner hopes they will click an ad or two. I make it a point NOT to click any links on what a site owner must know is a site full of useless words...

My point (and yes I have one) is this:

It takes more than a little effort to get your page to the front page of Google for competitive keywords and keyword phrases. I do so regularly using a combination of High PR Backlinks and Article Marketing. It takes time and effort but is accomplished without anything resembling magic or witchcraft. So if you are going to go to the trouble getting there:

Then please have something worthwhile to say on the topic!

There is zero reason to feel inadequate to the task of having relevant things to say. The results are in, and whatever you have to add to the discussion is well worth putting in writing as so much of what is getting to Google's front page is drivel!

An article outlining someone's failures would have been preferable to the vast majority of what I read exploring these SERPs. At least someone reading that would have been aided in their own elimination process. If you know nothing on a subject, research it and put down what you learn before going about the laborious work of posting backlinks with anchor text and writing articles to promote the page. You will shine!

Even if you build a blog with the intention of posting articles on a subject from an Article Directory to promote affiliate products or for AdSense income you can be selective about the quality of the articles you select and be head and shoulders above the competition in most cases.

The lesson to be learned here is that there is still a huge opportunity to present good quality content in pretty much any niche you choose and become an authority and a force to be reckoned with. Your blog or website can become an authority site!

We have all seen the posts, threads and articles preaching:

Create Content!

Create Content!

Create Content!

Well another word is needed here to make it:

Create Relevant Content!!

Create Relevant Content!!

Create Relevant Content!!

All it takes is the effort to be sure that your content delivers some form of relevancy on the keywords that you choose to promote.

So don't let yourself be over awed by the idea of your words being on the front page of Google.

I mean hey! Nobody else is...

Jim Patterson

Read more about Internet Marketing Tools and SEO Marketing

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Patterson
http://EzineArticles.com/?Googles-Front-Page---Dont-Be-Over-Awed&id=2516291

Looking Back At My Accomplishments For June 2008

Looking Back At My Accomplishments For June 2008

Here's hoping that your June was as good as mine was!

I learned a lot, and implemented a fair amount of it, the
end result being a net improvement to my Alexa Rank
of better than 500,000 places. I know, I know: it doesn't
really mean anything. It does give you a yardstick to
guage how you are doing in comparison to your peers.

The traffic that has gotten me here has come primarily
from Social Marketing activities, a bit of Article
Marketing and by getting into Trackback Links.

These are all a direct result of info gleaned from reading
the 2008 Authority Blackbook. I keep telling you all to
subscribe up at the right, but tell you what! Here it is:

The 2008 Authority Blackbook

This is the biggest and best Web 2.0 Resource list you
will find anywhere. It just flat out rocks!

Apply what you read and you will benefit...

I also learned a little something from one of my readers
that advised me to put more of my blog's "Link Juice"
to work for me, instead giving it away.

What's that mean?

It means no more widgets listing MyBlogCatalog or
FuelMyBlog. It means making sure that when you
mention something from another blog post, linking
to it. It means making sure that your blog doesn't
have the look and feel of a garage sale.

Hey, I know I've been guilty of that one, and am trying
to constantly improve the quality and quantity of the
content and resources that I publish here.

My relationship with Blogger took a bit of a beating
in June as well, but we got through it...

Another blogger (who shall remain nameless) that I
was (successfully) competing with for certain keywords,
decided to get a leg up by reporting me to Blogger as a
spam blog. This got my blog locked up 3 different
times. Smoke actually came out of my ears once...

Fortunately the good folks at Blogger listened to what
I had to say in my defense and unlocked me pretty
quickly. Anyone that has had this happen to them
knows the powerless feeling that ensues, and can
relate.

Well, I did get past that, and am persevering with my
little Blogger blog here and have decided to keep it up
even once I get the WordPress projects planned off
the ground.

My copy writing services have suddenly become a
bigger part of Floyd's Online Income as well. Any
of you wanting to grab some traffic generating
Squidoo Lenses check out my offer HERE.

And speaking of The Squid! I suddenly got a wild
hair last Friday night and just had to do whatever
was necessary to qualify as a Giant Squid. So...

24 Lenses in 24 Hours

Unfortunately I found that I no longer like some
of my old lenses so I took them down and replaced
them to make that all important 50 lens mark.

I was already sort of cranked up about Squidoo
anyway from my Genepax lens hitting #3 in the
Autos category, and realized that to start getting
ranked in the Top 100 overall on Squidoo, that I
would need to be one of the Giant Squids.

Who knows, I still may not make Giant Squid, but
I sure had fun cranking them out. It also gave me
motivation to keep writing. Content is so important
to what we do here, and I was on a roll so...

Just kept on cranking.

One of my Digg friends, Janet Ford also got me into
putting up pages on eHow and Triond as a means
of writing for income. Both have good revenue sharing
programs, but you've got to produce a fair number of
articles before it starts adding up, but add up it does.

Speaking of Digg, been having some scrapes there too.

The url for this blog got banned there. Not really sure
why. Sent an email about it, but got nowhere. Not a
stinking thing you can do about it, so moved on and
started using Propeller instead...

BTW, it looks to me like FriendFeed is going to become
more and more important as time goes on, so if you
ain't jumped on yet, do so now! I'll now doubt be
posting more about using FriendFeed in July so watch
for it.

If you pay any attention to me at all (and why should
you) you have noticed a growing dependence on Google
Gadgets. This is an ongoing thing for me, and several
others in my circle. On the other hand, they have gotten
me one whale of a lot of traffic on several occassions.

My attitude on this is, why fight it?! Google accounts
for the lion's share of the traffic out there, so why not
go with the flow?

After my dust ups with Blogger and Digg, I'm just too
tired to tackle Google...

Eat a peach!

Floyd Bogart

Genepax - Water Powered Fuel Cell Vehicle

Genepax - Water Powered Fuel Cell Vehicle

The Japanese company Genepax has unveiled a vehicle powered by water.Check this out.

read more | digg story

******************************************
This appears to be off topic for this blog,
except for one thing:

This is the Digg for a Squidoo Lens that I
put up on Friday June 13th. Well, I tried
a few new things publishing this Lens and
here are the results:

900 Visitors in the first 24 hours with 1,655
total as of this moment. It is ranked #8 in
the Cars & Trucks category with an overall
rank of 352. It has maintained a clickthru
rate of just over 30%.

It has ranked on the first page of Google for
over 10 keywords. Some are slipping now, so
I will have to do a little poking and prodding
to get them back up.

Some online marketing partners have asked me
to put together an ebook on this to sell to
their list exclusively, which is almost done.

If you want this information gratis, I will
be sharing it with my newsletter which you
can get by subscribing at the top of the
right hand sidebar. Do it now and also grab
a copy of Jack Humphrey's Authority Blackbook.

Eat a peach!

Floyd Bogart

What Do Alexa Ranking and Google PR Have To Do With Social Marketing?

What Do Alexa Ranking and Google PR Have To Do With Social Marketing?

As we consider this, remember that we
are only discussing Social Marketing and
not the technical side.
(at least until a bit later)

This question would not matter at all
except that you , and I are only human,
like all of our readers...

Huh?!

Well, when you consider the validity of
what someone has posted to their blog,
commented on someone elses, or written
in an article, you are bound to ask (if only
subconsciously) "Why should I listen to
this bozo!" And hey, that is a fair question!

One way of satisfying that is checking if
other seems to be listening to this "Bozo".

Ever since I installed Alexa for Firefox, I
almost automatically check to see the Alexa
Ranking or whatever site or blog I happen to
be visiting. This tells me at a glance what kind
of traffic they are getting, and therefore, to an
how much they know what they are talking about.

The same can be said of Google PageRank, but
I find that Google's constantly changing algorythms
make the results less consistent than Alexa Rankings.

It is also telling to compare how your own sites are
doing when compared to those you are paying
attention to.

Think about it for a minute. Why would you spend
hours pouring over traffic generation information
from someone with an Alexa Ranking several hundred
thousand worse than your own blog's?

Blogging is a vital part of Social Marketing for us all,
so it is also important to do what we can to improve
our own Alexa Rank as it means more visitors as
well as more perceived prestige within a niche.

Remember that Alexa Rank is based on visitors from
others with the Alexa Toolbar. So if you want your
own visits to be counted, then get it!

Likewise, I noticed steadily increasing Alexa Rank
once I put an Alexa Widget in my sidebar below my
profile. Placement may be meaningless,but is should
be easily visible on your page.

Note that all of this is about perception as much as
anything else. How so?

Well note that the Alexa Rank of this blog is 685,830.
This will change (hopefully improved) almost continually.
What the number means is that this is theoretically the
685,830th most visited site on the entire internet.

I say theoretically, as I know of a site getting almost
five times as many visitors with an Alexa Ranking of
3,895,598. How can that be? That site is currently
being promoted almost entirely by offline methods.
Thus very few of these visitors have the Alexa Toolbar
installed on their computers.

Improving Google PageRank seems mostly to be about
getting and maintaining a steady stream of high quality
(read that pertinent) links to your site. My experience
with this is that as soon as you rest on what you have
done you will start to slip. I also find that you cannot
count on what you have been doing to continue working.

When it comes to Google, you have to constantly keep
up with the most up to date information available.
I won't spend much time on this here, as frankly I am
not as up to date on this as I need to be. Guess you
know what I'll be boning up on next...

Hope you've enjoyed my musings.

Eat a peach!

Floyd Bogart

News Via Twitter - Is Everybody Missing The Point?

News Via Twitter - Is Everybody Missing The Point?

I have read several news items today referring
to the stories about people posting relevant and
important news to Twitter quicker than any
other medium had done.

Surprisingly, this is being mostly treated as a
gimmick, and with tongue firmly planted in
cheek. Take for example THIS ONE posted
by John Murrell at Good Morning Silicon Valley.

IMHO the point is not whether these Twitts beat
the conventional media to the punch, it is that here
we have one more way that news can, and is being
gotten out that is not corporately controlled.

Over and over again we have seen that "our" news
media is actually not ours. It is controlled by the
large corporations that own them, and they clearly
have their own agendas which may or may not have
anything to do with keeping us fully informed.

So to be so glib as to say that these Twitter updates
allowed us just to feel "saddened and powerless
minutes sooner" is not just naive, but also quite
dangerous.

Do yourself a little favor and do a Google search for
"Net Neutrality" or even just a Digg Search and
educate yourself.

Think this has nothing to do with Social Marketing,
Internet Marketing or your business in general?

Well, if AT&T, Sprint and the rest of the telecom
giants get to control the content of the internet,
who's sites do you think will come down first?

MSN.com, or your blog?

That forum you created and nurtured with your
own hands, or Yahoo!

And don't think that they have to just out and out
ban certain types of sites to get rid of them. It is just
as easy to eliminate content by levying fees for their
customers to access your content to shut you down.

This is not an issue that is going to go away soon.

Hey if they can do this, before you know it they
can suspend your basic freedoms!

Oh yeah, they already did...

Rant over!

Floyd Bogart