My posts are going to be pretty random because sometimes I will blog about tips and how-tos based on my day-to-to work. For this entry, I want to talk about the Keyword Hud in Aperture. 

We all know tagging photos can be a pain, but sometimes they help us quickly locate and organize our photoes, especially in Aperture. I use the keyword function in conjunction with Aperture's smart albums. When I'm working on a wedding project, I simply create a smart album for each keyword of a client shoot. So I have smart albums for keywords lik, Bride/Groom, Group Portraits, First Dance, Details, etc. 

But up until recently, I noticed that I had too many keywords that I never ever used in a wedding project. I had too many categories that I would have to click through to select one keyword. So it dawned on me to start using Aperture's Keyword Controls (Window>Show Keyword Controls), which consist of sets of keywords that you can access at the bottom of Aperture's main frame.

The trick to using the Controls is to limit your sets to exactly the words you use most often. I can't believe it took me so long to figure this out. Basically what I did is make a keyword set that reflects my typical wedding shoot. That set consist of exactly 14 keywords. With the size of my computer monitor, all fourteen of those keyword buttons can fit at the bottom of the application interface. Now I simply keep Keyword Controls open so that I can quickly label 1000+ photos I take on a typical wedding. 

I did the same thing for other photo projects I'm working on. With this approach, there's no need to pull out the Keyword HUD to get at keywords. (By the way, if you want to delete keywords from a file or files, just use Shift-Option+9, or better yet create your special keyword combination for deleting keywords (Aperture>Commands>Customize.)

How to Create a Set
To create a Keyword Control set:

1. Click on Window>Show Keyword Controls.

2. Click and hold the last drop-down button in the Control set. There may be a control set that already exist. Select Edit Buttons. 

3. At the bottom of Button Sets, click the plus button and create a name for your set. If you know you're not going to use the default sets in that already exist, delete them.

4. Keep your new set selected. Now go to the Keyword Library on the right side and locate the keywords you want to use in your new set. This is where you can also create new catagories and keywords.

5. After you locate the keywords, slide them one at a time into the Contents section in order to create your set. You can list them in order you like. I kept wedding list alphabetized for easy access. Try to fit as many keywords in a set as you need so that you don't have to keep changing sets to access different keywords. 

6. Now click OK and you're ready to start labeling your images faster. The wider you expand Aperture's interface, the more buttons will show up.

Optimizing a website to be found by search engines is one of the most important things that can be done for a website. These days when someone wants to find something on the Internet most of the time they will use a search engine such as Google, or Yahoo. From there, they will type in several key words that describe what they are looking for. If your website isn't one of the sites that comes up on the first page of the search most of the time you are out of luck, because most people don't go past the first page or two of search results.

There are a couple of things that can be done to help your site be found. If you have some money, you can pay to be a "sponsored link", or pay per click (PPC) link. For instance if you search basketball shoes in Google the first few links that come up are sponsored links meaning that those websites will pay money to Google whenever they are clicked on. The downside to these sponsored links is that people are becoming more and more Internet savvy, some people skip past the sponsored links looking for the more "organic search results".

The alternative to paying for sponsored links is of course being that organic search result, meaning that you truly have the best relevance according to what the search parameters are. This method is cheaper monetarily, but much more time consuming, it can be a full time job to keep a website near the top of a search list. This method involves understanding how search engines work and modifying the content and HTML code of your website so that your website will come up near the top of a search. This process involves a lot of work, from thinking of all the possible keywords that your website might be under, all the way to knowing where to put those words in the code and content of your site. But, if your site is one of the top organic search results all the work will be worth it.

In doing all of this, you must be careful not to stuff your site with "keywords" (keyword stuffing) that may not be relevant to the topic of your website, or spamdexing. Search engines put a lot of effort into finding sites that abuse the system in this way, and will remove them from all searches. If you aren't in the search engine at all, you will never be found, so don't cheat!

Saya sih pengen banget membagi copy ebook ini kepada anda semua, walaupun terang-terangan melanggar hak cipta, karena ebook itu bukan gratisan dari sono nya.

Tapi sayang, saya tidak bisa upload ebooknya di wordpress.com, jadi saya akan cari jalan lain supaya anda bisa mendapatkan ebook tersebut.

Saya baru membaca sedikit, dan mohon maaf, ebooknya asli dalam bahasa inggris. Jadi buat anda yang alergi bahasa inggris, lebih baik cari kesibukan lain deh, daripada mati-matian jadi internet marketer.

Kemarin ada yang chat sm saya, dan tiba-tiba bertanya, kenapa FAQ di www.JualVCC.com ditulis dalam bahasa inggris. Saya bilang, tidak ada yang salah, seharusnya dia yang belajar bahasa inggris supaya bisa membaca FAQ tersebut. Eh.. orang itu malahan marah2 dan log out dari YM saya hehehe...

Tanya kenapa? Pasti anda sudah tahu jawabannya.. Internet memang untuk orang pintar.. bukan orang yang setengah pintar, atau orang yang ternyata bodoh..

Asal jangan minum tolak angin.. hahaha

Dari hasil membaca bagian pertama ebook itu, saya sudah dibangunkan oleh sebuah vision, bahwa adsense itu sebenarnya sangat mudah. Tapi diperlukan kecerdikan, kecerdasan dan ketelitian. Tidak perlu kerja keras untuk bisa menghasilkan banyak uang hanya dari google adsense.

Asalkan kita tahu kuncinya.. Mau tahu? Ini dia 3 point yang harus anda perhatikan dalam menjalankan google adsense:

Ternyata untuk bisa sukses di google adsense, dasarnya adalah keywords, content dan traffic.

Keyword = kata kunci

Content = isi

Traffic = jumlah pengunjung

Dari keyword inilah google akan menampilkan adsense di blog atau website kita secara tepat. Content juga harus mengandung keywords, sehingga ada relevansi atau hubungan yang baik antara keduanya. Kemudian, content nya juga harus menarik, sehingga tercipta traffic atau arus pengunjung yang ramai.

Fungsi dari traffic ini adalah untuk menjaring "klik" adsense dari pengunjung.

Jadi kalau kita sudah bisa menempatkan ketiga posisi tersebut dengan baik, tidak lama lagi hasil kerja anda akan segera muncul.

Jangan heran jika dalam sebulan anda bisa menghasilkan $300 dari adsense. Bahkan jika anda sudah mahir, bisa jadi $200 dalam sehari bisa anda dapatkan.

Tentu saja, anda harus juga menjadi ahlinya dalam mengulas sebuah ide dalam artikel anda. Orisinalitas tulisan sangat berpengaruh terhadap bisnis anda. Tulisan orisinal, tentu akan menggunakan elemen keywords dalam content yang tepat.

Semakin tulisan anda enak dibaca, dan mengandung keywords yang bertautan dengan adsense anda, maka klik iklan adsense anda bisa dipastikan terus meningkat, dan ini artinya UANG!

Satu lagi, anda harus selalu siap dengan SEO, sehingga pengunjung bisa menemukan blog anda lewat search engine, terutama google.

Anda tertarik untuk mendapatkan copy ebook ini? Silakan email ke saya di iklan369@gmail.com

Salam sukses untuk bisnis adsense anda.

"If you are selling your home, selling your house or selling your residence in the tri-county area you should contact the tri-county home/house/residence selling experts who have been selling homes, houses and residences in the tri-county for over 30 years!"

Believe it or not, I made that up. Sadly, it's exagerrated only a little bit. Keyword-packing bugs me, mostly because it's done by people who don't believe they need to hire a professional copywriter. Just repeat a bunch of keywords over and over and, whammo! Optimization. (It bugs me that they say whammo!, too.)

As I ask elsewhere on this site, shouldn't your web copy also speak to the portion of your audience who aren't search engines? So, for an SEO article, this means writing in English, as organic as I can make it, while still keeping the keywords in mind. When the draft is finished I go back and try to graft in more keywords wherever it makes sense. When I feel like I have reached a logical limit, or maybe just a little beyond that number, I quit. What's interesting is that this intuitive measurement is typically right in line with whatever keyword percentage-count the experts are recommending. The beauty is that you can actually go beyond that 5 or 8 or 10 per cent limit as long as it's organic.

So here's a recent example of that: a blog article I did for a ______ company located in _____ that promises to save you ____ on your _____ bills!  Fill in the blanks!

Answers in next month's issue of Highlights, available in doctor's waiting rooms nationwide.

Quando criamos um sistema usando Rails, alguns pontos podem passar desapercebidos, devido as convenções usadas pelo framework. Pretendo iniciar uma série de posts mostrando como fazer SEO em aplicações Rails, mostrando alguns métodos e plugins que podem facilitar o nosso trabalho.

Técnicas de SEO

Para ter uma introdução sobre o que significa SEO e como são classificadas essas práticas, principalmente pelos mecanismos de busca, eu recomendo a leitura do artigo White, Gray e Black Hats. Neste post do tableless, Diego Eis mostra exemplos de técnicas White Hat, que são as recomendadas pelos buscadores, as técnicas Gray Hat, que se utilizadas se forma abusiva são consideradas anti-éticas, e ainda das Black Hat, essas sim tomadas como forma de enganar o ranking, e que quando descobertas são punidas com a remoção do site infrator.

As boas práticas recomendadas (White Hat) podem ser resumidas em: criar bom conteúdo e criar links internos. Para os buscadores, um bom conteúdo é um conteúdo relevante, ou seja, um conteúdo que por sua qualidade está sendo linkado por editores de outros sites. Além da qualidade, atualmente os buscadores verificam se esse conteúdo está formatado adequadamente, fazendo uso correto de meta-tags e estrturado de acordo com as definições da W3C. O Google, por exemplo, classifica melhor páginas bem formadas, com tags semanticamente corretas e uma boa hierarquia de títulos. Uma boa dica é sempre utilizar a ferramenta validação de HTML e CSS da W3C e ainda as ferramentas para webmasters disponibilizadas pelo próprio Google, que verificam diversos aspectos que alteram a indexação.

Títulos e Meta-Tags

Quem já teve um site indexado sabe da importância dada à tag com o título da página (<title>) e as chamadas meta-tags, com a descrição (<description>) e as palavras chaves (<keywords>), que vão no cabeçalho do HTML. Por isso, é importante que cada página da sua aplicação tenha conteúdos distintos nestas tags, algo que se encaixe com o conteúdo apresentado. Para facilitar esse trabalho, vou apresentar o plugin para Rails chamado meta-tags.

Se você tem o GIT instalado, vá até a pasta da sua aplicação e execute:

$ script/plugin install git://github.com/kpumuk/meta-tags.git

Feito isso, você já pode organizar melhor o conteúdo de suas meta-tags. Vejamos como utilizar o plugin em uma aplicação Rails, que para fins de exemplo, chamarei de "Locadora".

No layout da aplicação (normalmente em app/views/layouts/application.html.erb), use o helper display_meta_tags, da seguinte maneira:

[sourcecode language="html"]
  

    < %= display_meta_tags :site => 'Locadora' %>

  
[/sourcecode]

Este método é responsável por inserir as tags e title, description e keywords no HTML. Depois, podemos configurar valores como o título da página para cada view, usando a seguinte chamada:

[sourcecode language="html"]
  

< %= title 'Locações pendentes' %>

[/sourcecode]

Fazendo isso por exemplo, quando a página acima for mostrada, sua tag title será configurada de acordo com o conteúdo, no formato abaixo:

[sourcecode language="html"]
  

    

Locações pendentes

  
[/sourcecode]

[sourcecode language="ruby"]
@page_title = 'Locações pendentes'
@page_description = 'Lista de locações que ainda não foram devolvidas.'
@page_keywords = 'Locadora, Locações, Pendentes'
[/sourcecode]

Ou ainda, usando o método set_meta_tags:

[sourcecode language="ruby"]
set_meta_tags :title => 'Locações pendentes',
:description => 'Lista de locações que ainda não foram devolvidas.',
:keywords => 'Locadora, Locações, Pendentes'
[/sourcecode]

Caso você queira, pode ainda usar opções extras para personalizar seus títulos:

:prefix - Para não mostrar o nome do site antes por exemplo, ou mostrar outro conteúdo

Ex.: <%= title 'Locações pendentes', :prefix => false %> #--> <title>Locações pendentes</title>

:separator - Texto usado para separar o nome do site do nome da página.

Ex.: <%= title 'Locações pendentes', :separator => ":" %> #--> <title>Locadora : Locações pendentes</title>

:reverse - Quando verdadeiro, inverte a posição no nome do site e o nome da página.

Ex.: <%= title 'Locações pendentes', :reverse => true %> #--> <title>Locações pendentes | Locadora</title>

Outras opções e formas de uso são melhor detalhadas no arquivo README.rdoc, que se encontra na pasta do plugin.

O plugin meta-tags facilita o gerenciamento do conteúdo de tags que são de suma importância para ter um website bem posicionado. Conteúdo esse que fica mais difícil de individualizar para cada view a medida que a aplicação cresce. Uma boa prática para o uso deste plugin é setar valores padrão das tags no controller da aplicação (application.rb) e depois customizar o conteúdo nas views.

Nos próximos posts desta série, teremos mais dicas de plugins para melhorar o SEO das suas aplicações Rails. Aguardem...

Leia mais sobre SEO:

• Página sobre SEO no Tableless
• Marketing de Busca

Looking for patterns using Google Analytics

1. Right now I'm using the blog URL convention (date) to isolate Information for posts that were posted during the selected duration.E.g. looking at the traffic during September 08 contributed by posts that were only posted during that same month. Today Google Analytics shows traffic for all the posts on this blog for the selected duration and it requires some work to isolate the new posts from the old one in order to see how they contribute to the selected duration traffic. Why is this important? Pattern # 1 progress - does your content gets better? Maybe the traffic is all based on old success. The inverse - same as #1 but for old post s- i.e. show me the traffic for the past month excluding posts posted in the last month. It would be great if Google Analytics can do that for you.
2. I use spreadsheet to separate traffic for "generic" pages only- i.e. the home page, RSS button, page number etc... Why is this important? Each item on the blog other than blog posts has different importance and objective behind it so isolating these can help to fine tune each individually. It is also good to know if people are finding the root folder (i.e. your home page) maybe using bookmarks or blogrolls.  Pattern #2 - are you building a great brand name? The inverse is interesting too -  exclude "generic" pages from the report and allow focusing on blog's posts impact only. It would be great if Google Analytics can do that for you.
3. Support for blogs with multiple authorsor blog with many guest bloggers (not blog network). It will be a great help if you could see who is the blogger, in Google Analytics, next to the blog post traffic info. This could be automated (using a certain standardized way telling Google who wrote this post). Why is this important? Pattern #3 - finding the best bloggers on the team and learning from them.It could be the content, the style, the keywords, the community that these bloggers are building. I'm sure that this is useful in blog network too, yet over there it is easier to isolate bloggers traffic because each has his own domain name.
4. Daily traffic - hourly - higher granularity. Currently if you want to see daily traffic you have to change the date to today. There is no way to see hourly traffic. I wish there was a separate page for daily traffic and the resolution is in hours. Why is this important? Pattern # 4 - timing the post - if you noticed that your recent post is just great, you may want to leave it a little longer on the top of the blog. You may find that one social media site like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Twitter, FriendFeed and more works better during different hours. It could also help learning when not to post (hint: 5pm eastern time during the work week:)).
5. Pattern #5 - lost opportunities or finding hidden gems - Finding your best historical stuff (not traffic based) from the time that you were less known as a great blogger or with smaller supportive community around you - looking for pages with the highest Time on Page and the smallest Bounce Rate yet low traffic. Just be careful, not to judge too soon. If there was not a lot of traffic the Time On Page number may be high - Google average it, so too small of traffic may keep this number high. Once you find a post that match this pattern try stumbling it.
6. Page view per visit- Google provide this number and you can track it over time. It shows if users stay longer on your web site reading more blog posts or leave quickly to find other more interesting blogs out there. It is important to build links between relevant blog posts on your blog (not excessively though).  For blogs with multiple authors this is a real challenge. How other bloggers can see what to link to? This is when categories helps. If the team has visibility to exiting blog posts in each category, then they can think about how their post should be categorized, and then look for relevant blog posts to link to. Google Analytics can help here too, if it has access to the categorization information then it could show the success of one category over the other. If not then it would be great to annotate blog posts row's with more info (having custom properties) . Pattern #6 - content type (category) success.It is also important showing blog's recent and best posts on the sidebar, so the users can easily find them. The blog performance is another factor! People will not hang around slow web-site.
7. Keywords- there is a ton of data out there about this subject so I may repeat other's finding. My first finding is that people love the word "list". People love list but they really like this word in the title more than "best" (I think that Google hate this word). I could not resist using the word "list" for this post title:) People like to see the benefit (value) from reading your blog post more than artistic titles, so "hot to" is a great start for a title. Speaking about titles it is important to think about them for the long run too.If you write about a company or product put the name in the title. Why? So, if someone will be looking for this company few month from now, using any search engine, there is a chance to find your blog. Simple, yet I do see the opposite happening even till this day. You'll see the difference using Google Analytics very quickly. Some SEO experts tells you to optimize titles for the short run and then to modify them for the long run (beware from changing the permalinks) and Google Analytics can help telling you when is the right time to modify the title but I'm not sure if it will truly helps. I don't think that Google come back to re-crawl this content. Pattern # 7 - keywords timing and tuning.By the way, blogs with multiple authors or blog networks that are providing training and guidelines can bring new bloggers up to speed quickly and avoid such simple mistakes. 
8. US vs. the rest of the world - Google Analytics provides regional segmentation's. You can see where your audience is coming from and how fast that region grows. So you can use this information to keep them engaged. For instance European use Jaikumore than Twitter so post updates from your blog over there and build community on Jaiku if this is your target audience. This is true for other social networks too (e.g. Facebook is very weak in Japan). Write content about local products, news and companies relative to the regional success - pattern # 8.
9. The right traffic source allocation and effort.Google Analytics dissect traffic into three categories: Direct Traffic, Referring sites, and Search Engines.As a blogger most of your impact is in the Referring web sites category. Especially in the beginning. This is where your work, building readers community is the key to your success. Again, Google Analytics shows you where your traffic is coming from and where it lands (landing pages). For blog with multiple authors (or for blogs network) it would be great to see the contribution by author, to reward the ones that expend their readership in this way. pattern #9 - are bloggers on the team growing their community? The Traffic Source percentage allocation can also tell you where you should invest your effort. It is different from case to case though e.g. if your blog talk about products (and sell them or use advertise on your blog for selling them) then SEO using the right keywords is the most important activity and the traffic source allocation should reflect that. For most other cases you should divide your time something like 30% reading other blogs or experimenting with tools, product, services, projects, 30% writing content and devote 30% of your time for community building. I really like to hear some feedback about this suggested allocation.
10. mmmmnm, do I have to come up with the tenth? ...OK, Pattern # 10 - what activities are helping you to find new readers?Google Analytics shows you two visitors types - new and returning. Look for what is it that you are doing bringing new users to the site. StumbleUpon is a great option. You can try tagging your blog using different tags. There are numerous places to tag these days: Wordpress, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Delicious to name a few. Check hashtags.orgfor most popular and recently added hashtags. You can Digg posts under different categories (business vs. technology). You can use TwitterPack and Twellow for finding people from different categories and sub-categories to follow, so they can follow you back, then build new relationships. You can comment on blogs from different categories (using Technorati and recently the revised Google Blog Search). You can use backtypeto see where bloggers leave comments and follow their actions. Keep checking Google Analytics to see what works and how the new visitors vs. returning, percentage changes.

There are more capabilities in Google Analytics than described in here; like finding broken links, specific browser and OS optimizations and exit pages to name a few. I have a lot more to learn but I think that what's in here are some of the more interesting patterns that you could discover using Google Analytics in the first few weeks using it.

Small disclosure: I work for a company that sells web analytics product but I don't work with that team and I know very little about it.

Tip: The catalog will try to confuse you, but with a few tricks, you can get the upper hand.

__________________________________________________________________

If you keep getting no results for your search:

• Try making it simpler by taking words away. For example: If the search string ARTHRITIS EXERCISE PROGRAMS doesn't bring up anything, just search for ARTHRITIS and sort through the results to find books that include exercise.
• Mix things up and enter your search a different way. For example, try putting the author’s last name first--or just skip the author’s first name completely; you usually don’t need it.
• Use the asterisk key * to search variations on your word. For example, searching BOOK* will bring up the words “book,” “books,” “bookmobiles,” etc. This is called truncation. Use it often, because sometimes you don’t know how the system has listed your topic, and this increases your chances of finding something.
• Don’t try to spell out long titles! Strong Women and Men Beat Arthritis : The Scientifically Proven Program that Allows People with Arthritis to Take Charge of their Disease is too long. Just type some key words: STRONG WOMEN ARTHRITIS. Or if that doesn’t work, type the first few words in order: STRONG WOMEN AND MEN.

If you find too much, or if the results are organized in a confusing way:

• Click on the browse button and do a search on author, title, or subject from that screen. The results will come up in a list that is similar to entries in the old card catalog. Please resist the temptation to put in too many words; a single word is usually all you need.

General tip:

• Don't worry about capitalization; it doesn't care. And most punctuation doesn't matter, either.

If you want to understand the weird logic of the catalog, call us at Reference and we'll tell you what we know. Or just keep experimenting, and the patterns might become clearer. Even if they don't, you can increase your chances of success by trying the tips above. And trust your hunches; if the catalog says we have nothing by William Shakespeare and you suspect it's lying, you're right! Ask a library staffer to try the search; with two against the catalog, we're more likely to prevail.

Also, the catalog can do some really cool things, but I'll save those for another post.

· T

You could have the coolest website in the world but if it's not designed so the spiders can index it properly chances are not many people will know about it.  You can optimize a website once it's been designed but it's so much easier to do that during the build process.

When creating the text for each page make sure the meta tags have the top 5-10 keywords from that specific page repeated in them.  Your title tag should have 70-90 characters (including spaces), your keyword tag should have no more than 20-25 keywords (separated by commas) and your description tag should have no more than 250 characters (including spaces). 

I've seen a lot of dealers who tend to put their competitors names in their keywords.  In order for that to be effective you have to repeat those names in the text on the page, which of course you don't want to do.  You'll have more success when you concentrate on your state, major cities, models, manufacturers and types.

Remember, the top 5-10 keywords or phrases should be repeated several times in the text of the page for the optimum density.

" Automatically add tags to posts which contain words that match words in a 'tag list' "

• Use a predefined tag list to autotag a post (without tags) while saving/publishing.
• (optional) Hook into Autotagger via the action 'tag_posts' and use the predefined tag list to tag all posts (without tags) in the blog's database. This is useful to set up on a schedule if posts are regularly made without tags (eg. a script that adds posts directly to the database bypassing the WordPress API). You could also use this if you added more tags to your tag list and you wanted to re-tag all old posts (after deleting current tags).

Download

Download: Autotagger 1.1

Installation

1. Unzip 'autotagger.1.1.zip' and upload the 'autotagger' folder to the '/wp-content/plugins/' directory.
2. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.

Configuration

1. Go to the 'Settings' menu and click on 'Autotagger', and add your desired tag list.

History

• Sept. 1, 2008 - ver. 1.0 : Released.
• Oct. 2, 2008 - ver. 1.1 : Added option to include/exclude Pages from autotagging.

Screenshot

The hardest part, as always, is the start, the first step.  It is very important to come up with a good thesis statement that is why it is so hard.  But after you’ve done this, the writing of the article itself is not that difficult.  Because by thesis statement, you’ve already structured your essay.  You just need to explain your arguments.

The next difficult step is to find articles which would support your opinion and choose quotes from them in order to make in-text citations.  That’s because you need to look through so many articles, decide what words to use and how to put everything together.

Also, the conclusion part is very important, so you need to spend time on it.  In order to make the final sentences sound convincing.

I like writing and compositions, but here we need to write academic writing.  So we must look up for academic articles from research databases; sometimes it tends to be problem with keywords.  Then if you find them, you need to read all of them.  You face new words or terms that you’ve never seen or heard before and need to work on them.

And other details like “in-text citations” and APA style, etc.

Anyway, I learn, practice and do my best.

APA style, because for small mistakes you lose points ;-(  APA style is very difficult!

To find article, because we sometimes use wrong keywords.  To begin writing essay, I always have this problem because sometimes it is difficult to write thesis statement without Thesis Statement Builder.

It was somehow difficult to understand how to write essay (where to put in-text citations, how to put them)  Also, I was confused when dealing with discursive essay before you sent an e-mail with an example.  All in all, the difficulties were with organizing the paper.  But now I think I get it!

First, finding articles.  It takes a lot of time to find a proper article with information you need, you are looking for.

Second, reading and combining the information.  You have to work a lot to understand those articles, make an outline and combining the information.  You have to change the author’s words by using synonyms.  Sometimes difficult to find articles that support your ideas.

But in general, if you have time, and you know how to organize the essay, it is not so difficult to write it.

The thesis statement is the most difficult part.  But using the “Thesis Statement Builder” it is much better and easier.  Sometimes there are topics like “smoking” or “using computers” which have more cons than pros.

Sometimes it’s very difficult to find the appropriate article…sometimes the articles are too long and there are other graphs and tables which confuse the reader.  But on the whole, it’s not so difficult.  The most important is to know what you are writing about and to clarify all pros and cons to make your essay clear and easy to understand.

From the research sites like Ebscohost, we can find a lot of different types of information with different size and volume.  So, sometimes when we want exact information for our topic, I feel confused because most of the articles go in the wrong way. (i.e. you start looking at articles for early human development but the research site gives you so many articles that at the end you choice one of them.  But this article will be about today’s techno world affect on a person’s life!  Where is the word for “early human development?”

The most difficult part for me is that we have too much assignments for such a short time.  Doing this type of assignments really takes a lot of time, I mean: searching for an article, finding which you really like, writing review.  It would be much easier if we had more time to do this.

Also, I think that it would be much better if we had an opportunity to choose topics ourselves, I know that is almost impossible, but still it will involve students, because they will choose what they are interested in.  Or maybe it is possible to give us a list of topics, so we can choose one of them.

Below are what you need to do:

1. Determine your blog's primary focus.

One that you should know before you do anything else is that Google AdSense ads are most effective when they are served to people who are interested in the products and services those ads offer. This means you needto clearly define who your real targets are. This can also be refered to as a niche. With that in mind, Google AdSense tends to work best on blogs that are about niche topics such as a specific product or hobby. Consider how you can make your blog's topic more focused to better attract specific types of readers and specific types of ads.

2. Write consistent and focused content.

Google serves ads based on the content on each of your pages. The more focused your content is on each page, the better Google can determine which ads are the most relevant to your readers. Write consistently and stay focused on a specific topic to increase the likelihood that Google will display ads on your blog that your readers are apt to click on.

3. Work to increase your blog's traffic.

The more visitors to your blog, the more potential for clicks on your Google AdSense ads. Work to increase your blog's traffic to boost your chances for ad click-throughs. However, keep in mind that if you write focused content, the ads on your blog will be relevant to that content. The traffic that comes to your blog needs to be interested in your blog's topic and your content, or they are not likely to be interested in your corresponding Google AdSense ads. Work to drive traffic but make a concerted effort to find traffic that adds value to your blog.

4. Research and test keywords.

Google serves ads through its AdSense program based on keywords. Advertisers bid on keywords relevant to their businesses. Some keywords are more popular than others and therefore, drive higher bids. Higher paying keywords also mean higher payouts to you when your readers click on them. The ads served on your site are determined by the content on your site. If you're writing about topics related to higher paying keywords, then you're likely to earn more money from your Google AdSense program than if you wrote about topics related to lower paying keywords.

5. Test Google AdSense ad positions on your blog.

You can display Google AdSense ads just about anywhere on your blog. Test a variety of positions on your blog to determine which work best for you in terms of generating click-throughs and maximum revenue.

Tips:

1. Check with your blogging softare provider and blog host to ensure your blogging package allows you to place Google AdSense ads on your blog. For example, wordpress.com does not allow Google AdSense ads.

2. Don't fall victim to the allure of covering your blog in ads to generate income. Blogs that are cluttered with ads are difficult to read, and readers typically don't return to blogs where the meaningful content is hidden in between ads.

3. Track your results to see what's working, particularly as you test keywords and ad positions. This will allow you to develop the best advertising mix to maximize your blog's income while staying consistent to your blog's brand image and overall message to readers at the same time.

Again, joining community boards and social networks are easy ways to help improve your brand exposure.  These activities will gradually make people recognize your brand.  Branding is a lot more complicated, but I hope that this short post helped you understand the concept and it’s relationship with search engine optimization better.

I got this website to be indexed and top the google in just 2 days due to a very clever scheme, THE META TAGS. I am sure, most of you are aware of its use, but not many are aware of its CORRECT usage. I am using Flash as my primary content, and that means, that indexing such a website by a spider is almost impossible. That is why I use a very clever scheme to keep my Meta tags and my content indexable.

The website is for a school forum. I conveniently added it to all search engines by using my many online tools that allow you to. Afterwards it was a simple game of meta tags. I used the Keyword, Description, Author, Robots, Copyright and distribution (almost all) tags in this website, and it proved quite helpful, as the search engine can read not only my created page, but also benefit my company 'Xyber 3D Studios', by indexing it as a Keyword. After adding the relavent keywords, the next step was crucial i.e. The title and content relavency to the meta tags should be optimum! That was pretty simple as well. I just wrote a simple note for NON-Flash users in HTML below and above the Flash content, and used KEYWORDS of my meta tags in the actual note. This means that my content was complimenting my keywords, 100% relavency!

Next thing I did was created a Facebook Promotion Page for the Website. I created Link Backs from this page to my website. Facebook is already PR 9, and it is one site, that may always have that kind of pagerank. Therefore it is one the most reliable sources of FREE LINK EXCHANGE! I tried to add the site to DMOZ and Yahoo, but I'm still awaiting a reply of confirmation, so no use to me.

Then after 2 days I waited for the magic. I typed 'Bahria College Karachi' in Google and Wola! My site was first to be shown. I agree that due to the lack of new content, the site decreased to No. 6, but that was another story. My primary objective was achieved! My TEMPORARY WEBSITE is doing marvels, imagine what my actual website would do. And I plan to make it all Flash as well, not because I love flash, but thats the only thing I know :).

Correct way of Adding Meta Tags.

<META name="Robots" content=" index,follow">
<meta name="distribution" content=" global" />
<meta name="copyright" content=" Your Name Here" />
<meta name="keywords" content=" Keyword 1, Keyword 2," />
<meta name="description" content=" 25 - 30 Character Description would suffice" />
<META name="Author" content=" Your Name here">

The above tags are given in their correct usage format. Note the spaces used, and use them in the same to avoid errors on your page.

For Flash Users. The W3C compliant Code presently is.

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="c.swf?path=movie.swf"  width="400" height="300">
<param name="movie" value="c.swf?path=movie.swf" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
</object>

Good Day to you all.

Once you start getting sales, you can always ask your past customers about how they found you in the first place, why they chose you, and what issues were important to them in choosing you.  Take the time to talk to them.  This will help you acquire more potential customers by referrals from your past customers.  At Cataweb Online, we make it a point to update our social network from time to time so that our customers are well-informed about changes and new products.

You can also get keyword ideas by checking your web analytics or server logs, looking at some competitor’s pages, and going through forums and community boards to see what issues most people discuss.

These are just some tips to help you on your way to becoming an established player in your chosen industry.  Hope this post helps!  You might want to check out some more tips and guides here.  Just click the link and learn more!

So the first thing you should do is use a very important online SEO tool, which you can find from various sites, and this is the keyword tool.  I personally use the Good Keywords software, which is freeware and is only around 500kb in size.  Installing it gives you a tool to check up on generic keywords you're interested in and gives suggestions on other good keywords derived from your original choice.  So if we take your "weight loss" keyword and enter it, what will come out is a list of terms related to it.

In terms of ranking, "weight loss" comes out on top of course, and in our example, it got 1,413,194 searches for the month, based on the Overture engine, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2003.  That's a lot of searches, and if you want to cross check the results using even just the Google search engine, you'll see that almost 20,000,000 pages come out for the term "weight loss".  Those are the pages you'll be competing against, so it's best to scroll down the list of keyword options.

Go for more specific terms, like "weight loss story" or "weight loss picture", which at the time we checked ths out, ranked somewhere in the middle of the Top 100 related keywords for "weight loss", with maybe 3,000+ searches a day.  Choose your 3 to 4 key phrases from those suggestions and those are the ones you will be using as keywords for your site.  With a lower ranking than the top generic keyword, it should be easier to overtake the top site for those keywords, instead of clawing your way up a list of 20,000,000 entries!  At least that's what we at Cataweb Online S.L. recommend.

Search engines rank your pages by how many links go to your pages from other sites that are highly ranked.  So check what sites are already established in your chosen industry – those sites that come up on top of search returns – and then ask those sites to link to you.  You can also buy listings in online industry directories that already place well in search engines.

You also place your keywords first in your title tags and meta tags so they won’t get cut off if the tag is too long to appear in its entirety.  Also include common misspellings of your keyword phrases in your meta tags so users will still find your site even if they misspell the keywords.

Lastly, list your keywords only in the keywords meta tag and never include keywords not related to your page’s content.  Otherwise, you might get banned from search engines because of spamming.

Well, I hope these few basic steps help get you and your webpage up and running.  Click on these links to view or join our social network and business profile – LinkedIN and Ning.com.

The broadening financial crisis is triggering worries about software sales at bellwether Microsoft, but analysts remain bullish on search advertising.

Paid search spending should grow 26 percent this year and follow that performance with a respectable 2009, says Forrester Research's JupiterResearch.

In a report issued last week, Forrester analysts said the $11.4 billion market should grow another 20 percent next year and 13 percent each year through 2013.

More advertisers are competing for the same keywords, driving up costs. That in turn is leading to a rise in costs per click, from an average of 60 cents in 2008 to 82 cents in 2013.

The study suggests advertisers might do well to focus more resources on optimizing their sites for organic (unpaid) search results. "The slowing of the U.S. economy and shifting of resources to (search engine optimization) as a way to fight keyword inflation could reduce the growth that paid searching marketing has enjoyed in previous years," the report said.

So which keywords should you target.

Usually your first instincts are to go with keywords that bring the highest amount of traffic, right? Because the more traffic you bring to your site, the more money you make. Well that might be true for some sites, (websites making most of their money off Adwords for example), but if you are selling something from your website this is usually not the case.

You are looking to target keywords that your soon to be customer is typing in when they are looking to buy something.

The first stage of our buying cycle is discovering the product. It can be from advertising, a TV advert, newpaper, practically anything can trigger the need, the want to buy something. Then we hop online and do our research.

The internet has so much information that we are spoilt for choice. You can compare prices of say a camera on 10 different websites in 5 mins as opposed to the offline method of browsing the mall for example. This is the second stage, the research phase. Now this might be (if you have a great deal) a good place to try and catch the buyer.

So for example: lets say we see an advert for digital cameras and we want one. We hop online and do the research. We would probably start with a generic term like "digital camera" or "cheap digital camera". As you dive further into your research you will find the EXACT camera that you want, for eg. "Sony Cybershot DSCW120/B". This is where you want to get your traffic from.The third and most important stage:

Buying phase. Now the person has done all their research and is ready to buy there brand new digital camera, they type it into a search engine and who comes up? You do, because you have researched your keywords properly and are waiting there to sell them the camera.

Remember, they keywords that bring you the most traffic are by no means the ones that will bring you the most money. If you liked this article and are interested in human behaviour and marketing check out Seth Godins blog. He is the master of these things!