In addition to the usual search Google offers its users several services that can be useful for different purposes. Currently more than 70 services are available. Most of these services are web-based applications for which you need only a browser. Some services require you to install various plugins to ensure correct operation. All the Google tools are free. User-friendly interface of these tools is understandable even for the beginner. Most of the tools are oriented to Google webmasters, marketers and developers who want to promote their sites or products. Google tools will make the promotion process much easier and faster, which in turn will make a profit in a shorter period of time. Although these applications have free access developers tried to make their functional as effective as possible.

1. Google Analytics

This web service can be considered as one of the greatest Google tools. In Google Analytics you will find daily statistics of your site visits. This service allows you to know where your site receives the greatest traffic, which pages are more popular with visitors.

2. Google AdSense

Google allows its users to make money online using the web service Google AdSense. After placing a special code on your site pages Google will put ads there which logically correspond to the content of the site or specific pages.

3. Google AdWords

This service provides the ability to create effective advertising messages. Google AdWords is among the five best products of Google and it is one of the sources of income for many companies.

4. Google Ad Planner

This tool provides valuable information to a webmaster about his own websites, sites of competitors, traffic volumes, visitor’s preferences and other kind of information.

5. Google Website Optimizer

This tool allows you to optimize your website. With Website Optimizer you can identify which content on the site is the most interesting for the visitors.

6. Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools can provide information on how the search engine sees your site or some of its web pages. This tool provides important information using which a developer can improve ranking and website traffic.

7. Google Toolbar

Tool Google Toolbar is built-in into your browser, after installation you can find information about the value of web pages. This tool will be useful for SEO-optimizers or website owners.

8. Google Related Links

A useful tool for SEO optimization allows keeping visitors on the site, reducing the number of failures and thus increasing page views.

9. Google Trends

Google Trends provides information on how often keywords or phrases are requested in Google, as well as how popular these or other topics are in different geographical regions.

10. Google Search-based Keyword Tool

This service will be useful for SEO optimizers to search and generate keywords based on the most popular search requests.

11. Google+

Google has created a new social network for its users. In this network you can chat with your friends, share links and photographs. Google+ makes it possible to communicate not only in usual chat, but also in video chat, that is a significant difference from other social networks. Google+  working for business.

12. Google Blogger

Today almost every company has its own blog that helps to attract more visitors and enhance the overall profits.

13. Google Checkout

Checkout service is an analog of the payment system, which can be used to implement a web purchase. This service charges a fee for use as opposed to others.

14. Google Froogle

If you need to find a description of a product, Google Froogle tool will help you. This service is most valuable for marketers to set prices.

15. Google Places

Web application Google Places allows you to attract Google users. This service provides the most comprehensive information on companies including description, photos and a link to the website. By using this service information about your company can often appear in search results, accordingly increasing the number of views.

16. Google Zeitgeist

Google Zeitgeist allows you to find the most popular search requests. In addition Zeitgeist can become a generator of ideas for creation of new content.

17. Google Custom Search

Create an individual search engine for your website based on Google technology. Specifying one or several Web sites, add the application to your site along with the search box and search results. You can also change the application interface.

In this way these services are most useful for webmasters and for site owners. These web applications will simplify your work and save time and money by making your business more successful and productive on the Internet.

Special Niche directories or resource pages

Go deeper into your niche or the topic you blog about. Is there a way you can shore up resources for your readers to benefit from? If you blog on personal finance for Americans (as an example), you can create resources pages under various categories and sub-categories.

For example, for the personal finance blog or website example:

• Stocks
  • Stock Brokers
  • Latest on Stock Indices and stock prices
  • Tutorials and advice on stock picking and investing
• Real Estate
  • 75 Leading Real estate Websites in the U.S
  • List of leading Realtors
  • Best Real Estate Portals
• Taxation
  • News, Trends, and Latest Information on Taxation in U.S
  • Resources to know everything about U.S Taxation Basics

Make Khan Academy an inspiration; it’s popular for a reason. Go ahead and develop niche directories and special resource pages for every conceivable category and sub-category you possibly can. In effect, you are almost creating web directories of sorts within your own pages.

Info graphics & Slide Decks

Infographics are hot these days for the simple reason that data is more digestible when presented visually. They are all the rage today and all that you need to do to start with infographics is to visual data flow, research and collect data, and create infographics. For creating infographics, you have options:

• Hire specialist designers who can design these infographics for you.
• Use special tools such as Piktochart, Easel.ly, and Infogr.am to start creating your own infographics without any professional help.

Alternatively, you can also use the same assets you use for infographics (data sets, graphic elements, etc.) to create slide decks that you can publish on your own blog or on Slideshare and other such public domain websites.

Interviews

Interviews are popular because they aren’t bland, and because interviews are perhaps are closest you can get to a story. Your source (the person you are interviewing) is another human who has a story to share.

Your interviewing fleshes out the story during the course of the Interview itself. In effect, the story is a personal, authentic account of the person’s life and about his take on the subject that the interview is about.

For instance, if you are interviewing a blogger or an entrepreneur, the content (produced as a part of the conversation with your subject) is unique, personal, and inspiring already.

You don’t have to be a journalist or a professional media person to take interviews. John Bardos of Jetsetcitizen.com interviews other location independent professionals and that makes up for 80% of his content on the blog.

Did we mention that you automatically get linked to and develop a powerful network of close associates and friends, thanks to your interviews?

Podcasts

Did you ever tune into podcasts like EntrepreneurOnFire.com or Mixergy.com? How about learning the best of startup insights from Seth Godin, a popular author and a prolific blogger?

Podcasts aren’t new. Somehow, they were forgotten for a while until Apple developed an app exclusively for Podcasting and then the rest of the industry followed. Podcasts now get a fresh new lease of life and podcasts now consist of both audio casts and video casts.

Once you create your podcasts, you’d have to aim to publish them as available feeds on iTunes and other sources such as Blogtalkradio.com. Podcasts – once created – are like everything else that must be promoted.

Videos

If you needed just one content type to focus on, choose video and transcripts for these videos, which can substitute for the conspicuous lack of text on your blog. According to Mashable, more than 4 billion videos were viewed on YouTube alone by the end of 2012. TechCrunch reveals that more than 32.1 million U.S households now watch online video through traditional media such as Television.

Videos are huge already and they’ll probably be next only to text as far as reach is concerned. It beats text and any other form of media output where effectiveness, clarify, and engagement factor is concerned.

Webinars

Webinars allow you to enthrall live audiences remotely. Unlike videos, which are recorded and then published, webinars are live and are more interactive. Leading webinar solutions such as Gotowebinar.com and WebEx.com provide you with instant solutions to go live worldwide. If you are looking for ways to use webinars more for training, teaching, and educating your readers/visitors/viewers/subscribers, you also have additional options such as WizIQ, and Udemy.com where you can repurpose your webinars are lessons – more exposure, visitors, and credibility.

Cheat Sheets, Whitepapers, and reports

Everyone likes tricks, cheat sheets, hacks, secret files, special reports, and eBooks. Plan to publish these as a part of your business even before you make your website and leave it to the world to see many people also appreciate exclusive templates for getting things done or for battling any of those repetitive and mundane tasks.

Hubspot regularly publishes an eBook, a free report, or a template of some sort or the other for its readers, subscribers, and email subscribers.

It’s called inbound marketing – the kind of marketing that takes an altruistic approach to marketing so as to make people come to you instead of spending millions of dollars to “go to the customers”.

What can you create for your business? Can you think of productivity hacks, special cheat sheets, timely web reports or e-reports? If you brainstorm enough, you’ll be able to come up with content that makes you an indisputable leader in your niche and amass loyal readers for life.

Social Media Content

Did you ever stop to think if 140 characters on twitter and a few more words on Facebook would ever make an impact? They sure do. Ask Chris Brogan and Kim Garst on Twitter and they’ll swear by their success. One look at Mary Smith’s Facebook Fan Page and you’ll know why she’s called as the Facebook Fan Page Queen. Justin Beiber just overtook Lady Gaga’s insanely large Twitter following, at the time of this writing.

Social media works. It just does.

Social media is the best way to nurture long-term leads, engage with others, build relationships, and invoke trust. If it weren’t for social media, any business – small or large – would have to spend millions of dollars for the level of nurturing and engagement social media provides.

How many of these content types are you actively producing? What works for you and what doesn’t?

Following the major changes by most of this big-head internet companies, it seems that most of their changes, even when they announce are at the best interest of consumers, were created to leverage commercial users more data with which they can better target their adverts. The Consumers Union confirms this and further warns consumers that such approach will only help Google create more detailed and intrusive profile on them.

Should We Avoid Using Google Products?

That’s probably the worst response, and almost impossible to do. If you don’t use Google mail, and you don’t use Google calendar, can you also stay away from the now popular Google+ and their Search product which receives about a billion searches a day? There are Google products that obviously help us in brand marketing. The truth is, at some point you may still meet face to face with one of Google’s products, which stretches across several internet platforms, including a dating site, Orkut. On the other hand, if you run an online business, sell digital products on the make money niche or other communication-hungry niches, run a blog or just conduct any profit-oriented activity on the internet, chances are, you will sure use one of Google’s products someday.

Sounds Good, What Should I Do?

So how do you protect yourself from Google’s hunger for personal data? Don’t get this wrong. Anti-virus and internet protection software will do little to save you from the bots that Google consistently unleash to accomplish their commercial goals. If you are worried about Google’s kingship over your internet activities, here are four things you should do.

• You mustn’t sign in

Google can easily follow you around on the internet when you are signed in on any of their services. So if you want to reduce this, you can choose to sign out before using some of their services like Search or Maps which doesn’t require users to sign in.

• Set your browser to protect you

The latest versions of most of the major browsers now feature a unique secure mode called “stealth mode”, which deletes tracking files from any website you visited and blocks your activities from being recorded in the browser history. If you are using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, this mode is called “InPrivate Browsing,”, on Firefox and Safari, it is called “Private Browsing,” and on Google Chrome, it is called “new incognito window”. Activating this on your browser will help provide you some privacy.

• Make use of Google’s privacy tools

Go through the Google’s privacy tools page and follow their guidelines to make use of the little control they still left in your hands concerning what they know about you, and how they can use this information to treat your online activities.

• Use another account

Most people are not comfortable mixing their professional life with their personal life. And guess what, once you are signed in on Google products to either use their research tools or to build your brand online, there is no way of distinguishing this and everything records on your single profile. So to at least keep your personal records different, you can create a different account for your business activities and then another for your personal life activities; like a G+ page, YouTube channels, etc.

On the other hand, you can alternatively use another company. Google is not the only search provider and if you look well, you may find a couple of other alternatives for other products too. For instance, Yahoo is there for your search and free email services.

However, creating the right mix of branded content is also important to ensure that the right message is delivered. In this article we will be discussing how you can create quality branded content that actually does its job.

#1: Consistently Find New Opportunities

Before you go out there and create top notch content for online branding, you need to first find the right opportunities to do so. In other words, you have to utilize any and every opportunity that will help you in building online buzz through branded content. Because that’s the only way you will be able to keep the momentum going.

For example, if you’re a software company that creates and sells tools for web designers, you will have to find opportunities to spread your branded content that discusses the ins and outs of web designing. Content then works to indirectly promote your tools.

#2: Focus on Being Engaging

If your content isn’t engaging enough, it will not get the needed attention. And if it doesn’t get the attention, it doesn’t spread. The idea behind creating branded content is to ensure that it spreads through word of mouth with social media being the medium.

Now, engaging content here doesn’t mean that you can create any form of content and expect it to get you target exposure. No, it means that you have to be strategically relevant in your approach so that your content impresses your target audience. Remember, the more relevant your content is, the easier it will be for you to make it engaging.

#3: Keep Things Mega Interesting

People easily get bored these days, regardless of the type of content they’re consuming. This is why it’s important that you keep it interesting by creating content in various forms. Focus on bringing in more variety and work your way up by utilizing your blog/social media profiles to spread more of interesting content than anything else.

Right from sharing intriguing messages to giving real-time updates, you can do many things to keep things interesting. When your branded content generates enough interest among your target audience, it has a higher chance of spreading.

#4: Build Your Audience

If your branded twitter account is simply a long list of tweeted articles you are not going to get the interaction you want. By simply spitting out links doesn’t mean people are going to automatically find you, follow you, and read your content. Not only should your content be engaging but your social media efforts should be active.

Interact with similar brands, ideas, and content. Sharing thoughts, opinions, and ideas along with your mega interesting content is the best way to get people to pay attention and actually consider you a valuable resource in your niche.

#5: Share The Wealth

You may have the best writing and content in your niche but if nobody sees it then what’s the point? Using your time and resources to share your content on other websites is a great way to take the initiative to interact. If you are an SEO agency then providing top notch websites with insightful guest posts will not only gain your credibility and author rank but it will also help you gain traffic from that site’s audience.

The goal is to create great content, but it doesn’t always have to be on your site, maybe the best post you will write the month should go on somebody else’s website because if you are giving away great content for free the site owners and readers will be more encouraged to share your own blog.

Regardless of what type of business you are in, as long as you’re able to focus your efforts on creating quality branded content, your content marketing will give you results, and you will reap its benefits for years to come.

Once bitten, twice shy

For starters, what is SEO? And why do I have to care about it?

Well, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search engines. All major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing have such results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads.

Now, why should it affect you? Well, if you are a site owner, or run a business that uses the internet as a medium of relaying your products or services, then a good search result ranking will give you a fighting chance against your competitors, and rake in the joys of return on your investments.

Everything sounds great so far, right? Well, if done correctly then you would have every reason to smile for future results. But again, there are things that may cause bumps on the road; and those would be believing in SEO myths.

So, what are these so called, “SEO Myths?”

Here are 10 of them, and the reasons why they are categorized as myths:

Pagerank is Important

Let’s just get the cat of the bag, and just go on ahead and start with this. Pagerank may have in some point been used to rank search results, but the degree of its importance has been lessened every passing year; and that trend still remains up to this day. In the case of Google, they do look at a sites Pagerank, but it’s just 1 out of 200+ factors that they use in their algorithm. Bottom line is, Pagerank is something you can consider looking into. Does Pagerank affect a sites ranking? Yes. Does it have much of an effect? No, it’s just one factor out of over two hundred. Worrying about your sites rankings makes sense, worrying about your sites PR is a complete waste of time. Only the former affects how much traffic you get.

Meta Tags Matter

It’s kind of funny that people still think that Meta tags are still a factor for ranking, since when Google had used it in their rankings, which was way back in the medieval times, even they were admitting the fact that this poses too many legal issues between site owners, and is really a complete waste of time. But then again, it really is mind-boggling as to why there are still people who think that they search engines still base their rankings off of this.You don’t need to worry about this when trying to boost your sites ranking. While title and description tags are obviously important (for the user-experience), meta tags have long been forgotten about by the search engines. Spending your time optimizing them is therefore not to be recommended.

There are SEO Firms that have Google’s approval

If there was such a thing as a Google endorsed SEO firm, then they’d already be a Fortune 500. Really, the whole concept of this is ludicrous, and who ever cooked-up this conspiracy theory should have their head examined for leeches.

Link trading can improve your Page Rank.

If done on a large scale with irrelevant sites, then no, it would be an utter waste of time. Reciprocal link are quite easy for Google to catch. And often, the easy way out is the one laden with traps along the way.

Blog Commenting is an Effective SEO Strategy

Let’s just say, this one really depends on what you are going for. If you’re running a blog, blog commenting is an effective way to reach out to other bloggers in your niche. High quality comments on high traffic sites can also lead to a nice boost in direct traffic. In terms of SEO however, the effectiveness of blog commenting tends to be somewhat limited. Posts on high quality blogs tend to receive hundreds of comments. And this means that the SEO benefit of any comment that you leave is going to be diluted hundreds of times. Yes, a value of a link has a diminishing factor; this is something that an SEO has learned at the very beginning. Can blog commenting help your site rank? Yes. But is your time better spent on other SEO techniques? Definitely.

The Best Backlinks Come from .Edu and .Gov Sites

Because so many of the most respected websites in the world end in .edu and .gov, many webmasters have started to believe that the extensions have some sort of magical SEO powers. Contrary to popular belief however, a .edu or .gov backlink is only as valuable as the site that’s actually on it. A worthless backlink is a worthless backlink regardless of its extension. Again, the search engines don’t place any preferences on any TLD.

The More Words, the Better (The Infamous Keyword Density Myth)

You could say, I saved the best for last. The champion of all SEO Myths. This is the catalyst for all the spammy websites we’ve had during the medieval days. Thinking about keyword density will pretty much result to incoherent content, and raised eyebrows. Adding quality content to your site is obviously an important part of SEO, but past a certain threshold, word counts are largely irrelevant. Many webmasters believe that the more words they pack into an article, the better, but this is actually completely untrue. Using five hundred words to say something that could be said in two hundred words isn’t going to help you rank. Using too many words leads to nothing but bored readers.

Some SEO Companies Can Get You Guaranteed Rankings

Now, this is just plain dumb. There are simply too many factors at play to ever guarantee anything for sure. Even the most talented SEO gurus in the world don’t reach the first page every time. And if you take a look, you’ll notice that they never claim to either.

Smart Webmasters Use Black Hat SEO

I don’t think I need to expand on this any more than I have to. Since the term Black Hat has already been mentioned. But for kicks and giggles, let me just say, that an effect caused by Black Hat methods will never be long term. They are eventually penalised and end up worse than when they started.

Ranking is Everything

Well, let’s put it this way. You have to put your money where your mouth is. Even the rankings don’t guarantee a return on investments, unless your site has the goods to back it up. Basically, if your sites design is confusing and your content is barely readable, it doesn’t really matter where you rank.

With all that has been said about SEO Myths, it really is laughable that in 2013, we still see people that believe in these fairtales. And you would think that when they are penalized for believing in what we have mentioned, that they would learn from their mistakes; but sadly, they don’t. Eliminating the old saying, “Once bitten, twice shy.”

Since Google’s newest and somewhat controversial algorithm update dubbed “Penguin” first hit the web in April 2012, users quickly discovered that Google’s update was anything but small, cute and cuddly.

Hundreds of thousands of websites were slapped with Google “penalties” informing them that until they fixed their website of “manipulating their PageRank” through various shady methods, they would continue to be excluded from SERP’s indefinitely. Even worse? The rest, potentially millions more, weren’t even informed.

Now, don’t get me wrong – Google isn’t “out to get you” or your company (though with these new updates, you might think so). But there is an important lesson here.

For every genuine, hardworking website on the Internet, there are literally thousands of malicious, illegitimate websites vying for the top spots of search engines posing as legitimate sites to get exposure, advertise clients, and make money at the expense of real people and real companies. This is nothing new.

Fortunately, Google has been after these types of websites since they first began, and thank goodness; with so many tactics for manipulating search engines (spamdexing, link building, keyword stuffing , invisible text, and countless others) Google would be a graveyard of spammy, incoherent (albeit clever) jargon websites designed only to increase traffic and exposure for shoddy, shady, and shallow websites, if they were left unchecked.

Still, it’s not fair for the genuine, honest startups and other business sites that have been thrown in with these phonies, through no fault of their own. Though Google Penguin is designed to further isolate and promote only the most relevant and topical websites for users, it’s not perfect; neither was Google Panda, nor will the next Google update (Polar Bear? Puppy? Platypus?). Still, as a smart SEO, it’s your job to go with the flow and adapt to the ever-changing maze that is Search Engine Optimization.

But how?

Almost as frustrating as the realization that your website has all but disappeared from the Google search page is the fact that Google is very keen to keep the secrets of their new Penguin algorithm classified. They offer small pieces of advice (who hasn’t heard “write for people, not for search engines!” Sure, Google), don’t be spammy, create relevant content with lots of followers, etc. Nothing everyone hasn’t heard before.

But I propose a new idea – the trend Google Penguin is advocating can simply be interpreted as this: “get your act together.”  And you can do that with these 3 foundational ideas that everyone has heard before, but no one is really making a top priority:

1.     Creative and Unique Content

2.     Followers

3.     Buzz and Talking

Wait – what? That’s almost too basic. Where’s the epiphany, where’s the secret to Penguin? Obviously a good website has these 3 things.

True, these are not secrets from stolen Google blueprints cracking the code from their complex algorithms; this is common sense. But we can clearly see that Google is pushing common sense to websites, not by creating far-reaching, specific indicators like keywords or links, but genuine user accessibility.

These three qualities are indeed what make a website great, and really, these are some very important things you need to adapt to Google Penguin based on some recent research – good content, and interested people who are talking about you.

Google Penguin is fitting their search engine to match just this. Simple.

So it’s time to get your act together, or more specifically, your website’s. In the past, things like keywords, backlinks and repeated phrases were the undisputed key to staying in-sync with Google’s updates, particularly Google Panda. Now, it seems that Google is moving away from this veritable laundry list of “relevancy” and is now moving toward simple high quality websites, and you can’t fake quality, no matter how hard you try.

Google is coming full circle, and it’s time to go back to basics. Your new priorities include:

·      Maintain a steady stream of relevant, contextual information that caters to and helps your audience,

·      Encourage your audience to follow and subscribe to you, and,

·      Give them reason to talk about you on their own.

SEO is becoming harder and harder to manipulate and influence, and that’s ok. Although it might take an edge away from you or your company, it also means that spam sites will disappear, and genuine sites like yours will have a fair, reasonable chance to battle for the top spots, without any tricks or unfair advantages.

Get your act together. Hire a quality writer who knows how to talk to people (not search engines), create a reason for people to follow you, and reward them for doing so. Go back to basics. Your genuine efforts will pay off, and you might just find yourself coming out on top on Google Penguin.

How do you get the attention of websites prestigious enough to improve your ranking? As any SEO company can tell you, there are several ways to go about it.

Provide an Intuitive Format with Helpful and Insightful Content

It doesn’t matter how many other tricks you try. The bottom line is that your website must have interesting, accurate copy. You get extra points if your website is easy to navigate, and if it is accessible to people using mobile devices like smartphones.

Keep Your Content Fresh

Most websites periodically check their links to make sure none are broken. If they find a website that has not been updated in several months, they may to decide to delete the link to that site in order to make room for links to newer content.

Submit to an Article Site

As the name suggests, article sites allow you to submit articles in your area of expertise. Google’s updates have made this a slightly trickier process – you should read an earlier article about the effectiveness of article marketing for more info. While you can’t blatantly self-promote, if your article is accepted, you will be able to post a link back to your site. By the way, most article sites have clear guidelines and will check the writing for quality. If you don’t like to write, or if you don’t write well, it may be in your best interests to hire a freelance writer to pen the articles.

Write a Guest Blog Post

Find a blog that both interests you and relates to your blog. Then contact the webmaster and offer to write a guest blog post in exchange for a link back to your site. Be sure to research the blogs you approach and put together a thoughtful, on-target proposal. If you send out a bunch of generic proposals, you could get the reputation for being a spammer — and that certainly won’t earn you any links. Again, you may want to hire a writer to produce the actual guest blog post.

Avoid Link Farms

Link farms are sites that will post a link back to your website in exchange for money. They were popular for several years, but Google’s newest algorithm, Penguin, penalizes sites that pay to be featured on link farms. In other words, trying this route may actually harm your Google ranking rather than help it.

Use Social Media

Whenever you update your website, especially if you’re offering a new product or service, make sure to share the news on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+. This social media marketing will drive traffic to your site and, with luck, earn you some links as well.

Comment on Other People’s Blogs

Read blogs that are related to your business and leave an appropriate, thoughtful comment on one of the posts with a link back to your website. Don’t just say “Great post!” or your comment will probably be deleted or, worse yet, marked as spam. Leave a comment that indicates that you have really read and given some thought to the material.

Link to Your Favorite Websites

Find a few sites that you genuinely admire and provide links to them on your website. Then send a polite email to each web master, explaining why you have linked to their site and inviting them to visit your site in return.

Getting links from quality sites involves building trust with other web masters. It can be a slow process, but with a little persistence and creativity, you will get the links you need to improve your page rank.

Although Google Penguin has been heavily commented on, discussed and publicized all over the web, its real impact on the web was not as severe as many people might think. The bottom line is that Penguin was designed with specific anti-black hat parameters built into it and if a website didn’t fit those parameters, or only fit some of them in a minor way, it was either unlikely to be affected either way or could have even benefited from the search algorithm changes that have occurred. By way of example, the very first and most impactful Penguin update only affected some three percent of search results noticeably -nothing to laugh at, but also nothing too extreme.

The people most affected by Penguin were those whose SEO policies and strategies went against the grain of Google’s main policy. These are the same people who will continue to be affected and will be putting their websites in danger as well.

Google’s Goals

So, what are these Google policies? The main thing to keep in mind is that Google’s bottom line depends entirely (at least for now) on two main factors: the first of these is its continued dominance of the online search market and the second is the Adwords/Adsense advertising system that is mostly based off Google search and which provides the company with more than 95% of all its revenues.

Both of these absolutely depend on creating an environment in which the Google search algorithm delivers the most accurate possible results for the highest quality, most relevant content possible on the web. Google’s ad based revenue model depends on the quality and relevance of search results, and consumer preference for Google search -as well as using Google for advertising– also depends on the same thing.

Naturally then, Google is going to constantly work at building better and better search algorithms that root out as much as possible of the bad, low quality and spam based strategies that many webmasters use to manipulate the algorithm into giving them higher rankings than their quality, popularity and relevance would normally make them deserve.

The main way in which these webmasters tried to achieve higher rankings while going against the grain of Google was by using so called black hat SEO tactics like link spam, content keyword stuffing, link exchanges and other methods that simulate genuine site popularity or quality in an effort to manipulate the search engine bots which Google uses to index the vast landscape of the World Wide Web.

This is why Google started cracking down more heavily than ever with its recent algorithm changes such as Penguin (most recently) and others such as Panda before that.

The problem for black hat SEO practitioners is that while Google always disliked their craft, it’s now getting much better at detecting it than it was ever capable of doing before.

What does this Mean for Black Hat?

It should be obvious; search is becoming a much more hostile landscape to black hat SEO ranked sites. Google knows it won’t completely eliminate them from its search rankings with its efforts, but what it is successfully trying to do is raise the marginal cost of using black hat SEO to the point that most people simply abandon it and develop their sites in a way that fits Google’s aims for its search index.

In this, Google is steadily succeeding and will probably only continue to do so in months and years to come. The net result will be that black hat, although never fully disappearing, will become much more unsafe, unreliable and difficult to pull off. Instead, more and more people will simply decide that the effort isn’t worth it considering the risk of suddenly finding their site deranked. Instead, what many webmasters will likely decide is simply:

“If I have to put the same effort into black hat based success as I already would have to into white hat search optimization of my page, I might as well just take the white hat route and at least know that my site is safe”

This is exactly what Google wants to see happen thanks to its increasing of the marginal cost of doing black hat SEO and with this, Google is most likely going to diminish black hat dramatically over time.

Because of this, it is important to try and find techniques that you can utilise with any budget – or even without a budget, whether that budget is big or small.  This means that the only things these SEO tips will be costing you – is time and effort. Something we can all spare at some point in the day.

This article will aim to give you some tips that you can use no matter what your budget is.

Find Wasted Link Equity on your Website

You want to make sure that you’re utilising as much of your link equity as possible, particularly you you’re working to a small budget and can’t consistently build new links.  A neat little technique you can use here is to find where your internal link equity may be wasted a bit.

Start by running a crawler such as Screaming Frog across your website.  When it is finished, go to the response codes section and look for any 302 redirects.  If you find them, check to see if they are meant to be 302 (temporary) redirects or if they should be permanent.  If they are meant to be permanent, then make sure you change them to a 301 so that they pass as much link equity as possible.  Better still, change the link so that rather than going via a redirect, they link directly to the target page.

Give Internships to Local Students

Quite often, students at your local college or University will be looking for work over the summer or non-term time.  You can try and hire some of these and get them to work on your SEO campaign.  There are a few ways you can utilize them and use their skills, such as:

• Writing content for your website
• Finding link building targets and getting contact details
• Outreaching to people via email or phone
• Running your social media channels like Facebook or Twitter

There are probably loads of things you can think of.  You can also be quite creative depending on your niche too.  For example if you operate in the fashion niche, you could try to work with fashion students.

Offer Guest Posts to Related Blogs

This one doesn’t have to cost you any money but it can take a bit of your time.  You can spend some time researching good quality, relevant blogs in your niche, then contacting them to see if they will accept a guest post from you.

If they say yes, you can then write the article for them and send it over.  This can contain a link back to your website.  This can be a very low cost way to build good quality links to your website.  It can also be a great way of building relationships with bloggers in your niche too.

Sort Out Your Server

Ensure your server is working properly and working well. All this SEO work you’re working so hard for isn’t going to be any use if your audience can’t even load the website because it keeps crashing. You can compare different servers and hosting agents on comparison websites like www.WhoIsHostingThis.com and find the right one to fit your niche and the kind of industry your website is in too. Read through reviews and compare the different providers – and then watch as your website performs better, and the user experience becomes better – eventually improving SEO.

What to Do with Analytical Data

Many small business owners lack the awareness that they have access to a large variety of analytics and statistics concerning their company website. Even when acquired, most business owners simply do not know what to do with the information. However, it is imperative to track your company’s online visitors to understand where each visitor comes from, how they reached your site, how they are using it, and if they converted or purchased anything. Understanding the website bounce rate, provides the opportunity to rework landing pages and keep each visitor engaged with the site.

Analytical Evolution

Web statistics and analytics have come a long way since the early days of the Internet when simple log analyzers provided only minimal information on visitors. Today, extended information is provided including all the pages viewed by the visitor, along with associated files including images, hits, IP address, pages viewed, referral pages, and a variety of other important information.

Once this information is gathered, business owners can process the data and create reports showing detailed information pertinent to marketing and promotional plans. Full analytics provide services that track each visitor in real time to provide a transparent image providing statistical information and general statistics.

Understanding Visitor Behavior Patterns

Hiring a company to make sense of these general statistics is a clever way to understand each visitor’s habits/behavior. By acquiring and processing this information the business owner can fine-tune the company website and make smarter decisions about promotions, advertisements and marketing options.

Many of the basic tracking information will include detailed information on each visitor including page views (present and past), page counts, entry pages, exit pages, referrers, and search phrases. Once the business owner understands the viewing patterns of each visitor, it is easy to find tune the website landing pages to enhance the visitor’s experience. Fine-tuning can also help close the deal after realizing exactly where the visitor fails the call to action.

By analyzing search phrases and referrers, it becomes easy to see exactly where each visitor is looking before accessing your site. This information allows you to change your focus and rework specific keywords and advertising sites to target the audience that completes most of the sales.

Advanced Analytical information

Advanced analytical information and statistics are used to determine exact strategies used in advertising campaigns while tracking revenues. By keeping data on actual sales, and monitoring advertising campaign performances, the business owner can make sense of conversion rates and track habit trends including the times of the day, and the days of the week that produce the most revenue.

Adjusting the Marketing Budget

Once a business owner can find a professional company that can properly analyze tracking information, they can adjust and fine-tune their landing pages to keep each visitor interested long enough to achieve the best results for the business. Professional SEO companies that provide premium service and optimal support can easily make the difference between ongoing profits and loss.