I received a letter today from Google. I thought it was a letter banning me from their Adsense program or a legal letter letting me know that I’ve done something wrong with my account.

To my surprise, it’s a letter inviting me to be an advertiser on their Google Adwords program. Enclosed on the envelope with the letter is a voucher worth PhP1,500 of free advertising if I sign-up before May 7, 2010. After this date, the value will drop to PhP1,000.

It is written in the letter that there are 3 reasons to advertise your business on Google.

1. PhP1,500. For you. For free. Use it to drive potential customers to your website. For example, if your average cost-per-click was PhP10, PhP1,500 could deliver 150 visitors to your site.
2. Reach your exact customers. Show your ads on Google only when potential customers search for your products and services. Target prospects in Philippines, Asia or the entire world.
3. No risk. No obligation. There’s no contract to sign or minimum spending requirement. Once you use up your free voucher, you’re under no obligation to continue.**

Written under the letter in small print:

** After the promotional credits has been exhausted, your campaigns will continue to accrue clicks for which the costs will be charged to your credit card. If you don’t want to be charged for additional clicks, you can pause your campaigns at anytime.

Not bad at all.

Now, I’m thinking hard on what product or services to advertise.  I’m sure some of you already know that I have my own small software company. I’m developing software for other companies and do consultancy services too. I might use the voucher for this.

Aside from the voucher, inside the envelope is a brochure detailing the step-by-step procedures on how to place an Ad on Google within minutes. See the image below.

The four benefits of Google Adwords are printed at the back of the brochure.

1. Find the people who are searching for you.
2. Pay only when someone clicks on your ad.
3. Show your ad where potential customers can find you.
4. Create your free ad for a successful campaign in just minutes.

I don’t want to waste this free opportunity. I know that Php1,500 is too small for an advertising but I’ve got to start using Google Adwords somehow. And, we all love free don’t we?

Sometimes you come up with a great blog story. You know it will drive you a lot of traffic but you have a problem. No one knows about your great blog post.

In order to get maximum attention you need to spread the word around. This is where the social / bookmark networks come handy.

Bill Gate is using the technology. Mircosoft is taking advantage of this new marketing strategy. What about you? Are you harnessing the power of social networks?

Social Network Logos

What is a social / bookmark network?

It’s a place where you can share your stories or blogs and network or bookmarks with others. Take Digg and StumbleUpon for example. You submit your blog story to the network, allowing other members to vote and comment on it. More popular stories that receive a certain number of votes get promoted to the front page. Most social networks are different. Some even allow you to export a large number of bookmarks straight from your browser.

Why social networks?

1) Social networks get a lot of traffic due to their nature. Users often return to read the latest stories and share their own.

2) Readers are usually only one click away from your blog. A popular submission can bring you thousands of daily visitors.

3) Most social networks are free and take seconds to register and submit your first entry.

4) You will be surprised when you see the amount of other websites that use feeds from various social networks. A good story can spread across the network like wild fire.

5) If your story will not get to the front page you can always submit another one. In most cases there is no limit on the amount of stories you can submit.

6) Most social networks are search engine friendly. Not only your story will be picked up by major search engines in no time, in most cases you will also get a reciprocal link. Some social networks have very good google page rank (PR)

Tips and tricks:

1) An interesting, catchy story is often a must. Your main target is to get promoted to the front page by getting enough votes. You need to convince other readers to vote for your story. Strange, shocking and controversial stories often do well.

2) You can always ask your friends to join and vote for you in order to get more votes. Don’t create fake accounts because you will simply get banned.

Secret tip: Form an alliance with other bloggers and vote for each other’s work.

3) The more stories you submit the better. If you want a steady flow of traffic you will need a steady flow of submissions.

4) Just enjoy your experience. I certainly find it more interesting compared to other methods of blog promotion, such as link development.

Social networking sites are useful, aside for their marketing potential,  but as a way of keeping in touch not just with your friends but with your universe of friends.

There are a lot of various social networks around. Simple search on google should do the trick.

Lately, I’ve been suffering from this syndrome. Unfortunately, I guess there’s no cure for it. If there is, I will vehemently avoid the medication.

Even when I’m in public places (it’s a no-no) , I can’t control myself not to suffer this contagious disease. I’ll always look for the opportunity to do it.

Before you think of any thing gross, let me clear myself.

GASS is a phenomenon that can hit any members of the Adsense Family. You’ve got to be a member in order for you to suffer this addictive syndrome.

GASS is the abbreviation of Google AdSense Stats Syndrome. According to Google Adsense Insider, ” The primary sign of affliction is the compulsive need to check AdSense stats every 15 minutes or so to see how much you’ve earned since your prior login.”

This compulsive disorder will sometimes bring uncontrolled urge for the patient to check their accounts even multiple an hour!

“Sufferers face strong withdrawal when separated from a PC with Internet access and have been known to experience mild abdominal discomfort and general irritability”, according to Rob, AdSense Product Marketing.

In order to minimize the negative effect of this syndrome to all Adsense family members, please let it be known that reports are generally updated every 15 to 30 minutes, but there can sometimes be a delay of up to 24 hours.

Sometimes when you see a “no data available” , don’t rush to your eye doctor. Your eyes are perfectly normal and not making a tricks on you. It can take up to 24 hours for Adsense “robo-accountant-auditor-doctor” to fully verify the internal logs and finalize your reports — as a result, you may sometimes see changes in your earnings during the course of the day.

Are you suffering from this syndrome? How often do you check your account?

Just a very, very quick post here while having my sumptuous breakfast .  I’ve  posted yesterday the continuation of our SEO secret topics and I hope you’ve learned  one or two techniques from that.

I’m taking the weekend off ( you should as well), but I just can’t control myself not to remind you that WordPress SEO Secrets will be pulled from the market at MIDNIGHT TONIGHT EASTERN TIME (January 17) and this is your LAST CHANCE to grab your copy and get the bonus. There will be a last-minute rush, so early today is the day to get yours!

Did I mention BONUS? Oh yes, there’s a lot of them. Do a quick check at WordPress SEO Secrets site and see it for yourself.

So today is the last day to grab  Michael Martine’s treasure.

That’s it from me. I’m going back to my breakfast meal now. Have a great weekend and be sure to take your rest too!

Oh boy, I was busy for the past three days and time flies so fast. It was only 3 days ago when I wrote my last post and now, weekend is almost here. A friend of mine is launching a business next week so she asked for my hand to helped her in preparing some business materials.

Anyway, today I will give you the 2nd part of our topic “SEO Here, SEO There, SEO Everywhere“. Remember the WordPress SEO Secrets that I mentioned on my previous post? Well, it’s timing because I received some additional secrets from WordPress SEO author Michael Martine that he wants to share to us.

Basic Education in SEO according to Michael Martine (WordPress SEO Secrets)

For SEO point of view, the parts of the blog the matters most are: Titles, post slug names, headings, and text content. Let’s discuss each one.

• Titles: Keywords (search terms) in titles are very important to search engines. Titles appear at the top of a browser window or in a browser window tab. The problem with blogs is that your headline automatically becomes the title unless you have a plugin that allows them to differ.

• Post slug names: The post slug is the virtual file name of a blog post. This is very important to search engines. It becomes part of the permalink for a blog post. You need to set up what are known as “pretty permalinks” in WordPress, and you need to edit the slug for SEO reasons. You want to use important keywords in the slug, just you do for the title.

• Headings: In your WordPress blog, you can use various heading levels when writing posts to break up the content into sections. Search engines pay attention to keywords in headings. Many people don’t know how to see the controls for headings in WordPress. You have to click on the “Kitchen Sink” button on your WordPress toolbar (barring special buttons added by certain WordPress plugins, it should the last button on toolbar above the write box). Once the second row of toolbar buttons is revealed, use the “Format” drop-down to set headings.

• Text content: Of course the content of the post must be relevant to a searcher’s needs. Use the same words in the post the searcher would use in a search (keywords). Use them as frequently as you can while still sounding natural (read it out loud to test). Think of it this way: if your searcher has a question, you want your post to be the answer.

If you want to more on how to make your wordpress blog visible to Google and other search, I suggest you check WorPress SEO Secrets. It will explain how to do all of this step by step in words, audio, and video.

If you  have questions on what I posted here, just write it on the comment area and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Update! Update!: WordPress Secrets SEO will be taken out of the market in 2 days. Saturday, the 17th is the last day.

SEO, SEO, SEO. I’m pretty sure that if you have been blogging for at least a couple of months now, you’ve seen these words posted in almost all blogging resource sites and some “make money online” blogs as well.

What is an SEO all about? How important it is for your site? Does it have affect at all in your online business?

For the technical minded people and computer-savvy, I guess you can easily understand what is an SEO and how it works.

For most of the bloggers out there like WAHMs(working-at-home-moms) who doesn’t know even the meaning of SEO, today, I will define SEO in a very simple way and will tell you some little secrets that even a new blogger running a mom/pop business can follow.

The Meaning of SEO

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks,” the more searchers will visit that site.

Here’s what BlogDeManila definition of SEO:

Search engine optimization (SEO) = make your site or blog the most visible to the search engine, the more visible you are, the more visitors you can get.

It’s very simple isn’t?

More visitors will bring you more traffic! And the more traffic you have, the more “money” you can make!

You’re next question is “How to make my blog/site more visible?”. Am I correct?

SEO Secrets Revealed!

Alright then, here are the simple and very practical tips on how to make your site more visible to the eyes of the search engines.

1. Think about what people are going to search for.

Make sure the content of your site is using the correct keywords that people will use in searching. Search engines are using program (spiders) to arrange (indexing) all the websites and blogs all over the world using the “keyword” query. This keyword is basically the word people will use to look for the information using the search engine.

Tip: Write for the reader not the engine!

2. Use “How To” in your Title.

It’s no secret that “how to” contents are some of the most sought after. This is the reason why ehow.com and wikihow.com together with answer.yahoo.com are one of the top most result when people search for a particular topic.

Tip: “How Tos” with  list and benefits are hot!

Take for example the title “How To Plant Malunggay”. People living in our country doesn’t know the scientific word of “Malunggay” which is Moringa oleifera and, I’m absolutely sure that 99% will use the word “How to plant Malunggay” than ” How to Plant Moringa oleifera”.

See the optimization I did with one of my niche blog site using the SEO secret 1 and 2 that I’ve just mentioned here.

TheFarm@PinoyBusiness was one of my first niche site where I applied SEO.  I already abandoned that site but do you know that it’s still earning? See my post about Inactive Blogs But Actively Earning.

Going back to our topic, you don’t have to take my word about the result that I’ve shown you . You may search the title that I used using Google, Yahoo, Ask or any search engine that you prefer (as long as the result is in English ) . I bet you that it will land if not on the top list, it will surely be on the first few pages of your result page.

I don’t want you to get bored with this topic so I’ll divide this topic into two. There are still 3-4 SEO secrets that I want to share.

Take note that these are not  just tips that I copied from another site. I am personally using these “secrets” which I’ve studied for more than a year now. I got bored studying the technical stuffs that’s why I’m presenting the topic here using very simple, and understandable words that I can think of.

In short, I’m telling you what are the SEO techniques that really works, and easy to implement without being too much techie.

Watch out for my next article as I reveal more of the real and true secrets of SEO!

While the world was doing the countdown for the year 2009, Google on the other hand was updating the PageRank.

I remember it was only 2 months ago when Google updated their PageRank. Back then, Blog De Manila.com was just about to be launched and so it was still zero.

You see, I’m a blogger who doesn’t mind my PageRank.Seriously, I cannot find the advantages of being on the top. Don’t get me wrong, I love the current level of BlogDeManila which is PageRank 2, but it doesn’t tell me much on what good it can bring on my blog.

I’ve have just checked some popular sites and blogs, and still I can’t comprehend how does PageRank works. Take the following examples:

• Yahoo ‘s PR is at 9 while CNN is 10. Does it mean that more people are checking news at CNN and more popular than Yahoo?
• Yahoo’s Mail domain (mail.yahoo.com) is at 9 while Gmail is at 8. Does it shows that there are a lot of yahoo mail user’s than gmail?
• Friendster is 7, MySpace is 9 while Facebook is at 9. Is this their ranking of popularity in a given time?

What puzzles me are these two popular blogs,  JohnChow.com and JohnCow.com are both leveled at PR 3. There is no doubt that JohnChow is more popular than JohnCow. JohnChow SERP (Search Engine Result Page) is even much is even much higher! I can conclude on this two examples  is that PageRank doesn’t ultimately determined who is popular or not. It doesn’t even give you the hint who has the authority.

The theory is, only Google knows the real rank of your page. As I mentioned above, I don’t whine about PR, I’m also one of those who are excited when their PR goes up, but it’s not my obsession to make my site get a higher rank. Search engine result page (serp) is much more important to me.

So tell me, does PageRank matter to you at all? Does it have impact on you getting more money online?

If you are not aware yet, Google Analytics is now counting the visitors that are using Chrome browser. Prior to September 4, Google announced that they would not track the usage of Chrome for some time. I guess they were in a hurry to include it so that they can get a glimpse on how many people are really using Chrome.

In reality, even if Google will not add yet Chrome on Google analytics’ list of browser, Chrome in itself has a tracking feature that can sends information about visited websites back to Google. Some of the information that it regularly transmit includes usage statistics, keystrokes, and identifies each user with a unique ID.  This unique ID is issued when browser is installed. Google said this can be prevented by deactivating the  ”Google Suggest” feautre.