What are Search Engines and Search Engine Optimization (Part 2)

Search Engine Optimization

There are two things involved on which you should know in getting a web page into search engine results.

First, Getting into the search engine index.

Second, Getting the web page to the top of the final sorted results before display.

Accomplishing the first step is relatively easy. You just need to let the search engine spider know that the new web page exists. You can do this by pointing to the new page from an existing web page or blog that is already indexed. Some search engines may also provide an option to suggest a new URL for nclusion into their index.

Second step is the tough part. Most of Search Engine Optimization tasks revolve around this. Serach engines spend a lot of time and effort on making their algorithms find the best way to rank sites. According to Google, there are over 200 factors that determine the rank of a web page in the results.

Serach Engine Optimization is the process of trying to get your web pages rank at the top of the search engine results for keywords that are important to you.

Organic and Sponsored Results

Most search engines have two types, namely, organic and sponsored. The organic or natural results are those the search engines display on their own. The sponsored results are paid for by an advertiser. The sponsored results typically appear at the top and side of the organic results.

Search Engine Optimization directly affects only the organic results. However it does have an indirect effect on paid search results.

What Do the Search Engines Want?

Search engines want to satisfy their users by providing relevant informations.

Google, for instance makes most of it's money from selling advertisements (Adwords) that are displayed along with the regular search results.

Most people use Google because it provides relevent results.

Search Engines Don't Like getting Gamed

Search Engines and Google do not wan't their algorithms to be gamed. IF the results are manipulated, people will start using some other search engine and they obviously don't want that.

The best case scenario for search engines will be people creating websites for their users and forgetting everything about serach engines. That way there is no question of their algorithms getting manipulated.

For obvious reasons the algorithms used to determine the search engine ranks are proprietary and known only to Google. Google is not going to open up their source code and tell us the exact way their algorithm work.

This has lead to SEO related information becoming more and more confusing and conradictory!

SEO Contradictions and Confusions

SEO analysts and specialists try and piece together this information from...

1. What the search engines tell us to do through their "best practice guidelines"

2. Clues based on the patents filed by search companies.

3. What we learn by analyzing the search engine result pages (SERP).

4. What common sense says Google and other search engines will want to do.

5. Ideas and insights from people who are good at figuring things out.

6. Opinions from people based on what they want to believe, based on random observations or based on some "school of thought" they belong to.

7. Misinformation from people who have a vested interest.

What are Search Engines and Search Engine Optimisation (Part 1)

What are Search Engines?

A Web Search Engine is a tool that allows people to find information on the internet or the world wide web. If someone wants to find information on health tips he will probably search in search engines like Google by typing in "Health tips".

As we all know, internet informations are so huge that it is  impossible to find all web pages that points to "Health tips". In any case, the researcher is not interested in web pages that just mention "Health tips". Without a search engine it would have been impossible for him to find what he wanted.

But he was able to find what he want within second using Google!

How Do Search Engine Work?

Assume you are reading a book and want to find references to a specific word in the book. What do you do?
You turn the pages to the end and look in the Index. You will then locate the word in the index, find the page numbers mentioned there and flip to the corresponding pages.

Search engines also work on similar way.

Search engines are constantly building and updating their index to the world wide web. They do this by using "spiders" that "crawl" the web and fetch web pages. Then the words used in these web pages are added to the index along with where the words came from.

When someone searches for a "Manga" the search engine already has a list of web pages that refer to that "Manga". The only thing left to do is to sort the web pages in order of relevance. This is done based on a number of key factors.

Making your own Blog

Before I forgot, to use Google Adsense to it's fullest, you must already have your own blog/website. Ooops, if you still don't have one, don't worry your on the right section. Here, I will teach you how to get one.

Creating a Blog is very easy and there are many websites that offer you the facility to create one using their software. Having a Blog is the best way to promote your work and make your presence felt on the internet.

As mentioned earlier, there are many software options for starting a Blog. However, developer hosted software Blogger is the easiest to use, even though it may not be the most powerful. On the contrary, the learning curve is pretty steep for other Blogging clients and you just might get dissuaded from continuing to Blog. Therefore, for our purpose of setting up your Blog, we will use Blogger as the basis. Once you have mastered the Blogger, using the other software will not be very difficult.

Go to Blogger homepage (http://www.blogger.com). Assuming you have a gmail account. You can use this to sign in to Blogger. Google owns Blogger, so all your details for registration are available and the process of registration need not be repeated.  Click "sign in" after providing your gmail account.

The email address and your name will be displayed in the form.
The "Display name" is the identifier or your name, as you use something that you are going to stick to, since you will be on Blogger for a long time to come and if you decide to change your display name at a later date, you would be losing the advantage of the reputation that you have built in the meantime. Thereafter, check the box saying "I accept the Terms of Service" and click on continue.

A new page opens, this page is for selecting the name or the title for your Blog. as well as the "URL".

URLs are the addresses by which websites and Web pages are recognized.

Your Blog title can be anything but it is recommended that you make it catchy, so that it stays in the readers memory; after all we want your prospective readers to keep coming back.

After chosen the Blog title and have managed to find a unique URL for your Blog, click on continue and a new page opens prompting you to select a template for your Blog.

Choose your preffered template, don't worry about being not sure, since it can be changed at a later date. After you have made a selection, click on continue at the bottom of the page.

And presto! Your Blog has been created. You will get a message to the effect on the next screen, with the option to start Blogging.

How to Create a Google Adsense Account? (Part 2)

The following will be displayed when registering a new account.

Website URL: This is the address of your blog or website. If you have a website enter the address here. For example; www.myblog.com.


Website Language: Select "English-English" from the drop down menu. Next, check the two boxes below which states you willingness  to not place ads on sites that include pornographic content.

Account Type: Select "Individual".

Country or Territory: Select your country or territory from the drop down box.

Payee Name: Enter your name as it appears in your bank account. These field can't be changed at a later date.

Street Address / City / town / State / zip: Input your complete postal address here. Be sure that this is correctly entered since your payments will be send on this address.

After this, check the box below to confirm that you can receive the cheques made out to the payee name listed above.

Telephone: Provide your telephone details along with country and city code.

E-mail preferences: Check this box if you like to receive newsletters from Goggle.

How did you find out about Google Adsense - Select your choices' Thereafter, check all the three policies listed below and then click "submit information".

When you submit the information, Google lists out the information for you to confirm it. Check once again that all given information and details is accurate. If any changes are to be made, please do so at this stage.

Below the information are two check boxes, which ask you whether you have a Google account, which you are using with some other Google service like Orkut or Gmail.

It maybe clarified here that you can use only a Gmail account for opening an Google Adsense Account.

After checking the box, another option appears which asks you, if you would like to use your existing Gmail account for Google Adsense also or whether you would like to open a new account. make selection and continue. Congratulations! you have completed the registration and will get a thank you message with a promise to revert by email within 3-days or few weeks.

While waiting for email confirming the account, continue adding more contents on your Blog or Website and also optimize and promote it.

We will tackle on how to optimize and promote your blog/website on the next post after learning the basics.

How to Create a Google Adsense Account? (Part 1)

To create Google Adsense account, go to the Google page at http://www.google.com/. It is recommended that you make this page your homepage, since you will be using most of Google products and we can access them directly through this page.

Under the search bar, you will find the link to Advertising Programs.

The page is divided into two sections, Google Adwords, which is for advertisers and Google Adsense, which is for publishers and of use for you. At the bottom of the Adsense section, you will see a button which says "Sign up now." Click on this button to start the registration process for the Google Adsense program.

There are a couple of links right after the welcome message at the top of the page. If you want, you can go to the "What is Adsense" link, which is basically a help function. The other link "Already have an account?" is not required at this stage, since it is pressumed that this is your first time to create an account. Continue with filling up the form and register.

Opening a Google Adsense Account

Anyone who owns or is planning to create a blog or website must know or at least aware of how to make profit out of it.

Everyone should be involved in this. Google's Adsense Program is just too good of an opportunity to pass up. Even if your site is just for information or blogging purposes, you can still participate and make decent money with Google Adsense.

Google Adsense is an excellent way to earn money on the side. Even if you earned as little as $10 in a month, it would more than likely cover some or all of the costs for your web site.  Or, if you are simply looking for ways to add additional revenue to your website, then Adsense is perfect for that purpose too.

The Google Adsense program is getting so popular, people are creating websites just to display the ads and profit from Google's Adsense alone. Try searching the web and you'll find many success stories about people earning thousands of dollars a month from Adsense!

So, if you don't have an Adsense account yet, it's about time you should have one, now!

But, we all knew that not all who applied for an Adsense account gets approved.

So here's our great Tip for you:

The easiest and quickest way for your Google Adsense Account Application to be approved is to create a blog first at Blogger.com which is Google's own blogging service site.

Register at Blogger.com  and create a blog of any topic you're interested at and post at least 2 relevant contents on it. Wait for a day or two and then apply your blog for a Google Adsense Account by clicking on the button below.

That's it!

Note: If you already have a blog, even if it's not residing at blogger.com, you can still use it to open an account with Google Adsense. But, if you want to be sure that your application gets approved faster, we  recommend you open a blogger.com account and create a blog there.

What is Google Adsense?

Google adsense is an advertising program that enables publishers to earn. How does google adsense works?

Google adsense works almost the same as the advertising in newspapers and magazines. Newspapers or magazines publish their articles/news, print many copies and then distribute it to various subscribers. Cost from printing a newspaper copies to distributing it is high. To minimize the cost the newspaper company offers advertisement space to the newspaper pages.

The concept is the same as in Google Adsense. However, google adsense provides targeted advertising, i.e. it will deliver ads to those people who are interested in a particular product.

Google, the current search and online advertising leader analyze the content of each webpage and offer advertisements according to the content of the page.

So how does the website owner make money from it? Everytime a blog or a website visitor clicks on any particular advertisement, the advertiser pays Google. Google offers to share a part of that revenue with the website owner for letting out the space on his webpage or blog.