Search Definition

What Is Organic Search?

When you go to any search engine (Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, Ask.com, or
another) and type in a word or phrase then click “Search”,
you are performing an organic search. This is what millions of people
do every day. Every time someone searches Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, or
one of thousands of other search engines, they are performing an
organic search.

Organic search results are those results that return information for
specific searches. Companies achieve those rankings either by accident
or because they understand how search works well enough to put together
a strategy that gives them an edge in the ranking wars. This is called
SEO - search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization is the process of testing different
elements of web design and copywriting - on page and off page - to
determine what works best for giving a web page high page rankings in
the search engines. By knowing which factors search engines give more
weight to, webmasters can influence their own search rankings just by
adding or taking away certain elements from their web pages. If you can
tweak your pages well enough to land on the first page of any of the
search engines then you have successfully optimized a web page. Get
that page in the top 3 positions and you have done very well. That is
organic search. If you do it yourself it costs you nothing but time.

What Is Paid Search?

Paid search is the act of paying a search engine for a listing. The
listing can either be at the top of the page, above the organic
listings, or on the side - usually the right side of the search results
page. You will see the phrase “Sponsored Links” or
something similar. Those are paid search results and companies do pay
to have their listings there. But how much?

That depends. Everyone who has a paid search results bids on
keywords. You’ve noticed that the ads appear when you type in a
word or phrase in the search box. Those words and phrases are the words
and phrases that paid search advertisers bid on. The top listing is
owned by the company who has the highest bid or the lowest quality
score. When you strive to achieve higher paid search listings you
should pay attention to your landing page’s optimization quality
as well as your ad’s copywriting quality and relevance to the
landing page.

Well, that’s about it in a nutshell. You pay per click for paid search listings and get organic search listings free.

7 basic SEO Categories

1. Submit your individual pages to social bookmarking site.

2. Create an article and submit to online article site with embedded link/s.

3. Find a link exchange related to your site.

4. Added link widget like the one being used in blog.

5. Find and join forum.

6. Find directory

7. Find online classified ads that accept announcement with links.



You will have a PR2 after a 2 months

Using negative keywords

Use 'negative keywords' and your PPC profits can increase dramatically. This valuable technique tells Google which phrases your ad should not be displayed for. For example, if you're selling brand new 'apple laptops', you don't want your ad to appear when someone searches for 'refurbished apple laptops', so 'refurbished' should be a negative keyword for your campaign.

Wordtracker’s PPC expert, Ian Howie, will be running a PPC Masterclass for Profitable PPC Campaigns on 13th November in London.

Negative keywords are an integral part of any successful PPC campaign, stopping your adverts from appearing when a search query includes a term that is not relevant to your ad.

By adding negative keywords to your campaigns, you are filtering out unwanted traffic, helping you reach the most appropriate prospects whilst lowering your costs.

To find, prepare and add negative keywords to your Google Adwords account, go through the following steps:

1. Find your negative keywords
2. Prepare your list of negative keywords
3. Go to ‘Negative Keywords’ in your Google Adwords account
4. Enter your negative keywords

Let’s look at each of those steps…

Step 1. Find your negative keywords

There are 3 ways to compile your negative keyword list and they are:

• Wordtracker Keyword Tool
• Search Query Report in your AdWords account
• Use your market knowledge and common sense

Let’s look at each of those:

Wordtracker Keyword Tool

Make a search in Wordtracker’s Keyword Research Tool and instead of looking for keywords you want to target, look for keywords you don’t want to target, ie negative keywords. For example, see the following screen grab of the results of a search with ‘apple laptops’—the possible negative keywords are highlighted:

Search Query Report in your AdWords account

This will tell you what people are searching for. What search queries are triggering your ads? If your ads are being shown for searches using terms that are unrelated to you, add them to your negative keyword list.

Use your market knowledge and common sense

You might already have an idea of the search queries that you don’t want to trigger your ads. This may include terms like cheap or free.

Step 2. Prepare your list of keywords

Prepare your list of negative keywords for Google by wrapping each in [square brackets] and preceding with a ‘-‘. Like the following list for our ‘apple laptops’ example:

-[apple laptops discount] -[reconditioned apple mac laptops] -[colored apple laptops] -[pink apple mac laptops] -[used apple laptops] -[linux laptops apple] -[mini laptops from apple] -[refurbished apple laptops] -[orange apple laptops]

Step 3. Go to ‘Negative Keywords’ in your Google Adwords account

Log in to your Google Adwords accounts, go to ‘Tools’ and then ‘Edit campaign Negative Keywords’, see grab below:

Step 4. Enter your negative keywords

Copy and paste your negative keywords into the ‘Enter words manually…’ box and click on the ‘Add Keywords’ button, see grab below:

You can apply negative keywords at both ad group level and campaign level

At ad group level, all the ads in that group will not show for search queries containing that negative term. At campaign level, all the ads in the campaign will not show for search queries containing that negative term.

Different types of negative keywords

As with normal positive keywords, there are different matching options that each define how your keywords will match (or not) with search queries. So we’ll look at each one…

Standard negative keywords

Adding standard negative keywords to your ad groups and campaigns is the same process as adding any other keyword, but you put a minus sign (-) in front of the term.

If you added '-free trial' to your negative keyword list, your ad would not be shown if a user searched using the words 'free' and 'trial'. But, it wouldn’t stop your ad from being shown if they searched on just one of those words. So 'free sample' or '3-month trial' would both trigger your ad, whereas 'free 3-month trial' wouldn’t.

Negative phrase-matched keywords

Create a negative phrase-matched keyword by surrounding the term with quotation marks.

For example, if you added '-“free trial”' to your account, your ad would not appear if the search query contained the phrase 'free trial'. But don’t forget, the rules of phrase match still apply so your ads could still show if the search query is 'trial' or 'free 3-month trial'.

Negative exact-matched keywords

A negative exact-matched keyword looks like this '–[term]', like our apple laptops examples above.

For example, if you added '–[free trial]' to your negative keywords, your ad would only be prevented from showing on the search query 'free trial'. Variations of this search query, such as 'free trials', 'free' and '3-month free trial' could still trigger your ads.

In all cases it’s a good idea to add relevant variations of your negative keywords, including singular and plural forms.

Summary of the benefits of building a negative keyword list?

1. Your ad will not be shown for keyword phrases that are not relevant to your target market.
2. There will be fewer click-throughs that do not convert to sales.
3. Your overall clickthrough rate (CTR) will be higher, ie more people who see your ad will click on it.
4. A higher CTR will result in your ad being positioned higher on the page without having to pay a higher Cost per Click (CPC).
5. You will save money by reducing your CPC.
6. You will gain better knowledge of the keywords that you should weave into your website’s content.
7. You will increase your campaign’s Return on Investment (ROI).

A word of caution…

Start with the obvious negative keywords but don’t overdo it. Make sure you know which campaign you're affecting-some negative keywords will work for one campaign, but not for another. You could find yourself cancelling out profitable keywords which you should be trying to bid for.

If you don’t use negative keywords in your campaigns, your ads will be shown to users who aren’t interested in your business. Untargeted traffic can lower your Quality Score and your ROI will suffer. But make sure you don’t over-use negative keywords. Consider your potential negative keywords carefully and add to your list over time.

What is negative keywords?

Hey guys. As per usual we had a great response to our articles from our readers. Just to refresh your memories, Wordtracker featured the 7 Steps of a Pay Per Click campaign thanks to our PPC expert, Ian Howie.

We have noticed with these types of articles that we attract a lot of additional points of interest from our readership. We thought we would include them in our round-up article.

Ken Dickens wrote, “One more basic thing is to duplicate each ad group and have separate campaigns for the search network and content network.

“This will ultimately pay off in Google Analytics by giving you separate and more detailed information which will improve your conversion rate quickly.”

In our article, Ian Howie touched upon the merits of using Wordtracker to find negative keywords – these words are added to make a PPC campaign more streamlined. In Lia Barrad's comment, she demonstrated how 'negative keywords' work in practice.

“The importance of using Wordtracker to help research great keywords is essential but the point about finding the negative keywords is that it will stop useless PPC clicks.

“For example, I have a client that does advertising sales training, not real estate sales training or insurance sales training etc. When we formatted her Google PPC campaign to eliminate various types of training that she did not do - there were more real leads for her and less bounce rate.”

Penelope said that she would spend more time on negative keywords after reading the article.

She said, “I usually write a few ads at most for PPC campaigns, but have never considered anything like 50, as time is an important consideration for me. Negative words are something I don't spend much time on either, but will from now on.”

Of course as is with lots of these kinds of articles no one can tell you what is absolutely the right or wrong way to go about a PPC campaign, we can merely guide.

E-blueprint managed to put this into perspective with their comment, “There is nothing better than putting the work in and understanding exactly where you stand. It'll save you a lot of money in the long run.”

You will recall that our last case study brought some glamor to the newsletter, with Hayden Allen Vercoe talking to Rachelle Money about his online personal stylist website, iStylista.com, and how corporate blogging brought increased revenue to the site.

Vercoe was excellent at describing how he used Wordtracker for keyword research in his blogs.

Jeff Glucker was among the first to comment on the article. He said, “...we are trying the same approach and letting our blog build steam through keyword usage rather than strong direct promotion.”

We were particularly excited to hear from Irfan who told us, “Excellent article, we have been thinking since last few months to do something like this..i guess your article has helped us make up our mind to launch a blog...”

Glad to be of service Irfan, and good luck with your blog. Let us know how it's working out for you.

Vercoe said he wrote his blog posts after doing some keyword research. Spotty Boxes gave some sound advice on how to do this with any content.

“I usually choose two [keywords]. First a high traffic keyword which we are targeting long term - even if it is competitive - and then secondly a less competitive keyword which has a lower amount of traffic. This helps to give us some almost instant results.

“An example is our Christmas Hyacinth article which you can see if you go to the Spotty Boxes website, Children's Gardening and scroll to the bottom of the page.

"We probably won't get any results from the Garden Gifts for Christmas until next year but are already picking up traffic from Christmas Hyacinth Bulbs. Next stop for us - a blog!”

Thanks for that Spotty Boxes, and like Irfan, we would love to hear how your blog goes.

Next stop for the round-up is our SEO expert, Mark Nunney, who wrote a fab article on how to successfully optimize a page for over 10,000 keywords.

A few of you were clearly in awe of Mark's comments. There were a few "oohs", "ahs" and "wows" in response to his article.

Blake Ratcliff captures a lot of what our readers thought about Mark's article.

“This is an excellent article that illuminates the issue of keywords beyond simple discussion capacity to accomplish. We will be working to create ways to expand our keyword substantially based on this.”

Things to learn about google crawling behavior

There is a lot to learn when it comes to online or internet marketing and search engine optimization. That is why a lot of people hire SEO consultants to worry about their internet marketing for them.

However, if you do not want to have to pay SEO experts to help you with the marketing of your website, then you may want to think about doing it yourself! It's not that hard, it just takes some reading on the internet from trusted sources. Really, most of the SEO services that are provided online are built around one thing, and that is search engine crawlers.

Today we are going to talk more about search engine crawlers, and what they do. Soon you will find out that pretty much everything that you do, as far as search engine optimization goes, is to make these little crawlers happy. It is no longer as easy as a quick search engine submission and your website becomes popular.

As you may be able to guess by the name, these search engine crawlers are little bots that roam around the internet looking for new websites and ranking them based on an algorithm. When they come across a new website, they rank it in different ways, taking many things in to consideration. These ranks help to determine where the site is going to end up in a search done on a search engine.

The first thing that you have to do for these crawlers is to get noticed by them, and that is the hardest part of SEO, or at least that is what SEO consultants want you to think! The truth of the matter is, you can get your website noticed by simply visiting different popular search engines and adding your URL to their submission forms.

You also must get links from other web sites pointing to your web site to obtain link popularity and credibility with the search engines. This way the crawlers will know where your site is at, and find it a lot quicker. They will also consider it a relevant source of information if other sites link to you.

After that, it's all about marketing your web site on the internet through search engine optimization techniques. These little crawlers are programmed to look for certain things on your web site, these are things that SEO experts study and have an understanding for.

Using the services of SEO Consultants to help in your marketing, however they can be very costly, so you should hire a service provider that is talented and can provide a portfolio to ensure you get quality work.

Before hiring someone to work on your web site you should make sure they use ethical search optimization and marketing tactics and also make sure that they can provide results.


  Entireweb Newsletter   *   November 11, 2008   *   ISSUE #491
If you can't see images, click here to view this newsletter online    *   Printer-friendly version
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Search Engine Optimization And Search Engine Crawlers
There is a lot to learn when it comes to online or internet marketing and search engine optimization. That is why a lot of people hire SEO consultants to worry about their internet marketing for them.

However, if you do not want to have to pay SEO experts to help you with the marketing of your website, then you may want to think about doing it yourself! It's not that hard, it just takes some reading on the internet from trusted sources. Really, most of the SEO services that are provided online are built around one thing, and that is search engine crawlers.

Today we are going to talk more about search engine crawlers, and what they do. Soon you will find out that pretty much everything that you do, as far as search engine optimization goes, is to make these little crawlers happy. It is no longer as easy as a quick search engine submission and your website becomes popular.




As you may be able to guess by the name, these search engine crawlers are little bots that roam around the internet looking for new websites and ranking them based on an algorithm. When they come across a new website, they rank it in different ways, taking many things in to consideration. These ranks help to determine where the site is going to end up in a search done on a search engine.

The first thing that you have to do for these crawlers is to get noticed by them, and that is the hardest part of SEO, or at least that is what SEO consultants want you to think! The truth of the matter is, you can get your website noticed by simply visiting different popular search engines and adding your URL to their submission forms.

You also must get links from other web sites pointing to your web site to obtain link popularity and credibility with the search engines. This way the crawlers will know where your site is at, and find it a lot quicker. They will also consider it a relevant source of information if other sites link to you.

After that, it's all about marketing your web site on the internet through search engine optimization techniques. These little crawlers are programmed to look for certain things on your web site, these are things that SEO experts study and have an understanding for.

Using the services of SEO Consultants to help in your marketing, however they can be very costly, so you should hire a service provider that is talented and can provide a portfolio to ensure you get quality work.

Before hiring someone to work on your web site you should make sure they use ethical search optimization and marketing tactics and also make sure that they can provide results.




The first thing that crawlers look for is, of course, keywords.

Keywords in your web sites content and keywords in the links pointing to your site. When it comes to search engine optimization, use keywords wisely. Don't over-saturate your web site with keywords because you can get docked as a spammer. These keywords have to be worked into the web page and not just listed there. You should integrate them in to your content, page titles, meta tags and URL. Also, it will help the marketing of your web site if you work them into the titles of your web page as well.

Also make sure that your main page headings are bigger than that of your normal font so the crawlers can easily pick out what the main focus of your page is.

SEO consultants also worry about how many links there are out there that point back to your website. The more links, the better. However they must also be quality links from popular sites that are credible with the search engines. That is why SEO experts are always looking for different places where they can post links to your website. While crawlers are looking around, if they come across links to your website, then that helps to boost your ranking online.

As you can see, SEO services are very helpful, but if you can learn how to do online marketing by yourself, you don't need to hire anyone.

How to beat your competitor's SEO

You have optimized your website for winning keywords, are mid-way with your link building campaign, and have been going absolutely crazy creating fresh SEO friendly content that pleases the users and search engines.

You are obviously very serious about your online business, and yet you cannot seem to cross the Rank # 12, Page 2 barrier of Google search listing for your primary keywords.

A series of questions arise from the imaginary situation above:

1. Why is my ranking for the particular keyword not going up?
2. Am I missing out on any SEO strategies?
3. Maybe I am not building enough links? How much will be enough?
4. Do I have to improve my content quality?
5. The search engine has changed their algorithm (?again)
6. Others are using illegal SEO techniques

Now while one could go over the questions in your head, read up on latest search engine algorithms, contact a SEO expert, or blindly start buying links out of desperation, there is an easier way to find your answers.

Simply ask why are the other 10 websites ranking before your website?

Now that does not mean that the above questions 1 to 6 are not relevant, but simply put, one of the easiest ways to boost your search rankings is to study the top 5 to ten websites for your keyword and then apply what working for them into your own strategies.



Now I am not asking you to copy the competition or have a strategy that just involves beating the competition at the ranking game. It never works. What is needed is a better balance between your company's SEO strategies and of those of your competitors.

Like in any business strategy, you have to know your competitors, study what strategies they are using, and then apply the best of those strategies to your own game plan.

In the same way, in defining the SEO path ahead for your website you must analyze your competition. What are they doing to rank in the top 10 that you are not doing? After all those websites are listed on the top for a reason, and they are applying SEO strategies that the search engine in particular seems to like.

Now while finding the answers to those questions in the real business world may be difficult, in the online world all you have to do is to right-click and view the source of the page.

The below simple steps will open up a world of information to you.

1. Does the domain name contain the keyword? If the link is a sub domain then does the sub domain contain the keyword?

2. In what Meta tags, title, etc has the competition placed their keywords?

3. Does the link name contain the keyword? eg. www.seo-optimization-experts.com/mumbai-seo-expert.html

4. How many keywords are listed in the keyword tag i.e. is the page focused around one or two keywords, or is it a jumble of keywords listed out.

5. Is the title and description captivating enough? How has the keyword/s been placed in the title and description and at what position?

6. Is the page graphic intensive? Is the site using a lot flash or active server pages? Search engines cannot understand graphics, only the text it can read on the page. Make sure there is a good balance between the graphics and content.

7. How long is the body text? Writing 400 to 600 words is normally fine.

8. Has the keyword (keyword weight) been used appropriately in the body content? Ideally the first 25 words of content should be keyword rich, and the keyword should appear after every 100 words in remaining content.

9. Is the content interesting to you as the reader? Does the content follow a theme? Is the content relevant to what keyword the page has been optimized for?

10. What is the page rank of the page (You can check page rank of any website by downloading the Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com.

11. Which is the first place in the source code the keyword appears?

12. Has the keyword been used appropriately in headline tags and link text?

13. Does the site use java script, tables, frames, dynamic content, CMS etc?

14. Is the page focused around a theme?


15. How many inbound links are there to the page? You can check the link popularity of the page on www.marketleap.com? Visit the sites that have given the link. What is their page rank? What is the link text that describes the link to the website? Has the keyword been used in the link text?

16. How many pages does the site have?

17. Does the site have a good site map that lists all the content pages, videos on the site that search engine spiders can crawly easily?

18. Are there any 404 errors on the website?

19. What is the domain name extension e.g. .com,. net, .edu, .co.in

20. How long has that domain name been in existence? Search engines rank those sites better that have been around for a while, or those that plan to be around for a while?

21. How many directories has that page/website been submitted to?

22. Has the site used any spamming or illegal SEO techniques like keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text, duplicate content and other such spam techniques? If yes you can inform the search engine of the same but do so with caution. For Google: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

How to beat your competitor's SEO program

You have optimized your website for winning keywords, are mid-way with your link building campaign, and have been going absolutely crazy creating fresh SEO friendly content that pleases the users and search engines.

You are obviously very serious about your online business, and yet you cannot seem to cross the Rank # 12, Page 2 barrier of Google search listing for your primary keywords.

A series of questions arise from the imaginary situation above:

1. Why is my ranking for the particular keyword not going up?
2. Am I missing out on any SEO strategies?
3. Maybe I am not building enough links? How much will be enough?
4. Do I have to improve my content quality?
5. The search engine has changed their algorithm (?again)
6. Others are using illegal SEO techniques

Now while one could go over the questions in your head, read up on latest search engine algorithms, contact a SEO expert, or blindly start buying links out of desperation, there is an easier way to find your answers.

Simply ask why are the other 10 websites ranking before your website?

Now that does not mean that the above questions 1 to 6 are not relevant, but simply put, one of the easiest ways to boost your search rankings is to study the top 5 to ten websites for your keyword and then apply what working for them into your own strategies.



Now I am not asking you to copy the competition or have a strategy that just involves beating the competition at the ranking game. It never works. What is needed is a better balance between your company's SEO strategies and of those of your competitors.

Like in any business strategy, you have to know your competitors, study what strategies they are using, and then apply the best of those strategies to your own game plan.

In the same way, in defining the SEO path ahead for your website you must analyze your competition. What are they doing to rank in the top 10 that you are not doing? After all those websites are listed on the top for a reason, and they are applying SEO strategies that the search engine in particular seems to like.

Now while finding the answers to those questions in the real business world may be difficult, in the online world all you have to do is to right-click and view the source of the page.

The below simple steps will open up a world of information to you.

1. Does the domain name contain the keyword? If the link is a sub domain then does the sub domain contain the keyword?

2. In what Meta tags, title, etc has the competition placed their keywords?

3. Does the link name contain the keyword? eg. www.seo-optimization-experts.com/mumbai-seo-expert.html

4. How many keywords are listed in the keyword tag i.e. is the page focused around one or two keywords, or is it a jumble of keywords listed out.

5. Is the title and description captivating enough? How has the keyword/s been placed in the title and description and at what position?

6. Is the page graphic intensive? Is the site using a lot flash or active server pages? Search engines cannot understand graphics, only the text it can read on the page. Make sure there is a good balance between the graphics and content.

7. How long is the body text? Writing 400 to 600 words is normally fine.

8. Has the keyword (keyword weight) been used appropriately in the body content? Ideally the first 25 words of content should be keyword rich, and the keyword should appear after every 100 words in remaining content.

9. Is the content interesting to you as the reader? Does the content follow a theme? Is the content relevant to what keyword the page has been optimized for?

10. What is the page rank of the page (You can check page rank of any website by downloading the Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com.

11. Which is the first place in the source code the keyword appears?

12. Has the keyword been used appropriately in headline tags and link text?

13. Does the site use java script, tables, frames, dynamic content, CMS etc?

14. Is the page focused around a theme?


15. How many inbound links are there to the page? You can check the link popularity of the page on www.marketleap.com? Visit the sites that have given the link. What is their page rank? What is the link text that describes the link to the website? Has the keyword been used in the link text?

16. How many pages does the site have?

17. Does the site have a good site map that lists all the content pages, videos on the site that search engine spiders can crawly easily?

18. Are there any 404 errors on the website?

19. What is the domain name extension e.g. .com,. net, .edu, .co.in

20. How long has that domain name been in existence? Search engines rank those sites better that have been around for a while, or those that plan to be around for a while?

21. How many directories has that page/website been submitted to?

22. Has the site used any spamming or illegal SEO techniques like keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text, duplicate content and other such spam techniques? If yes you can inform the search engine of the same but do so with caution. For Google: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html