Best SEO SERP checker tools

Many people have asked the questions – how to check the SERP ranking of your website? Are all the SEO done working for you? I have come to the same question when I paid for link building and SEO services, and in needs of evaluating the effectiveness.

Based on my researches, the SEO SERP tools on free websites do not give accurate result. Many of them show that the specific keywords are not ranked in the Google.com, while I was able to find my site by searching the specific keywords and the rank was pretty high too. Therefore, my suggestion is to avoid using them.

Two main recommendations I have would be:

1.       Many have been using a tool called “Rank Checker”. It provides yahoo and Google ranking. However, you will have to pay for the full version.

2.       If you are looking to check your SERP ranking for Google only, my best suggestion is the SERP ranking tool provided by Google themselves on Chrome. You can download the free tool and install it with your Chrome browser. It provides SERP ranking results from different Google countries, such as  Google.com.au, Google.co.uk, and many more!

                You can find the SEO SERP tool at                 https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ofoaoaloeipdofknnaapbmdddddioklg.

If you have other suggestions, please feel free to comment.

Does YouTube advertising work?

One of the largest google traffic sources besides its own search engine is YouTube. Needless to say, Google made the right move in acquiring YouTube. The volume of traffic and potential of earnings from advertisers are huge! In the past, I would say Youtube traffic doesn’t convert because most of the visitors are repeated users. They are most likely in watching videos than responding to advertisements that they have seen thousands of times.

However, the result has proven me wrong. If you are an online retail store owner, the CPC ads on youtube would definitely do you some good. Regardless of branding, Google report has proven that Youtube traffic is the most converted advertising source from the display network. There are two suggestions in maximizing the returns on your YouTube CPC ads:

1.       Only run Graphical Banners on Youtube traffic, or I should say Graphical banners on display network shall bring you a good return on investment (ROI) rather than text ads. You can simply run a test on the exact campaign of text ad vs graphical ad with same targeting, and you will see what I mean.

2.       Build up a Youtube channel for your retail store. This definitely allow visitors to recognize your store if they are watching your competitors videos on youtube. More recognized stores would lead to sales rather than unknown stores with CPC ads.

If you are running affiliate offers, you can try running on Youtube ads if the CPA is relatively high. Keep in mind that visitors are usually repeated visitors, and you may need a certain number of clicks before turning them into sales.

With that said, do allow longer term for Youtube traffic to show conversions in your report. It may take higher spending than other websites in the display network.

How do you maximize your returns on Facebook Advertising?

At the beginning, I thought Facebook advertising would be similar to Google CPC adwords. After trying for a month and spent over $100 USD on facebook, I have proved my thought was totally wrong. There was zero conversion and I don’t think the ads were even seen by my targeted audiences. Just like many advertisers, I am used to the Google interface and its reporting. Facebook’s report just turned out totally too simple to me. Before I started the campaign, I have sent them a ticket of requesting for a pixel code (which I thought that all of the big or small advertising network would have this feature by now), and they were kind enough to reply me and informed me that they don’t have pixel code/conversion tracking as of now.

For that reason, I was a bit hesitated in trying them, but I have found a $50 free trial coupon on facebook advertising while doing my research and I will just go ahead with the Google Analytics report for now (even it could lead to around 20% discrepancy as usual). With over $150 (include the coupon) spent and more research done, here are the techniques of using Facebook advertising:

·         Looking for “fans”, not instant conversions or sales

·         Actions tracking for “Likes” are provided

·         Calculate your returns on cost per click (CPC) by cost per like for short term budget analysis

·         Not typical CPC ads like Google, it’s a social network platform, which advertisers should focus on long term relationship building

·         Calculate your long term returns by conversions from direct facebook referral

·         Create useful information and updates on facebook page frequently

Is it worth to run facebook advertising? It depends.

In conclusion, you can spend money in generating more visitors to your facebook page, just like generating more visitors to your website. Different than website, facebook is not a direct sale tool. It’s a community for you to build relationship with potential customers or just make friends. Therefore, it is worth for you to spend on facebook advertising if you are building a precise, worthwhile facebook page. When promotion comes once in awhile, it becomes an additional channel to spread the words out and convert into sales. Hence, it’s no hurt to generating more “fans” to your page after all.

Alternatives of Google Adwords

In the last five to six years, many marketers and affiliates continually ask the same questions – what are the alternatives of Google adwords? Why do they keep asking this question in 2011 while everyone thinks Google is already everything you need? It’s because Google is not everything you need, not now, not five to six years ago, or anytime in the near future.

Only people who do not know Internet marketing would stick with Google forever. There could be two reasons: 1) they don’t have too much time to manage more than one advertising campaign; 2) They haven’t known that there are many other fishes in the pond! It’s fair to say Google has a very high percentage of market shares in Internet Advertising market and they do work! However, I have heard many publishers left Google for so many reasons. As marketers, you cannot miss any single targeted potential audiences, so you have to find alternatives of Google advertising.

Here is a list of choices and I will slowly introduce them in coming posts:

·         Adbrite

·         Bidvertiser

·         Clicksor

·         Chitika

·         Infolinks

·         Yahoo Publisher Network

·         Kontera

·         WidgetBucks