Search Engine Tips – Protect your SERP
Nov.15.2009 
Whenever someone searches for your brand name using a search engine, they are also being shown 9 organic results on the search engine results page (SERP) that may not be your site and maybe even another 9 paid results for competitors bidding on your brand name, which means you could be competing with a total of 18 other results that aren’t your site!
To ensure the searcher a) comes directly to your website and b) doesn’t see any negative entries that can creep in to the top 10 results, it is important that you use as wide a range of branded content as possible for the search engines to spider and rank. Taking your position at number one in the SERP organic section as red, below are other methods to ensure you dominate your brand searches.
Paid search top result
It may seem strange to bid on your own brand name when you already have top organic position but with clicks likely to be as low as 5p to 20p per click you should view it as an investment in online real estate. Eye tracking research shows that people’s eyes start at the top of the SERP and as you go down the page fewer and fewer people look at that area (see the research here). By having two entries at the top you are increasing the likelihood of a click and forcing other results further below the fold. You are also blocking anyone else bidding for the top paid spot on your brand name.
Put your blog on a sub domain
Google views sub-domains as separate entities to the main site which gives you a great opportunity to get a 2nd entry in the organic results by naming your blog something along the lines of http://blog.domain.com
Create a Facebook page
A well populated and linked to (e.g. from your main website) Facebook company profile should see your Facebook profile be shown high in the rankings. To set up a business profile go here http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
Wikipedia page
Although the terms state that you are not allowed to write an entry about an organisation you are associated with, let’s be honest, it happens all the time. There are too many corporate entries for it no to! Google loves Wikipedia and ranks it’s page in the top 5 for countless search terms. Set up your own page to benefit from this love! Go to the home page here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and click on ‘create account’ in the top right to get started.
Google Universal Search
Google is always trying new ways at presenting the web’s information, and it is rare to be shown a SERP that doesn’t have either some results from Google News, Product search, blog search or all three! If you don’t have one, get a Google account and start using the submission and feed features to make sure Google is picking up your press releases, blog posts and displaying your products.
As we touched on in a previous post about Twitter’s integration in to the fabric of search, Twitter accounts are only going to become more prominent in the SERP, not less. Make sure you have an account and link to it from your home page to show Google how important it is.
YouTube channel
Following the same theory as Facebook and Twitter, a profile on such a large and heavily linked website will be shown highly in searches for your brand name if combined with a respectable amount of content and a little linking from your own site to the channel’s home page. Create an account here http://www.youtube.com/create_account?next=None
What about page 2?
How often do you go beyond the first page of Google? Probably rarely if ever, and that’s the same for the majority of searchers. The truth is, if you’re in position 11 to 20, you’re going to get crumbs, if you’re not in the top 20, you’re nowhere!
Make Money from Your Website
INSTA Host gives it’s customers a helping hand to make money online from advertising by allowing you to easily install an ad server from our CGI script library onto your website. OpenAds is a feature rich advertisement suite allowing webmasters to easily incorporate banner advertisements onto your website with minimal effort.
Below is a helpful guide on ways you can make money from your website through advertising.
Direct Banner Advertising
Graphical banner advertisements tend to be very effective and as a result a great source of revenue. As you will be in complete control of who is advertising, you essentially eliminate the middle-man allowing you to keep 100% of the profits. It’s not as easy as using Advertising Programs such as Google Adsense, who take care of the selling for you, it’s completely down to you to contact potential advertisers and convince them why they should advertise on your website. When approaching advertisers it’s a good idea to present to them reasons why they should advertise on your website. Good traffic statistics, including page views and unique visitors, will help your cause. Try and give as much positive information as you can. It’s also worth adding an “Advertise” link on your website, allowing people to easily enquire about advertising rates, opening up the opportunity to make a sale.
The following is a list of the most popular banner sizes used:
Horizontal:
Leader board: 728 x 90 pixels
Full Banner: 468 x 60 pixels
Half Banner: 234 x 60 pixels
Vertical:
Skyscraper: 120 x 600 pixels
Wide Skyscraper: 160 x 600 pixels
Rectangle:
Standard Rectangle: 180 x 150 pixels
Large Rectangle: 336 x 280 pixels
CPC (Cost-Per-Click) Advertising Programs
There are many CPC advertising programs available on the internet, the most popular is Google Adsense (http://www.google.com/adsense/). Adsense serves advertisements onto your website that are targeted to the content of each page, having relevant ads will result in a higher click-through rate. It’s good practice to have ads that blend into the content of your website as they will appear more natural and increase the chances of visitors clicking them. Google Adsense allows you to customise the ads to your needs – including the size and format, e.g. text, image or video and link colours. Should you get unwanted advertisements appearing on your website, Adsense has a competitive ad filter so you can block certain sites from showing. Adsense is a very easy way to make money from your website as it requires minimal effort to setup and it takes care of displaying relevant advertisements for you.
Affiliate Schemes
You can also make money from your website by joining an affiliate program where you can earn commissions by referring visitors to a website where they perform certain actions, e.g. purchase a product. INSTA Host offers an affiliate program allowing you to earn a 10% commission on all domain and hosting sales that where referred from your website.
OpenAds Support
Should you need any help with your installation of OpenAds please visit the official support site
Support Page:
http://www.openx.org/support
Forum:
http://forum.openx.org/
