YouTube Video Optimization for Search Engine optimization

YouTube has become a dominant force in on the web. According to comScore, in April of 2009 Americans watch over 16.8 billion videos up 16% from the previous month. YouTube videos are often showing up on Google natural search engine results surpassing the top spots. A YouTube video properly optimized can outrank sites such as Amazon and EBay. This is an internet marketer’s dream tool and it is so simple to use. This is why you must properly optimize your YouTube videos.

A good starting point for YouTube optimization is to make videos that are short, sweet, and straight to the point. People want instant gratification, not wanting to sit around watching a 30 minute video on how to use a cell phone headset. Videos should be kept to a few minutes to reduce production time, upload time, and download times. Have a script prepared so you do not mutter or stumble upon your words. Film the video in the highest quality format you can. Crisp, clean videos will receive more attention than grainy, hard to see videos. Do not make videos private and always allow for comments. This user interaction can help increase video views and move you up the YouTube video rankings. Using Annotations, text boxes in your video, can help deliver your message or promote your website or company. Make sure not too over use annotations as they can become annoying and distracting from your videos main purpose.

Since the search engine spiders cannot read or comprehend videos you must use the text fields to optimize your videos appropriately. This means doing keyword research and making sure your keywords appear in the title, description, and tags of your video is imperative to a successful YouTube marketing campaign. Maximize on the amount of text you can have in these fields. More text means a better chance of someone finding and clicking into your video. Make sure you use original titles and descriptions otherwise your video will get lost in the millions of videos with similar names. Original content is what YouTube wants to see. The more originality you add the better off you will be. You also want to have a user name with your brand or website name so it is easily remembered.

You have to put everything into perspective to increase views, as the average video only receives one hundred views annually. According to YouTube guidelines there are many factors that influence rankings and can help optimize your videos. These include the video title, the description, tags, incoming links, comments, subscribers, ratings, playlist additions, flagging, embeds, shares, age of video, channel views, subscribers, views, and the number and quality of sites that host or point to your video. You want to interact on YouTube by watching other videos, commenting, subscribing, creating channels, and making friends. Interaction helps with the viral marketing, where one person tells another person about the video. This person tells five others and so on. Doing this will increase your video network and views. All these factor into ranking high for YouTube optimization.

If your video appears on an outside website you want to make sure that it is relevant and appropriate for your video. Each time your video is viewed from an outside source it still counts as a view, so keep posting your videos on blogs and other sites. Basically, you need links from outside pages leading to your YouTube videos. You want the links to have strong anchor text, meaning that the link leading to the video contains keywords related to your video.

To increase your videos views, subscriptions, and favorites you can send out an email blasts, place your video on your website and other websites, engage in the community, build a following, connect with other members, provide valuable content, participate in social networking sites. Basically the Web 2.0 created a heaven place for video sharing. Your ultimate goal should be to reach YouTube’s homepage under Spotlight, Most Viewed, Most Discussed, and Top Favorite Videos.

You can submit your video to the major video sites at once using programs such as Tube Mogul and Traffic Geyser. These software programs submit your video to all the major video sharing sites for you, saving time and energy. Simply enter the tile, description, and tags for your video and it will appear on all the major video sharing sites. They offer analytics and tracking for your videos in one place making it easy to analyze and tweak your videos.

The best analytics would have to be the one given to you for free, YouTube Insight. This will give you all the stats and detailed information you could ever ask for. With Insight you can see how many page views you have, how popular it is, where people found your video, what country people watching your video are from, what sections of your video are most watched and least watched, and so much more. This statistical data should help optimize your current video and plan for future videos. There are many articles written about YouTube Insight and how to take advantage of it. I suggest reading up on these.

There is a program called video tube automators, which is designed to build hundreds of YouTube accounts so you can view, comment, subscribe, and vote on your own videos. This run into the black hat area of marketing and is seen as spam. This is unethical and can get your account permanently banned from YouTube.

Monetizing your YouTube videos is quite easy. You can easily set up your Ad Sense account in accordance with YouTube so you can start receiving money every time an ad is clicked next to your video. The main source of income from YouTube comes from the fact that you can show product reviews and sell features that could not be described in words. Electronic gadgets are a perfect match for YouTube video reviews.

Why Your Website is Worthless

You may have put a lot of money, resources and hours into your website, but if it’s not reaching your target demographic and generating business, your website is worthless! A website that seemed great a couple of years ago is probably not doing the job nowadays without any updates. Read on to find out why your website just isn’t cutting it anymore.

TMI

The popular web acronym TMI, or too much information, doesn’t just apply to people - your website can have TMI too! If people find too much information about your product or service on your site, they won’t be motivated to call you and find out more. Words or text on your website don’t always convey what you are able to do and whether or not you are reliable. Too much information on your website can prohibit the “person to person” sales techniques that have worked for businesses for many years.

Too Little Information/Poor Navigation

While you don’t want to give visitors too much information, you don’t want to leave them in the dark either. If your site has too little information, or poor navigation prevents users from finding the things they want to know, you’re unlikely to get any business.

A Case of Sloppy Site-itis

Sloppy site-itis is how I would diagnose sites that look like the website equivalent of Pig-Pen from the comic strip Peanuts. If your website looks like it was put together in about 5 minutes, without any thought or care, why should someone trust you to put time into their product or service? As little as one hour of maintenance can make a world of difference to the look of your site. Go through your site and make sure all the links work, check for spelling errors, and make sure all formatting, fonts and colors are consistent throughout the site. After a while it’s easy to miss mistakes that you’ve been looking at every day, so it’s a great idea to have a friend check for you too.

People Can’t Find Your Website

More and more consumers are turning to the internet to find the goods or services they need. The most important reason why your website is worthless is if people do not know about your website. You could have a multi-million dollar design, and the best product available, but if people can’t find your website, it can’t generate business. This is simple enough to understand, but short of standing on the corner waving a sign with your web address on it, how can you help people find your website?

Get on the A-List

If you’re not listed with a business directory on the top search engines, many times your website will slip through the cracks. To generate more business it may help to put your website out there on business directories along with a brief ad describing what you do. Ads that are easy to read, informative, to the point, and don’t overload the customer with information they don’t need to know are best.

You don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel, just do your research. See what your competitors are doing; look around on Google and Yahoo! to see what is ranking, and go with what is proven

One of the easiest ways to find reputable online advertising companies and business directories is to Google the keywords you think your customers would search for. When the page pulls up, scroll through the links on the first page and find a good business directory. Getting your website seen through multiple linkings on top business directories will help your website rankings and give you the business boost you need.

Social Networking: 10 Steps to Finding Your Target Market in Facebook

Everyone is talking about social networking, and many claim social networking to be the panacea for all of your marketing ills. Marketing on social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter can help you increase the size of your email list and help you grow your business. The key to success with this strategy is making sure that members of your target market are in your network.

Facebook is very strict and very particular about how its participants contact each other. Facebook limits the number of new invitations that can be sent in a given day or week. The exact number is a Facebook secret and unknown to the public, but if you exceed this secret amount you can get booted from Facebook. However, I think if you stick with no more than 10 per day, you will probably stay within their limits. Secondly, you are permitted only 5000 friends in Facebook, so if you’re successful in this strategy, you may ultimately need to create a waiting list of friends.

How do you find your target market in Facebook? Whether you’re an experienced social networker or just a newbie, here are 10 secrets to growing your target market network in Facebook:

1. Update-to-date profile and/or Fan page: Before you begin a “friending” (i.e. request to become another’s friend), be sure that your profile is up-to-date with an accurate description of what you do, your interests, and your contact info, including your web site URLs. If you have multiple businesses, invite people in your appropriate target market to become fans of your niche-specific fan page.
2. Follow the gurus. Follow leaders in your field/industry and “friend” them. Anytime you make a friend request, include a personal note, as that will increase the likelihood that they will accept your request. Say something like, “I’m a big fan and have been on your ezine/blog list for several years. I’d love to have you in my network in Facebook.” Once they have accepted your invitation, make comments about their status updates to help you get on their radar and in front of their networks.
3. Friends of friends. Take a look at the people in the network of your industry leaders, as they are probably part of your target market as well, and send friend requests to those of interest to you. When you friend someone that you only know by association, send a personal note as well, like “I discovered your profile in ’s network and would like to get to know you batter by adding you to my network.”
4. Use groups. Look for groups that may contain your target market. In your search for groups, use keywords that describe your niche, your industry, your geographic area, the interests of your target market, or whatever other terms you might use to find members of your target market. Join and begin to participate in the group so that they begin to get to know you. Then peruse the member lists for good prospects, sic as the members you’ve connected with or have gotten to know. Since you won’t be able to view the profiles of the group members because they aren’t in your network, much of your decision-making about whom to friend may be based upon appearance or how you might be connected to them via other friends in your network.
5. Check your own lists. Friend people that you already know from your high school, college, alumni associations, and places of employment if they fall within your target market definition.
6. Facebook-recommended friends. Facebook typically recommends friends based on your current friends list when you log into your profile. I’ve found these recommendations to be pretty solid. Take them up on their recommendation and add those folks to your network.
7. Add by interest or industry. Do a people search by job title, industry, geographic location, or interest. Those people with those terms in their profile will show up in your search, and you can request to add them based on common interests.
8. Build the relationship. Once you friend someone, you need to begin to get to know them and start them on the like, know and trust journey so that you become their top-of-mind expert in a particular area. Begin building the relationship by posting a quick “thank you” note on their wall, as well as a comment about something on their profile that interests you or in which you have in common. Watch for their status updates, as well, and comment on these when appropriate.
9. Create a group. Once you’ve got about 500 followers, create a group for your target market. Provide the group with useful content and and ask questions to stimulate discussion and get the members to return to participate in the group. You can post articles, links to blog posts, or videos you have created. Invite group members to any free virtual or face-to-face events you’re hosting.
10. Integrate into your plan. No marketing strategy works unless you consistently implement it over time. As a newbie to Facebook, you might want to spend as much as 60 minutes per day researching friends and participating in groups. As your network grows, you many spend only 15 minutes 3 times per week on Facebook. The key to success is to put this strategy on your calendar and make it a routine part of your ongoing Internet marketing tasks.

While social networking is an inexpensive marketing tool and can be effective in helping you grow your business, maintain your other marketing strategies, as well, and simply add this strategy to your marketing mix. A well-rounded Internet marketing plan that includes social networking and is implemented consistently will mean that your prospect well will never run dry.

The RIGHT Way To Use Keywords In Your Article Submissions

If you’ve just started marketing your website and you’re trying to figure out what’s the deal with all this keyword stuff, I’ve got good news for you:

Using keywords in your articles submissions is not nearly as complicated as you may think.

Actually, it’s quite easy once your realize that the main purpose of your article is to provide valuable information for your target market and that your articles should be on the topic of your website. When you are writing on the topic of your niche, many times your keywords will naturally pop up in your articles.

That is the RIGHT way to use keywords–An article that is using keywords correctly will sound entirely natural to the reader and will be easy to understand.

If you use keywords the WRONG way, the article quality will be compromised and the reader will come away thinking, “That article sounded like it was written by a robot, for a robot. There was something weird about that article.”

WRITE FOR YOUR HUMAN READERS

First and foremost, you should write for humans first, and search engines second. Think about it–if you write for search engines and your article ends up with a high ranking and the title or article is not appealing to humans, readers simply won’t click through to read your article. A high search engine ranking alone will not drive more traffic to your articles or your website–you need to provide quality content that will be of value to your readers.

Focus on writing a quality article that will be useful to your readers, and then after you’ve completed the article go through it and see if there are any spots where your keywords or variations of your keywords can be inserted. Most likely though, you will find that your keywords are automatically popping up in your article if the article is written on the topic of your website.

VARY YOUR KEYWORDS

The HTLM resource box is a great way to bring exposure to your keywords. In the HTML resource box you can hyperlink your keywords, and that can draw more attention from Google. In order for this to be effective though, you need to be careful and vary your keywords–don’t use the same keyword for each article submission.

If you use the same keywords every time in your HTML resource box, it can appear that you’re trying to manipulate Google’s rankings, which Google does not appreciate.

Use semantically related keywords in your article and resource box.

Do not simply use one keyword phrase over and over again. This means that if your keywords are “sail boats”, you can use “sailing boats”, “sail boat gear”, “how to sail a boat”–you get the idea. Mix things up and write in a natural sounding way.

DON’T OVERDO IT

Have you ever read an article that had one phrase repeated over and over again throughout the article when other words would have worked much better?

You can go overboard when using your keywords, so be sure to keep your keyword density between under 3%.

Here’s a formula for calculating keyword density:

[Number of times the specific keyword or keyphrase appears in the article] divided by [Number of words in the article] multiplied by [the number of words in the keyword or keyphrase] multiplied by 100

KEYWORDS AND TITLES

Use your keywords in your title when appropriate–your title should always reflect the subject matter of your article.

If it is appropriate to use your keywords in your title, try placing them at the beginning of your title. That will help readers who are scanning long lists of titles–if possible, the first 3 words of your title should clearly tell the reader the subject matter of your article.

If you’re not sure what your keywords are, there are many excellent tools available on the internet, some free and some paid. Some of the top keyword research tools are WordTracker, Keyword Discover, Overture, and Google Keywords Tool.

Your article submissions are a great place to make use of your keywords, and your best bet is to write naturally, write on the topic of your website, and focus on creating a quality article that will be helpful to your target market and a joy to read.

Google Adsense May Be King But There are Other Options

When it comes to making money with a website, one of the most popular methods is running text and/or image ads on various pages. It’s referred to as contextual advertising and “inline ads”. Text or image ads are shown which match the content of the pages. Inline ads appear as highlighted words on the page when the visitor hovers over highlighted text on the page. Ads appear in small boxes. Contextual ads are often displayed to the right or left of website copy, or as blocks within sections of the text. The ads shown are related to the content of each individual page. As visitors click on these links, you earn cash.

Probably the largest and most used of the contextual ad programs is Google’s Adsense. Google really is a giant when it comes to the Internet, and their talents go far beyond just being a search engine. Adsense is used by many site owners to bring in a monthly income.

If you’re interested in running Adsense ads, first you’ll need to apply and get approved. Once approved for one site, you can place Adsense on any other site that you own. You can decide to run only text ads or choose from image and text. Various sizes are offered, and you can custom select colors to match the look of your site. Once the code is generated, you paste it on your HTML pages where you want the ads to appear. Simple & easy.

But what happens if you’re not approved by Google, or for some reason your Adsense account were to be terminated? What would you do then? There are other ad network options out there and I’ve gathered some of the best alternatives together here.

Before signing up for any ad program, make sure you read their terms of service and any requirements to make sure it’s a good fit for your website. Also, review the payment options so you’ll know how and when you can expect to be paid. Let’s review:

1) Text-Link-Ads.com: http://www.text-link-ads.com/

Once your site is approved, you insert the code on your page and they sell simple text ads that appear on your site. You have final say over any ads being published. Payments are made via Paypal or Clickbank. You receive 50% of the sale price for each link they serve up. This ad network is acceptable to be run on the same page as Google Adsense as this is not considered contextual advertising.

2) Adbrite: http://www.adbrite.com/

A variety of ad formats to choose from. You can run text ads, banners, inline ads or even full page ads. You can choose to approve or reject ads before they appear on your site. Pays monthly with the default minimum check amount of $100.00. Once your site is approved, ads will appear within 24 hours of your pasting the code. Adbrite has no policy against using other ad networks on your site at the same time.

3) Kontera: http://www.kontera.com/

Contextually relevant ads and ad units which are linked to keywords on your web page. Ads displayed will match the content of your site. For your website to be approved it must be in English, be content rich with more than 50 words per page. You can run text, image, billboard, and video ads.

4) Quigo.com: http://www.quigo.com/publishers.html

Quigo offers content-targeted advertising to those with strong traffic. Publishers with 500,000 or more monthly page views are encouraged to apply. Once approved, simply copy and paste the code.

5) Yahoo Publisher Network: http://publisher.yahoo.com/

Works very similar to Google’s Adsense program. You design your own ads, choosing colors and formats, then paste some code on your page. You’ll be paid per click. Advanced ad targeting and display capabilities can sometimes improve your results. You can choose to be paid via Paypal once your earnings are $50.00, or a check when you hit $100.00.

6) Chitika.com: http://chitika.com/

A full service online ad network which serves over two billion monthly impressions across more than 30,000 websites. Chitika ads are not contextual and can be run on the same page as Adsense. Twenty-four different ad sizes are available. Payment is via Paypal once your account is at $10.00, or a check when you reach $50.00.

7) Miva: http://tinyurl.com/oha28n

Miva offers a wide variety of ad formats to choose from: content ads, inline ads, search ads. You’ll be paid on a per click basis. Payments are made monthly by check or Paypal once your balance reaches $25.00. You can also block competitor ads from appearing on your site.

AffiliatesGarage.com: http://www.affiliatesgarage.com/

A different type of ad network which allows you to display affiliate ads in an “Adsense Style”. You can run Clickbank and Paydotcom text ads on your site or blog and earn up to 75% commission.

9) Bidvertiser.com: http://www.bidvertiser.com/

Display text ads on your website and let advertisers bid against each other. Ad formats are skyscrapers, banners, rectangles, buttons. They even have ads for your RSS feeds. Payout is monthly via Paypal once your balance is $10.00. This one pays on a cost per click basis.

10) AmaSense Ads: http://www.amasenseads.com/

This service allows you to create Google Adsense styled ads for Amazon products. Different ad formats are available which makes it easy to integrate into your site. Amasense can also be used side by side with Google Adsense without any problems.

As ads are clicked on, you earn a percentage of the product which is paid by Amazon depending on the type of product that is bought. You must have an Amazon associate account first before signing up. To get one go to https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

As you can see Adsense is not the only game in town when it comes to running ads on your site. If you have multiple sites, you may want to use one of the services mentioned above, then test, to see which one is a better earning opportunity. You might be surprised at what you learn.

It’s against Google’s terms of service to run another contextual ad service on the same page as Adsense, but there are exceptions to the rule. Most of the services above will tell you if you can run their ads alongside Adsense.

If your websites are mainly information based, network advertising is an excellent way for you to earn an income with little effort on your part. No matter if you use Adsense or another service, it just makes for good dollars and cents.

Merle’s Mission Blog- “Rants, Raves and Random Acts of Kindness” a self proclaimed “Internet Junkie” with a passion for net marketing, affiliate marketing, social networking. An avid Blogger and writer with several niche sites to her credit

How To Profit From Your Pay-Per-Click Advertising Campaigns

Advertising your services or products on the Internet is both extremely effective and extremely competitive. There are several ways to go about attracting traffic to your website; Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose from, along with developing an SEO, or search engine optimization campaign. Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. One of the differences is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign versus months for a good SEO campaign.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires a bid for a “per-click” basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site. There is the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results of other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective. One of the greatest advantages is that you never have to tweak your web pages to change your position in search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click campaign is pay a fee.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you’re up and running. It doesn’t demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier–and more effective–the process will be.

The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain your position–which can obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost-effective form of marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site is worth. You can compute this value by dividing the profit you make on your website over a given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same time period. For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were 25,000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50 cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click.

Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual hit.

The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can about search engine keyword research. The good news is there isn’t a limit to the amount of keywords you can add to your bid because additional keywords do not add additional cost. This translates into a lot less hassle for you because there is no need to optimize your site to index a particular set of keywords.

Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than others are, but they will not cost you anything except time to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid. Of the popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one called Overture provides an online tool that will give you the data on how often particular keywords are entered into their search engine. They also offer suggestions for keywords after you enter a description of your site.

In pay-per-click, this written description is crucial. You must understand that the object of your description is not to generally attract visitors, but to be as specific as possible so that only those visitors who are likely to buy your service or product go to your site. You must use expert marketing copy to guarantee that your description is both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal candidates to your site. This description is your most powerful tool to insure that your bid is profitable.

Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you constantly monitor your bid. It is very important that you bear in mind that the results of the top search engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are Overture and AdWords Select, usually appear on other popular search engines. Because of this, the competition for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click to yield a profit.

If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on that particular keyword and try another one. Remember: when you pay too much per click to make a profit, you are in essence losing the bidding war.

Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a monthly basis.

Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis of visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and will also insure that your pay-per-click campaign is a success.

5 Google Tools For Researching Your Market

Internet marketers and webmasters have always had a love/ hate relationship with Google. Whatever you think of them they do provide website owners with some great market research tools.

No matter what market you are in or plan to be in, you will find these free tools provided by Google very useful when researching your market. You should be researching your market constantly, NOT just when setting up your site. The internet is ever changing and, if you're not keeping up with those changes, you will be left behind.

Market Research Tool 1 - Related Searches And Wonder Wheel

When you start typing in the main Google search box you should see a drop down box appear giving you some alternative search terms related to the word you typed. Note these phrases down in a notepad file or write them on a piece of paper. They will be useful as part of your keyword list used in the next tool. You will also see more related search phrases after you click search. Scroll to the bottom of the results page and you will see "searches related to:" Note down any new phrases shown there.
Recently Google has released Wonder Wheel which is also a related keywords tool but is shown in a mind map format. You can also click on the related phrases to find more useful search terms. To access wonder wheel: enter your keyword in the standard search screen, then at the top of the results on the left you should see a show options link. Select that and it will reveal a menu. Near the bottom of the menu you should see wonder wheel.

Market Research Tool 2 - Adwords Keyword Tool

We all know how important keywords and search phrases are. Let's face it, it's what drives the internet. Google has provided us with a tool that tells you what keywords and phrases people are using to find what they are looking for. You are able to search an individual country, more than one if you hold down the ctrl key on your keyboard as you select, or all countries.

The adwords tool is now more valuable due to the fact it shows actual search numbers. Previously you only had a green bar to indicate how much traffic the search term receíved. You can also see how competitive each keyword is amongst adword advertisers, showing us which keywords are commercially viable.

Market Research Tool 3 - Google Trends

Now that you have an idea what keywords your market is using you can use the trends tool to check the history of that keyword / phrase. Google Trends supplies data for the last 5 years, giving you an idea if the search term is consistent. You can also see if the search term is popular at certain times of the year, also known as a seasonal keywords.

Another important function of Trends is the section that tells you the popularity of a keyword by country, city and language - very useful if you are targeting particular countries or even cities.

Market Research Tool 4 - Google Alerts

Alerts is underused by webmasters. If you want to stay in touch with what's hot in your market, you can by using Google Alerts. All you have to do is enter the most popular phrases in your market. Google will then send you links via email depending on what type you select.

The types are news, web, blogs, video and groups. If you would like a mix of all, you can select comprehensive. You can decide how often you want to be updated by selecting either: as it happens, once a day or once a week. I hope you can see how powerful this is if you want to be seen as an authority in your market.

Market Research Tool 5 - Google Web Search

Finally, we have Google's standard web search which is not standard in my eyes. It provides a lot of information if you know what to look for. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important part of running a website. By performing a search of your market keywords, Google will tell you what type of content it sees as important.

If you see videos, blogs or images this gives you another way to reach the top 10 of Google. If you see Web 2.0 style sites such as Digg, that could be another avenue. If there are adword ads on the right side of the screen, that tells you the market is commercially viable and more importantly that the keyword you entered is good enough to pay for, especially if there are 10 ads or more.

As you can see, even if you don't have money to buy the latest tools, I have shown you there is a way to get some very important information using free tools from Google. Are you starting to love them now?