How search engines work

Search engines have one objective – to provide you with the most relevant results possible in relation to your search query. If the search engine is successful in providing you with information that meets your needs, then you are a happy searcher. And happy searchers are more likely to come back to the same search engine time and time again because they are getting the results they need.

In order for a search engine to be able to display results when a user types in a query, they need to have an archive of available information to choose from. Every search engine has proprietary methods for gathering and prioritizing website content. Regardless of the specific tactics or methods used, this process is called indexing. Search engines actually attempt to scan the entire online universe and index all the information so they can show it to you when you enter a search query.

How do they do it? Every search engine has what are referred to as bots, or crawlers, that constantly scan the web, indexing websites for content and following links on each webpage to other webpages. If your website has not been indexed, it is impossible for your website to appear in the search results. Unless you are running a shady online business or trying to cheat your way to the top of the search engine results page (SERP), chances are your website has already been indexed.

So, big search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are constantly indexing hundreds of millions, if not billions, of webpages. How do they know what to show on the SERP when you enter a search query? The search engines consider two main areas when determining what your website is about and how to prioritize it.

1. Content on your website: When indexing pages, the search engine bots scan each page of your website, looking for clues about what topics your website covers and scanning your website‟s back-end code for certain tags, descriptions, and instructions.
2. Who’s linking to you: As the search engine bots scan webpages for indexing, they also look for links from other websites. The more inbound links a website has, the more influence or authority it has. Essentially, every inbound link counts as a vote for that website‟s content. Also, eachinbound link holds different weight. For instance, a link from a highly authoritative website like The New York Times (nytimes.com) will give a website a bigger boost than a link from a small blog site. This boost is sometimes referred to as link juice.

When a search query is entered, the search engine looks in its index for the most relevant information and displays the results on the SERP. The results are then listed in order of most relevant and authoritative.

If you conduct the same search on different search engines, chances are you will see different results on the SERP. This is because each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm that considers multiple factors in order to determine what results to show in the SERP when a search query is entered.

This Statistics was taken from

A few factors that a search engine algorithm may consider when deciding what information to show in the SERP include:

• Geographic location of the searcher
• Historical performance of a listing (clicks, bounce rates, etc.)
• Link quality (reciprocal vs. one-way)
• Webpage content (keywords, tags, pictures)
• Back end code or HTML of webpage
• Link type (social media sharing, link from media outlet, blog, etc.)

With a 200B market capiii, Google dominates the search engine market. Google became the leader by fundamentally revolutionizing the way search engines work and giving searchers better results with their advanced algorithm. With 64% market share, according to Compete, Inc., Google is still viewed as the primary innovator and master in the space.

Before the days of Google (circa 1997), search engines relied solely on indexing web page content and considering factors like keyword density in order to determine what results to put at the top of the SERP. This approach gave way to what are referred to as black-hat SEO tactics, as website engineers began intentionally stuffing their webpages with keywords so they would rank at the top of the search engines, even if their webpages were completely irrelevant to the search result.

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to techniques that help your website rank higher in organic (or “natural”) search results, thus making your website more visible to people who are looking for your product or service via search engines. SEO is part of the broader topic of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), a term used to describe all marketing strategies for search. SEM entails both organic and paid search. With paid search, you can pay to list your website on a search engine so that your website shows up when someone types in a specific keyword or phrase. Organic and paid listings both appear on the search engine, but they are displayed in different locations on the page.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable "What's New" for your site. Originated by UserLand in 1997 and subsequently used by Netscape to fill channels for Netcenter, RSS has evolved into a popular means of sharing content between sites (including the BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Wired, Slashdot, ZDNet,and more). RSS solves myriad problems webmasters commonly face, such as increasing traffic,and gathering and distributing news. RSS can also be the basis for additional content distribution services.

RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book.

Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way. RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.

Creating a blog is nothing that you need to be afraid of. There is no elaborate planning required either. However, there are a few things you would need to decide. Since these blogging service providers give you a lot of choice in terms of template and color themes, would be require to take those decisions yourself.

The following is a quick guide of what to think over before creating your
blog:

• Theme: Determine what you would be writing about or the nature of the content that you would be sharing with your readers. This depends mainly on your interest. Topics blogging to the field of politics, poetry, arts, current affairs, or almost anything under the sun can be chosen. You can stick to one theme or you can choose to write about whatever concerns you on a day to day basis. Since it is your very own web journal, you can make it as flexible as possible in all aspects.
• Blogging Provider: Next you need to decide upon which blogging service provider you would like to use. This depends on the kind of reviews that you get about them from friends and acquaintances, or something about them that you may have read online. Otherwise, you can always try out something and find out if you like it. You can try out
• one of these popular sites: Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Typepad,Blogagotchi.com,Livejournal.com, JournalHome.com, TheDiary.org,Mindsay.com,Blog.com,Diaryland.com,Blogdrive.com, or Xanga.com.
• Templates: A wide range of templates will be made available on any blogging service you decide to start you blog. Select the one you most prefer or like.
• Freebies: The advantage with these blogging service providers is that they make your blogging experience as dynamic and interactive as possible. They enable you to install add-on features that include button, pictures, blog chalks, imoods, tagboards such as myshoutbox.com, guest maps, guestbooks, comment boxes for readers' thoughts and views, etc.
• Additional Features: These interesting ones may not be free. By paying a price you can avail of them.
• Nature of Blog: You must determine who should read your blogwhether you want it to be read only by a select circle, or must it be open to all. This will depend upon the content, mainly.
• Layout: Again, there will be a wide range to choose from in terms of layout and color schemes.
• Content: You could pick up a specific theme and write about it consistently, or merely decide on any random topic as and when it interests you. You could try putting up content for a while and see the kind of response you get, and alter or modify it accordingly.
• Blogging Circle: Blogging is a great way to come in touch with people from across the globe. You can surf and visit other people’s blogs. Do not spam in their comment section, but write a genuine comment if
• you have something to say about a particular post.
• Skins: You can customize and personalize your blog as much as you want. Using software like Photoshop you can create your own skins and make your blog attractive as well as make it reflect you own personality.
• Publish: Finally when you are done selecting the setting and preferences, selecting a content to put up, you need to publish the content. Do not, however, forget to send the link to your blog to your friends and acquaintances so that they may come visit you.

Once you have started your blog, you will have noticed that it hardly takes fifteen minutes to do so. Maintain the blog is even easier. Here are a few tips that would help you successfully keep your blog going:

• Update: Update frequently otherwise visitors may stop coming to your blog. It will also give you more confidence to churn out more well worded posts in the future.
• Personalize: Even though you might be discussing general and universal themes, add your own personal touch to make things lighter and interesting.
• Theme: If you have a theme blog you can Google for other blogs of a similar kind and build you network.
• Spelling and Grammar: Make sure you proof read your posts. Spelling and grammatical errors can be a major put-off for many readers.
• Advertisements: You could play host to sites like Google AdSense and earn revenue by placing their links on your blog.

This is another powerful free method which is proven effective for beginners and professionals. This method is all about creating your own blog. A blog is a website that is maintained by an individual on posting regular content like an article, video or other material.

Blogs are considered interactive which allows visitors to leave comments or feedback about your posts. You can start creating your own blog on free portals like Blogger and Wordpress, but to get a nice looking theme so your blog looks nice and pretty it is worth buying themes but you can also do without if you are on a low budget.

You can start writing a topic about any subject that is related to your niche. For example, if your blog is all about celebrities, then you should write topics about celebrities.Do not mix off-topics in your blog because it might lose your reputation as a blogger, and you might lose readers. Once you have published your first post in the blog, you need to put Google Adsense on the sidebar, top right or between your posts.

As a publisher of your blog, you will make money with Google Adsense when a unique visitor clicks one of your ads. It depends on the advertiser’s pay-per-click rate on the ad clicked by your visitor, but I advice you not to click on your own ads.

Clicking your own ads will result for your publisher account to be disabled, and reinstatement of this process is too difficult. In order to get readers, you must go to Feedburner to setup your own RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed.

The RSS feeds publish latest or frequent posts in a standardized format, which the reader will then be updated through e-mail about them.

I also advice that you have to create at least one blog post daily for at least 4 days to a full week. But for me, at least 5 posts in a week gives me good results. If you have keywords that are related to your affiliate offer, then highlight that keyword and attach the link there.

Just like the first method, we will do the same thing which is sharing of links. Once again, we will use social media, bookmarks, forums and other relevant blogs as our traffic source. You can even use Ezine as the traffic source for your own blog in the resource box.

It can also be used on Squidoo and Hubpages as well. Anything that can get you free and legitimate traffic will potentially increase the number of readers of your blog.

Now before getting your own blog you will need to buy a domain name and hosting. I only recommend you buy a .com or .net if worst case .com is not available. Any other domain for building brand is almost useless.

If you are getting addicted to backlinks as a result of gaining more traffic to your blog, and you expect more sales to grow in your affiliate offer I suggest you use a link building program such as SEO Link Vine (What is SEO ?).

This is how blogging is considered to be another powerful method, and it is truly effective if backlinks and traffic are generated properly.

Once again, it needs a lot of work and research for the topics you need in your blog. Now we are through with this method and it’s time for us to go the next effective method for beginners.

This is one of the most powerful free methods right now. You can make money with your affiliate offers through article marketing. You are writing one or more articles in a specific product or niche and publish it to top-tier article directories like Ezine Articles. Top-tier article directories have loads of traffic daily, and they are worth for building your links there. But thaere is one problem which is not allowed on any of these article directories. They don’t allow affiliate-type links that are generated on each offer, so I suggest that you must create a simple landing page on your offer.

Landing pages are very easy to make, and you don’t need to spend money or time in creating your own websites at least when you are starting out you can start to create your own landing page on Squidoo or Hubpages.

You always watch videos on Youtube right? We all know that Youtube is the top video sharing site today! They receive millions of viewers everyday and it keeps on increasing.They also receive hundreds and thousands of new uploaded videos from different Youtube users every day. It means that this portal is truly a big potential for us to market our affiliate products on Youtube.

If you have no web or video camera, there’s no problem about it. You can create your own videos without this, toaffiliate product or offer with free software called Windows Movie Maker.For beginners, I need you to follow these steps to market your affiliate offer to Youtube with Windows Movie Maker:

1. Search images about your product. Collect at least 5 of them or even more. Right click and save them to your folder.
2. Open your Windows Movie Maker. There’s a menu at the left side which says “Import Pictures” under the “Capture Video” section and choose the pictures that you have downloaded from Google images.
3. Once all of the images were included on Windows Movie Maker, you must create an introduction about your product, something very promotional. If you are not sure about that, try to watch television commercials on how they promote their product from the start to finish. Then apply it on your own video. You can start adding your promotional messages on the slideshow through clicking the “Make titles or credits” under the “Edit Movie” section.
4. Add the images to the slideshow and if possible, create another title or credit between the images so that it will look like it’s a true advertisement. Finally, add the ending title with your link of your main landing page of the affiliate product. I also suggest that you must add video effects and transitions to make it look attractive to the viewers.
5. When you’re finished creating the video, save it as a movie file. You must wait a little bit until the video wasconverted to WMV file. Upload it immediately to your Youtube account and you must fill all the details needed for your video. Keywords or tags of your video are very important which is effectivefor others to find your video. In your video’s description, you must include the link of your main landing page of the affiliate product. When they start watching your video and gains interest with your product, they will click your link in the description and to buy your product.
6. Traffic! Share the link of your video to social media, bookmarks and other sites heavily. You can also attach the embed code of your video to your main landing page on Squidoo, Hubpages or your blog to gain attractiveness on your readers and viewers.
7. Rinse and repeat with other affiliate products or offers you want to promote. The more videos you will produce and upload, the more you gain potential sales and subscribers on your Youtube account.

If in case you have your own webcam and microphone, you can download free screen capture software that will record all your actions in the computer. You can use Screenr which allows you to capture your own screen with you talking in the background for at least 5 mins. Otherwise CamStudio and ScreenHunter are some of the best free screen capture software to use, and it’s good for beginners with webcam.So what are the three powerful free methods again?

1. Article marketing
2. Create your own blog
3. Youtube marketing

Don’t stick with just one method guys. It’s better if you apply all of them in one piece. However, all of these methods won’t work without discipline and positive attitude.

I notice that not all affiliate marketers are very successful with their careers. I don’t know if it’s true that more than 90% of the affiliate marketers failed in their career. Since I am very serious in affiliate marketing and creating new twists and turns to promote an affiliate product, I took a stance to never be in the list of failed affiliate marketers.

To tell you the truth, I have failed many times in attempting those saturated methods that were published by most bloggers who are making money online with their methods.

But it didn’t stop me from continually trying, because I’m still punching the bag for it. If an affiliate marketer fails and quits, he is a total failure. However, if an affiliate marketer fails but refuses to quit, that’s a sign of a true winner. Don’t you know that top affiliate marketers right now started with many failures in the past?

Yes of course! Everybody starts with failures of some kind, and keeps on trying until they succeed. This is why most affiliate marketers are successful because they overcome their own failures and mistakes in the past, and nowthey’re making a living on making money online with a strong and determined attitude.

Now we are through discussing about the simple and effective methods for beginners to make money online with affiliate marketing. It’s time now for me to give some tips and twists for you to experience even greater results when used in a proper way.www.Squidoo.com

If you don’t know what affiliate marketing is all about, this is your chance to know it. Affiliate marketing is a kind of marketing practice where the website business gives a reward to one or more affiliates for every sale they make for the product or system they are promoting.

Unlike any other marketing tactics, affiliate marketing pays not only per sale but also per lead as well, and as one-off commissions or continual commissions also known as continuity programs.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, these companies are using different methods in order to generate sales from their products. Some methods are virtual products such as ebooks, dvd’s, video courses, membership sites and subscription sites.

As we have already seen today, affiliate marketing is a relatively trouble free way for bloggers and other website owners to earn money. In fact, these days, even social media sites can become lucrative platforms for affiliate marketing campaigns.

Because affiliate marketing does not require affiliates to offer their own products or services for purchase, but only to place promotions on their sites for other merchants’ products, it frees affiliates from many of the responsibilities and complications of traditional sales models.

Affiliate programs typically work by having the merchant handle all the logistics involved in selling products or services, processing customer orders and payments, and shipping merchandise all while the affiliate sits back and collects a commission for each agreed-upon action completed by the visitors the affiliate sends to the merchant’s website via an affiliate link. As long as the affiliate has done her homework and chosen a trustworthy affiliate program, she needn’t worry about non-payment.

Affiliate networks administer programs for individual merchants, handling all the work involved, while generally providing tracking and reporting capabilities to their affiliates to help them keep tabs on their revenues and determine which products or services are producing the best returns. These tools can be helpful to an affiliate in fine-tuning the line of products she decides to promote on her site and, ideally, increasing revenues as a result.

However, all affiliate programs are not created equal. Which are the most popular programs available today?

1. Amazon Associate- Amazon is the largest marketplace for online shopping and if you want to make money by selling or promoting products, Amazon affiliate program can help you to make thousands of dollars per month. Amazon pays very high commission on each sale and you don't need to work hard to sell any kind of Amazon product because people love to buy Amazon products. You can find every kind of product related to electronic, books, software, clothes etc on Amazon. Payments are made via Check and bank transfer.
2. Clickbank - Clickbank is one of the biggest affiliate networks where you can find more than ten thousand merchants and 100000 affiliates. Clickbanks has thousands of affiliate programs and if you promote them, you can earn more than thousand dollars per month by working just 2-3 hours per day.
3. Commission Junction - CJ ( Commission Junction ) is another great affiliate network where you can find thousands of targeted products. CJ offers pay per lead and pay per sale affiliate programs to web publishers. Payments are made via check and direct bank transfer. Minimum payout of CJ is $50.
4. Neverblue- One of the best affiliate networks that has a large network of high paying advertisers. You can find here thousands of pay per lead affiliate programs which can be promoted on your blog, website or social networks. Very useful affiliate network where you can find free sponsored products such as free software or toolbars, applications , free trail sing up offers and more.
5. Shareasale- Shareasale is one of the most popular ad networks which has more than 3000 advertisers. You can find every kind of program. Shareasale offers pay per sale, pay per lead and pay per click affiliate program that can help site owners monetizing their website with highly targeted advertisers. Payments are made via Check and direct bank transfer.
6. Linkshare- Linkshare has over than thousand top merchants that pays very high commission. You can find here CPL and CPS products. You can also join here Apple's iTunes affiliate program to sell iPhone , iPad and Mac apps. Payments are made via Check and direct deposit. Minimum payout is only $1.
7. Cpalead - Leading affiliate network where publishers can find hundreds of pay per lead products. Website owners can offer free toolbar, ebook , software etc by using this affiliate network.
8. Avangate - Great affiliate network where you can find sponsored software, application , antivirus and other kinds of digital products. If you have a website based on technology, you can monetize your website by using affiliated software and applications of this affiliate network.
9. Clickbooth- Clickbooth is one of the best places to find highly targeted affiliate programs. You can find here hundreds of pay per lead programs to monetize your blog or website. Clickbooth offers two different services for website owners which are - affiliate network and cpc ad network.
10. Viglink- If you have a blog or website and you love to write reviews on software, ebay products, amazon products , gadget etc, you can earn thousands of dollars by using Viglink. Viglink monetizes your simple links into affiliate links. There is no minimum payout and payment can be received via PayPal.

Although there’s not much that can be done to alter your CTR by weekday, I thought I’d throw this table in just because it’s interesting. Sunday seems to be the best performing day, with Friday on the bottom. Why? And why is Tuesday better than Saturday?

I have a theory–and that’s all it is, a theory, so take it with a grain of salt. Friday is low because more people are preparing for their weekend trips and activities, and so they have less time to surf the web. Saturday is low because those same people aren’t home! Sunday is high because they’re back from their activities and want to hang out at home.

Average CTR By Weekday