More To Google Than Meets The Eye

Our work in the Ingenex internship keeps getting more interesting. Previously we learned how to choose the most appropriate keywords when optimizing a website for search engines. Google’s Keyword Tool and SEO Book helped us with this. Now we’re learning what to do with those keywords.

I used my own website Supraterranean.com as a test to implement the chosen keywords in automatically generated advertisements using Google AdWords. I typed in the dozen or so keywords, set the monthy budget and maximum per-click bid, and started the ad campaign. The results have been interesting, to say the least. In one week, my advertisement has had almost 40,000 impressions (i.e. – views). Only about 6,000 of those were on Google search results. The other 34,000 were on Google’s content network, the websites that have installed Google’s ad service to try and make money on a pay-per-click basis.

We weren’t sure if the content network would produce results, but out of the 8 clicks that linked to my website, 7 of them occurred on the content network. Only one click came from a sponsored link in search results. By the way, those 8 clicks have cost me about $1.86 so far, which I think is pretty reasonable.

I know that these findings are influenced by my extremely low budget, and that more of my ads would show up in search results if I paid more. However, these initial results are truly exciting, even just that I can expose my ad to 40,000 viewers in a week with such an efficient system. It’s great to learn about all the amazing services that Google is providing. They are a lot more complex than just a search engine, or even a search engine and worldwide map service. I’m sure I’ll be using their other services soon.

Be Greener, The Spartan Way

Spartans are green by default, but it makes us feel even better to be environmentally friendly Spartans. This is the concept behind Be Spartan Green, the website for MSU’s Environmental Stewardship program. In 2005, MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon issued a Boldness by Design referendum, proposing that the university shift from land-grant to world-grant status by 2012.

Even ’80s babies grew up with the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” slogan. Now the standards have moved beyond that insufficient plan. Be Spartan Green also contains plans to Research, Reeducate, Redesign, and Rethink. They’ve been implementing programs since November 2006, hoping to live up to the new “green” expectations. Some ideas will seem totally new, while others are pretty much common sense ideas that will get revamped operations. One nifty project involves making the Main Library restrooms more water and energy efficient. As strange as it may seem, it’s actually possible to have flushless urinals, thereby significantly cutting down the amount of water used. Another cool project is the Anaerobic Digester, which could use dormitory food waste and animal waste to collect methane as an alternative energy source for MSU.

Personally I think that MSU should be ahead of the curve when it comes to environmental friendliness, and not just living up to the current industry standards. As a two-time MSU student, my first recommendation would be that the university put in more recycling bins — as in one recycling bin wherever there is one trash can. Luckily Be Spartan Green accepts your comments and recommendations via email to greenideas@vpfo.msu.edu. Whether or not they use those suggestions is beyond me.

Optimizing Social Harbor for Smooth Sailing

This week we’re working to optimize Social Harbor for search engines. I’m taking it on from the perspective of search engine optimization (SEO) as a service offered. Social Harbor (owned and operated by Ingenex Digital Marketing) provides professional profile management. In other words, if you work with Social Harbor, they will make it easy for people to find information about you that you want them to find. In plain terms, if they pop your name into a Google search box, they will find credible information instead of a photo of you winning last year’s pie eating contest.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is no easy process. Social Harbor will put in the time necessary, using competitive analysis to choose the best keywords to optimize your site. Part of the goal is to drive traffic to the client’s site, and that is achieved with active links in the search results. As I’ve realized (and written about) over the past few weeks, the Internet has become a cluttered place. It’s almost necessary to have Facebook and LinkedIn accounts…but it doesn’t end there. There are now dozens of social media sites, for networking, sharing, cooperation, and communicating. Social Harbor brings the professional ones to the foreground, so that your recreational and leisure online activities don’t dilute your professional image.

Through my own research to optimize Social Harbor, I chose some of the following keywords: SEO, SEO search, SEO engine optimization, Michigan SEO consultants, Michigan SEO webdesign. These will be implemented in the content of the Social Harbor site, to maximize the efficiency of those keywords.