New Web Browser Choices: Which Is Best?

Permission is given to reprint this article in any format provided the author's bylines remain intact. Courtesy copies of publications are appreciated: aaron@aaronzwebworz.com.


New Web Browser Choices: Which Is Best?
by Aaron Turpen

There are a myriad of choices in Web browsers nowadays. If you're still using Internet Explorer (IE), you're probably unaware of the other options available to you--which may be to your detriment.

I've reviewed the best alternatives to IE and have compiled my results below. The names haven't changed much since the last article I did on this subject two years ago, but the browsers themselves certainly have.

My (new) favorite of the group is Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser. It's available for free at http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/. This is the fastest, least-encumbered browser you can get. It's much safer than IE security-wise and is extremely modular, so you can ad only what you want to ad to the base browser for plug-ins and so forth. This means it stays lean and mean. It offers features that people who spend a lot of time surfing the Web demand: tabbed browsing, popup blocking, password keeping, and easy-to-use security features (like wiping your histories and caches). Highly recommended.

Internet Explorer still has its fans, though I can't figure out why. It's still considered the standard in Web browsing since it's what most users (who never change their PC's base configuration) are going online with. If you have Windows Service Pack 2 installed, then your IE now has popup blocking, but that's about all it has in the surfer's requirements area. It's very slow and hasn't been updated in quite some time. On top of all that, it's the #1 target for browser-based attacks from hackers and viruses. You can get IE at Microsoft by going to http://www.microsoft.com.

Netscape has a newer version and includes Sun Java 2, bringing the total download to a whopping 24 megabytes. While not as slow as IE, this seems to be the ultimate objective of Netscape…to get to be as big as IE and to make sure you are totally aware of other America Online and Netscape products… in that order. Skip this one if you know what's good for you. It's only marginally better than IE, but the download will kill it for most. http://www.netscape.com

My old favorite, Opera, has recently undergone another upgrade. It's still fast and has a lot of really awesome features, like built-in RSS feeding. The only problems I now have with Opera are its slower load times (coming in behind Firefox), hard-to-find configuration options, and the ads. While the ads aren't blocking your Web viewing, they are kind of annoying and cost $39 to get rid of (registration of the browser). Firefox and the others don't require this, making Opera the only non-free browser on my list. Still, Opera remains a Web junkie's dream, especially for developers. Tons of awesome features and well worth the download: http://www.opera.com.

There are literally hundreds of Web browsers out there, but the above are the big names. Again, I highly suggest scrapping Internet Explorer for either Firefox or Opera. You'll find your Web surfing faster, safer, and easier with these browsers.


About the Author
Aaron is the proprietor of Aaronz WebWorkz and publishes two weekly newsletters online: The Aaronz WebWorkz Weekly Newsletter and Aaronz Auction Newsletter. He is also the author of "The Layman's Handbook to Doing Business Online" from which this article is taken.

10 Inside Secrets to Google Adwords - Part 2

Are you frustrated with spending your hard-earned money on
Google Adwords and losing more money than you make? Part 2
of this series continues revealing the inside secrets of
successful, profitable advertising with Google Adwords.

If you missed Part 1 or Part 3 of this series, simply send a
blank email to googlearticle@superiormarketingpartners.com
to get a all three parts of this series of articles emailed
back to you automatically.

Secret #4 - Make separate AdGroups for each keyword within
Google Adwords

Google Adwords lets you create up to 25 campaigns per
account, with up to 100 AdGroups per campaign as of this
writing. It's important to organize your keywords into
separate AdGroups to maintain finer control over the ad text
for each keyword. If you had one AdGroup for the following
keywords: 'widgets', 'plastic widgets', and 'wooden
widgets', then the ads created for that AdGroup would have
to apply to all of the above keywords.

If your ad text reads: "50% off all plastic widgets" and
this ad is showing for the other keyword phrases in the same
AdGroup, then someone searching for 'wooden widgets'
probably will not be inclined to click on your ad that is
focused on people searching for 'plastic widgets'.

The way to be sure each ad is focused on the exact keyword
phrase being targeted is to have a separate AdGroup within
your Google Adwords account for each keyword phrase, and ad
text that exactly matches that phrase. For example, an
AdGroup named 'Plastic Widgets' with the keywords 'plastic
widget' and 'plastic widgets' can have an ad with text that
reads "50% off all plastic widgets" and the people searching
for 'plastic widgets' will see the ad most relevant to their
search term. Create a separate AdGroup for 'wooden
widgets', etc. Now you can create ads with text that
matches the exact keyword phrase for which people are
searching.

Secret #5 - Run tons of keywords in Google Adwords

Most people that have Google Adwords accounts find the top
keyword phrases for their industry and run ads for only
those keywords. This is a big mistake. The top keywords
are the ones that have the most competition and also the
lowest click-thru rates. Smart Google Adwords marketers
know that the more specific a keyword phrase is the more
people will click on the ad. People that search for a
keyword like 'widgets' are more likely to skip over an ad
targeting such a broadly targeted keyword. However, 'large
plastic widgets' is much more of a refined search and there
are far fewer advertisers with ads that target that phrase
so you get the double benefit of having fewer ads in
competition with yours and you can also run ad text that
exactly matches that keyword phrase!

Doing keyword research and compiling a large list of
keywords may be time consuming, but you will run rings
around your competition if you are willing to do what they
are not.

Secret #6 - Split-test your ads in Google Adwords

As mentioned in Part 1 of this series of articles on Google
Adwords, it is critical to split-test your ads. Google
Adwords has a built-in feature that lets you automatically
rotate the appearance of your ads so different ads can be
shown an equal number of times (or weighted more heavily
toward the ad that gets more clicks if you prefer - you can
change this in the campaign settings). The benefit of this
approach is that you will be able to see which ad gets a
better click-thru rate (CTR).

Since Google Adwords rewards a higher CTR with lower cost
per click (CPC), it is crucial that you know which ad has a
better CTR. Sometimes just swapping the ad text that
appears on lines 2 and 3 will make a big difference in your
ad performance.

Secret #7 - Improve your ads in Google Adwords

So what do you do if you find that after split-testing two
different ads a clear winner emerges? Simple. Chuck the
lower CTR ad, keep the winner, and create a new ad to
split-test against the current reigning champion. By
following this split-test strategy, you will constantly be
improving your ads CTR and lowering your CPC.

How do you know when a clear winner has emerged? Is it
enough to have two ads that both have received 10 clicks
each? Or should you wait until you have 100 clicks each
before making the determination that one ad is superior to
the other? Statistically, a total of 100 clicks between the
two ads will mean the answer is fairly certain, while 200
clicks between both ads is an almost definite certainty.

What's stopping you from finding qualified, motivated buyers
and getting them to your website when they are ready to buy?
There is no better marketplace for this steady stream of
valuable traffic than with Google Adwords. By employing the
tips and strategies outlined in this series of articles, you
will be armed to the teeth to convert those hard earned
dollars spent on Google Adwords into profits for your online
business!

***************************

About the Author

Ron Isaiah is an expert online marketer. Get free eBooks,
mini-courses, tips and tricks by visiting
http://www.superiormarketingpartners.com

What is the Google Dance?

By Jakob Jelling
www.sitetube.com

As with any good web developer, the ability to time the changes Google will update your website and refresh the content for better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is in your favor. Welcome to the world of “Google Dance”. The Google Dance is simply that the predetermination of when the actual update will commence.

What really happens is Google sends out spiders to crawl the Internet, usually done to DNS (Domain Name Servers), upon spidering all of the available tables it begins to go through each individual site and updates the content on to Google.com. Thus if you watch your rank on the Google Toolbar, you can tell when your overall page rank has changed.

Understanding SEO and what is necessary to improve your overall ranking. Webmasters have been looking for ways to increase the odds of guessing when the next spidering would commence. There are various versions and servers that go out and crawl thousands of servers at a time, it takes time to relay and decipher this information back to the web server that Google.com pulls its information from.

Some vendors have created programs that actually go out to the data centers themselves to find out approximately when the last index was kicked off. Depending on the information returned from the trace the exact time and date are pinpointed. Is there really that much of an advantage to doing it this way? It depends, if you have a vital update that you want to optimize your site, you may want to know when the last time Google visited your site for content to keep information fresh and relevant.

There are many data centers that Google uses to spider across the world. Each center has a specific region it covers and all the information is gathered in aggregate and returned back to populate Google.com. With this many data centers the chances for continuous indexing is good, but not guaranteed.