Archive for June 18th, 2006
Pay Per Click Advertising And Marketing
by: Greg Lietz
When I think of Pay Per Click, I think of a marketing strategy that has two different sides - one where you pay for published ads and one where you get paid for publishing ads. Somebody is always paying for the click, whether it is you clicking on someone’s ad or another person clicking on your ad. Pay Per Click depends on how you look at who is paying.
If you use Google to search the internet then you may find that your search results include “Sponsored Links” (on the right hand side of the search results page). If you click on any of the Sponsored links, the advertiser that placed the ad you clicked must pay Google for that click. If the advertiser is you, you are the one that pays. The price that you would pay depends on how much you have bid on the keywords used to generate the ad. This marketing tactic is called Google Adwords.
In addition to the ads being displayed with the search results, Google allows owners of websites and Blogs to display the same ads as contextual ads. Contextual refers to content that relates to the subject of your web page. This system is called Google Adsense. Each time a visitor clicks on an ad Google pays the owner of the website for that click. If you have traffic going to your web site and you display the Google Adsense Ads on a page and someone clicks an ad, you make money.
Note that Google Adwords and Google Adsense compliment each other and are in fact, the inverse of each other.
Google Adwords Pay Per Click is a good way to get quick targeted traffic to your website. Because you are paying for an ad promoting your site or affiliate link, those that click your ad will be directed to your site. The efficiency of your ad (click through rate or CTR) will depend on the ad copy and the keywords. The keywords that you have in the ads that are searched for dictate when your ad is displayed. Read the article at URL http://www.theonlinebizplace.com/Make-Money-With-Adwords.html to get informed on how to make the most of a Google Adwords campaign as a tool to make money.
Google Adsense is a good way to make an “automatic” recurring income. Automatic assuming your ads are getting the clicks and generating the income you expect. Some tweaking of the ad placement, colors, etc. may be neccessary for optimization. When a Google Adsense ad on your site is clicked, both you and Google make a split percentage of the total of the bid price for the keyword that the ad was displayed and clicked for. Read the article at URL http://www.theonlinebizplace.com/Make-Money-With-Google-Adsense.html to get informed on how to make the most of having Adsense ads on your site for generating an automatic income.
Another type of ad that is gaining in popularity is the Chitika eMiniMall. Chitika eMiniMalls are advertisements that display a picture and a description of the product, the best deals where the product can be purchased and a search feature. If you want to display Google Adsense ads and Chitika ads on the same web page, Google requires specific modifications to the Chitika ads. Read the article at URL http://www.theonlinebizplace.com/Make-Money-With-Chitika-Ads.html to get all the tips you need to properly place your Chitika eMiniMall ad on your site for another great way towards an automatic income.
Both Yahoo and Microsoft are in beta right now with their own equivalent to Google Adsense. The Yahoo ad network is called Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) and Microsoft’s network is called Adcenter. I have not tried these networks out yet, but I may find myself doing that if I find that ad clicks yield a higher amount or percentage to the web site publisher.
There are several other pay per click networks available to try as well. Some of these would be RevenuePilot, Bidclix, CBclicks, Adsclick and Bidvertiser. I am sure there are even more than this. If you are interested, search them out and see if they fit for your own website’s use.
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About The Author
Greg Lietz is a freelance writer and internet businessman. His main website is http://www.theonlinebizplace.com where he provides content about internet based business opportunities, web site marketing strategies, writing articles and starting your own online home business.
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Permanent link to this post (733 words, estimated 2:56 reading time)
June 18th, 2006
As keyword marketing becomes more and more expensive and competitive, it has become essential when building your lists to focus on the maximum number of phrases and their variations that a surfer might enter into the search engines.
Why?
Because according to Amit Singhal, principal scientist at Google, a guy who really should know what he’s talking about, over 50% of the 200 million searches performed a day have never been searched before. He also said: “When performing a search most surfers give a 2-4 word query”.
(788 words, estimated reading time: 3:09 ) read the full post...
June 18th, 2006
Have you even been to CNN’s website? Odds are you have, and have read quite a bit of news. The reason people read the news is because news reporters and anything news related really are almost always highley credited. If you see something on the news, odds are it’s not any old half baked scheme, or false bit of information. This is why news coverage is the best!
(311 words, estimated reading time: 1:15 ) read the full post...
June 18th, 2006
Is Your Search Marketing Budget Allocation Right?
by: Navneet Virk
In the field of search engine marketing, paid listings in the search engines are often flaunted as the most effective way of deriving quality traffic to the websites, the recent surveys and research present a different scenario.
With the enormous growth of internet in the last decade, the opportunities associated with it have also expanded. Millions of businesses are running exclusively online and thousands of businesses are operating to help the online businesses run efficiently and get better Return On Investment (ROI). Search engines have apparently become the biggest source of user traffic to the online businesses. While paid listings in the search engines are flaunted as the most effective way of deriving quality traffic to the websites, the recent surveys and research present a different scenario.
About 80 percent of people, who have internet access, use search engines as their first tool to search what they are looking for. Effective online strategy would be to grab the user at the point of entry, that is, search engines.
Businesses are doing all they can to harness the search engines, unfortunately the search engine marketing (SEM) budgets need to be reanalyzed and restructured. According to recently released research from SEMPO, the bulk of search engine marketing (SEM) spending goes to paid placement ads. About 83% of the online marketing budget last year (2004) was spent on the paid placement and it is projected to reach up to 85% this year (2005). In contrast, less than 10% of SEM spending is devoted to boosting organic search placement through SEO efforts or paid inclusion.
However, if you look at the preferences and trust level of the search users, it appears that paid search ads might not be the most effective form of search engine marketing (SEM).
Surveys and research results by major marketing research companies indicate that the current spending pattern might not be the most effective way for marketers to make money off search. In fact, assuming a static SEM budget, spending more to create higher natural search results and somewhat less for paid search advertising can obtain better conversion results—especially when you factor in the behavior and attitudes of search engine users. Another factor to be considered while projecting your future paid listings budget is the rising average cost of buying keywords. With more and more advertisers entering the paid search arena, and users increasingly clicking on paid search ads, the rising cost for keywords contributes greatly to spending growth. According to Jupiter Research, the average price per click for paid search will rise from 36 cents in 2004 to 47 cents in 2009. Most of the search engine marketing experts agree that with rising paid keyword prices, it’s going to be incumbent on the advertisers to buy keywords more efficiently and explore more cost effective ways of driving traffic to their business sites.
Organic search engine optimization (SEO) of the website makes a lot of sense while exploring the possibilities of getting constant quality traffic. While SEO is often misunderstood as some sort of spam trick, SEO works over time to increase a company’s organic listing rankings for appropriate keywords and can give the most impressive ROI in the longer run.
Most importantly, natural listings are far more likely to attract users and get clicks than paid search ads. Survey done by Enquiro in April 2004 shows that 66.3% of search engine users say that they click on organic listings in the search engine result pages (SERPs) before clicking to sponsored link. Only 23.1% of respondents choose to click on any type of sponsored link before an organic one.
The factors that the organic search engine listings are more relevant and most users trust that the information is unbiased, add up to generate more click through ratio from the searchers. And simply because organic search listings are not advertising, six out of 10 Internet users deem such results most relevant, according to iProspect. This proves that no matter how the results are listed/presented, US Internet users perceive organic search results as more relevant than paid search advertisements. The more experienced the user, for instance, the more likely he or she will choose organic over paid search listings. Research further reveals that more than 70 percent of search engine users are aware of the difference between natural and paid listings.
Marketers who reallocate a small portion of their paid search budgets toward SEO efforts will tend to get higher conversion rates, since users tend to prefer organic listings over advertising. Therefore, with the user as the manager of the search link’s destiny, enhancing organic rankings will tend to harvest more responses than putting the vast majority of a search marketing budget into paid advertising—over 80%, as is currently the case.
More and more bigger companies are realizing the potential of organic search engine optimization (“We realized to have a long-term play; we had to have an SEO campaign.” — Les Kruger, SeniorOnline Marketing Manager,AT&T Wireless;CMO Magazine,December 2004)
If you are one of the businesses who tend to put more effort in paide listings than the organic search engine optimization, its time to rethink.
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About The Author
Navneet Virk is the seasoned search engine marketing consutant for www.seo-expert.com, Internet marketing and creative services company based in New York.
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Permanent link to this post (887 words, estimated 3:33 reading time)
June 18th, 2006
Targeted traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. The best source of free-targeted traffic to your site is the search engines. To be visible at the search engines, you have to appear in the first three or so pages of the search engine result pages (SERPS). The quest for attaining high rankings at the search engines has spawned a whole industry, the search engine optimization (SEO) world.
(826 words, estimated reading time: 3:18 ) read the full post...
June 18th, 2006
Keyword Rich vs Branded Domain Names
by: Scott Geer
There are two theories on what a good domain name is for the purpose of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Keyword Rich/Targeted Domain Names
One belief is that you should have generic keywords you want to target in your domain name. For example, if you are a web designer in Sydney you might choose a domain name such as qualitywebdesigninsydney.com.
Branded Domain Names
The second belief is that your domain name should represent your brand. You might run a company called Whicked Reality Inc, so your domain name would then be whickedreality.com or something along those lines.
Keyword vs Branded Domain Names - Which is better?
So which is better for SEO, the keyword or the branded domain name? Branded domain names are the cleaner, safer bet.
Sure, search engines analyse URLs for keywords, but they clearly filter out questionable domain names. In the two examples above, qualitywebdesignsydney.com looks horrible to the human eye, so chances are it will look horrible to the search engine algorithms. That is, it will look horrible unless the page contains some great quality content.
You only have to look up a popular search term in Google for proof that long, wordy domain names aren’t generally the way to go. SEO is a term that would certainly come up with sites that have been optimized to the nth degree. Put it in Google and you won’t find any mega-long-silly-domain-names.com. It’s a similar story when you search for the term search engine optimization.
Some of the sites in the SERPs do contain the term seo but it is always used within a branding context and not simply to boost a search engine ranking.
Keywords in Page Names
If you really feel the need to have some keywords in your URL, then I suggest putting those keywords in either directory or page names. For example, if you run a web hosting and web design company you might structure your pages as so:
www.companyname.com/web-design/quote.html
www.companyname.com/web-hosting/packages.html
As you can see, we’ve hit the target keywords of web design and web hosting without compromising a simple and classy looking companyname.com.
Conclusion
- Choose a simple, relevant, branded domain name. The one exception is if you manage to pick up a nice one or two word generic keyword domain name, but most are taken already.
- Structure your site/URLs so that you hit the most important 1 or 2 keywords in your directory or page structure.
- Keep optimizing your site with other SEO tips and tricks.
- Always remember - content is king - so make your pages useful and informative for people.
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About The Author
Scott Geer writes for Goo Theory, a site dedicated to revealing the secrets of search engines with some handy web design tips thrown in. http://www.gootheory.com/.
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Permanent link to this post (470 words, estimated 1:53 reading time)
June 18th, 2006
In 2003 I was accepted by Google into their AdSense program. Without a doubt, it has been a profitable relationship for both parties as they continuously serve up high paying content related ads and we share in the spoils. Still, AdSense does not bring me new customers, but AdWords does. Do AdWords work? Yes they do. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of running a cost effective AdWords campaign.
(688 words, estimated reading time: 2:45 ) read the full post...
June 18th, 2006
The question for this article is whether or not you should use “absolute url’s” or “relative url’s”? Not only that, this article researches whether or not Google ranks these methods differently.
Absolute: You use the entire url pointing to the designated page.
ex. www.yoursite.com/page1/index.html
Relative: You use an automatic path to the file
ex. /page1/index.html
Relative gives a path that is “assumed”. Your browser will automatically “assume” to put www.yoursite.com before the link.
(321 words, estimated reading time: 1:17 ) read the full post...
June 18th, 2006
If you’ve been involved in SEO (search engine optimization) for a while, you may remember the time when you could create a web page and get it ranked at the top of any search engine with little effort.
All you had to do was load up the page with the keywords you wanted to rank high for, make sure your meta tags were stuffed with those same keywords, submit the page and within a few days or weeks you’ve captured a top 20 or even top 10 result.
(842 words, estimated reading time: 3:22 ) read the full post...
June 18th, 2006
Can We All Fit In Google’s Top 10 Results?
by: Fernando Macia
Appearing on Google’s 1 - 10 web results is every web administrator’s dream. With Google generating over 85% of all Internet search engine referred traffic, reaching that privileged ranking can differentiate the professional Internet players from the amateur website owners. As a matter of fact, numerous tests have demonstrated that the top three Google results are read by the majority of web surfers, the remaining results on that first page are the second most efficient ones, but only about 10% of Internet users explore beyond the third page of results.
In other words, if your company is not part of the elite, or the top 30 results, the probability of being contacted by a client becomes almost non-existent. Thirty spots are all you have. And only ten of them are reserved for the cream of the crop. Is this truly all the space that is available for everyone around the globe? In reality, there are several factors that make those top rankings that you so feverishly compete for less contended than they first appear. The answer lies in the segmentation and accurate identification of your market niche along with an effective positioning of your website for this niche.
For now, you may want to temporarily forget about the Internet and start by asking yourself how many competitors you have in the real world. Or, if you prefer, you may want to list those businesses that are offering a product or service portfolio resembling yours and targeting the same client segment that you are profiting from. It is entirely possible that you may have already gone the extra mile differentiating your product or service offering, finding a market niche that can be addressed in a unique way, or identifying some other competitive advantage of your own. In other words, you may already be competing with a reduced number of firms, probably less than 30, and perhaps even less than 10. If this is what your real world looks like, why should it be any different on the Internet? Even if we accept the fact that there will always be markets or segments that will attract a greater number of competitors, as long as we have accurately segmented our piece of the pie, we will frequently find that only a handful of competitors are vying for our same portion.
Let’s look at this issue now from an Internet perspective. Can we all fit in Google’s top 10 results? The answer is a definite yes, at least as it applies to those results generated by search terms that potential clients use when looking for companies like yours. The good news is that Google has reserved for your business a small number of pages where your website can appear on the top three results, and then, a handful more where your site will definitely rank among the elite, but where, unfortunately, you will also contend alongside your closest competitors. Therefore, constantly measuring and tracking the amount of traffic that a site experiences does not seem as important -after all, in a real shop, one is more interested in helping customers than visitors. Instead, you should concentrate in assuring that when potential Internet clients look for your products or services they can indeed find your website. Let’s see how this is done.
1. Accurately identifying your market niche
You must get to know the type of clients that you are addressing: who they are, where they are located, and how they look for your products or services. Keep in mind that the typical Internet user begins a search using very broad terms. For example, someone in Great Britain looking for homes in the Costa Blanca of Spain may enter “houses in Spain” as search terms. However, those same keywords could be used by a student who is interested in Spanish architecture, or by a person looking for rental property in Madrid, or by an economist who wants to know how real estate prices have recently faired in Spain.
When a search engine returns an unmanageable number of results, users typically restrict their next search by including more specific criteria. For example, they may limit the geographic coverage -“house in Costa Blanca”-, include the type of product -“townhouse in Costa Blanca”-, or add an action -“opportunities + townhouse in Costa Blanca for sale”. If your business happened to be a small real estate agency in the town of Javea -in the Costa Blanca of Spain-, a potential client of yours would probably belong to the profile of those that entered “opportunities + townhouse in Costa Blanca for sale.”
Nowadays, a great majority of Internet searches are conducted by entering concepts consisting of two or three words. However, after a user becomes more familiar with Internet search engine technology the tendency is to type in more specific and detailed phrases.
2. Identifying your keyword sets
Are you targeting a general English speaking audience or perhaps Scandinavian customers that may be interested in buying luxury homes in Javea? One of your first criteria should therefore be the language.
After a language is selected, you must figure out how potential clients will look for your website. Keep in mind though that if you are a small real estate agency in Javea, focused in selling local properties to a British market, for example, it will be extremely difficult for your website to appear as part of the elite results when someone simply types in “real estate in Spain” as the search criteria. At the same time, be aware that the chances of your small business capturing a customer that entered those terms in Google are much reduced. The problem is that “real estate in Spain” is not the space where your small local company should be competing in. If, on the other hand, you had correctly identified your market niche, you would be enjoying a definite advantage when users entered more specific terms, such as “townhouses in Javea”, “villas in Javea”, “apartments for sale in Javea”, or “real estate agents in Javea”. In summary, the keywords that we select must always identify very clearly our specific market niche.
3. Optimizing your website
Your next step will be to ensure that the contents of your website reflect precisely the products or services that your clients are looking for.
If you are wondering how search engines classify websites, you must bear in mind that after all, a website is nothing more than information. Books have been organizing and presenting information for centuries. If you were handed a book and asked what the book was about, you would probably first look at its title, subtitles or any other text on the book’s cover. Next, you might turn the book over and look for a summary or synopsis on its back. A third level of information could be derived from looking at its index. Finally, and without having to read the entire book, you would browse through some of the pages, where individual chapter and section titles would catch your attention. If you were considering buying the book, you would probably take a look at recommendations from prior readers, paying more attention to those that you consider experts in the field.
Google is no different. When it comes to classifying a website, Google will look at the title of the default page, at its description or subtitle, and at the contents inside the page itself, which if properly built, should be a synopsis of what the users will find in the website. Google will next evaluate the website’s navigation or indexing by traversing through the various links inside each page or chapter. While Google navigates through a website, it will repeat the process of looking at the title, description and contents of each and every page.
In the same manner as we use recommendations from prior consumers before making a purchasing decision, Google will also take into account those links that point to your pages from external websites. And, the more important and prestigious those external referring sites are, the higher your own website will be rated by Google. It is therefore extremely important to have a good title and description for our website’s home page, but it is equally important to make sure that the titles and descriptions for the remaining pages accurately reflect their contents (nobody wants to read a book whose chapter titles are all the same). It goes without saying -unless your company name is Coca-Cola or Nike- that you should not use the name of your business as a page title. If someone already knew your company by name, they probably would know your web address as well.
4. Learning from your clients
You should review from time to time your website’s traffic statistics and derive from them those search engines and search terms that have primarily been used to find your website. At the same time, this information will identify those keywords most often entered by your potential clients. If you then create new pages using these same concepts and look for partners willing to include in their websites a referral link to your home page, you will start noticing a progressive improvement of your website’s ranking, at least for those searches that deliver the most profitable results.
Conclusion
In your race to become a highly ranked website, do not try to compete using very broad terms. Your site can join a search engine’s elite (top 30 results), or even be part of its cream of the crop (top 10 results), if you identify and segment your market niche accurately. In fact, even though you may end up registering less Internet traffic than before, or less than your competitors, the ratio between the number of visitors that simply pass through your site and the number of potential clients, also known as the customer conversion ratio, will be much higher. After all, what are you most interested in, traffic or clients?
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About The Author
Fernando Macia is Human Level Communications’ CEO, a company with offices in Alicante, Spain and Dallas, Texas. We specialize in web design, CMS development, search engine optimization and traffic statistics data mining. http://www.humanlevel.com.
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Permanent link to this post (1701 words, estimated 6:48 reading time)
June 18th, 2006
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