Search Engine Marketing

Finding Keywords: Six Tips for Choosing the Right Keywords to Use

2007-07-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

While most online marketers are ready to accept the fact that search engines can bring a large volume of low cost traffic to a website, the surprising reality is that many have little or no clue as to how they should go about doing so. Several different aspects make up search engine marketing; including submission of websites, creating search engine optimized content, interlinking websites and arguably the most important part- choosing keywords.

Keywords or keyword phrases are those terms that a potential customer uses on a search engine to look for a product or service that a website provides. So, for a jewelry manufacturer the word 'jewelry' would be a major keyword. Unfortunately, choosing keywords is not quite as easy as simply naming a product or category. There are many factors that should influence your decision as to what defines the right keyword(s).

It is important to remember that while choosing the right keywords is vital to the success of a marketing campaign, choosing keywords that are inappropriate will target the wrong people making the process of converting eyeballs to sales a nightmare. Here are some tips on choosing keywords that will give you great leads, which can easily be converted into sales.

1. Check out the competition.

Research your competitors and view their Meta tags to see which keywords they are using. This is a great way to quickly list down the most commonly used keywords for your type of business.

2. Make your own list.

Once you have the competitor keywords list, add to it any keywords you feel are important. Include your company name and city as well. Also add plurals and variations of the keywords. Make sure you spell important keywords in American as well as British English. So, in referencing the example used earlier, a jeweler would want to include 'jewelry' and 'jewellery' in his or her list.

3. Ask outsiders for help.

Rarely can you see your own business from an outsider's perspective. To get a layman's opinion, ask customers to send in keywords they relate to your company. You could also ask friends and family to make suggestions. You may be surprised at the keyword suggestions they come up with.

4. Evaluate your keywords using software.

Once you have a list, the process of choosing keywords is ready to move into the next stage of evaluation. Since you cannot possibly optimize your website for all of the keywords on your list, it is best to narrow that list down. Use software like WordTracker to decipher the popularity of each of your keywords and keyword phrases. Retain the most popular or frequently searched terms and discard those that are rarely searched. Google Adwords, Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool and Alta Vista's Prisma are also good tools to use when choosing keywords.

5. Be specific.

Rather than saying 'jewelry manufacturing' try saying 'men's jewelry manufacturing'. While the former may be a more popular search term and could possibly garner more eyeballs, the latter is likely to lead to more sales. People who search for 'jewelry manufacturing' could be looking for bridal jewelry, wedding jewelry or any other kind of jewelry available. If men's jewelry is your area of business, getting a bride to browse your website is a waste of marketing resources. It would be more effective to have 5 users interested in men's jewelry browse you site, rather than 25 that are interested in bridal jewelry.

6. Be flexible.

Always look to update your keywords based on the feedback received from visitors to your site, customers and website logs. Website logs can give exact information on which keywords are successful and which are not and is a great place to find reaffirmation for your keyword selection process.

Choosing keywords is a process that can dramatically affect the performance of your search engine marketing efforts and hence it is one that requires due attention. An important thing to keep in mind is that while getting a high ranking in search engines is important, it is more important to get a high ranking for a relevant keyword.

The main purpose of your efforts is to have customers that are looking for a specific product find YOUR specific product and with the right keywords, you can reach that goal.

Click to learn about Volusion's Marketing Services.

Stacie completed the Texas Creative program, receiving a degree in Advertising from the University of Texas at Austin, and is now happily employed with Volusion, Inc, http://Volusion.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stacie_Leonard

Is Google For Men And Yahoo For Women?

2007-07-26T04:58:00.000-07:00

This question always cross my mind, is Google developed for men and Yahoo for women? I know they both have, basically, the same potential, however, Yahoo is somewhat more user-friendly and perhaps a better place for “novices and women” to locate their content or search results. Not that I am calling women novices, please don’t get me wrong, what I am saying is, compared to Yahoo Google is just a one liner.

To be considered a true “expert” using any appliance or application, people or users who prefer to use and consider the Command Line Interface (CLI) a more effective and direct interaction with applications such as DOS, LINUX CLI, Cisco CLI etc. Looking at the layout of both search engines we could easily say Yahoo is and was built for the “novice” or let’s say the user who wishes to point and click for results.

Google does have categories and directories similar to Yahoo’s but where are they located? New users to the internet, or women on the internet, especially, using search engines find that they get more results or more meaningful results from their query just by using the available or to be more precise “the more visible” options available.

During any learning phase it is easier to catch on if you see, then click. I have seen students, teachers, managers, everyday users of computers/internet get lost in the web and the content within these so-called “super-power search engines” simply because they really can’t find what they want or there is too much that they can not process what they see or they have forgotten what they are really looking for.

It is quite easy to get side-tracked in these search engines’ vast databases and to make it even more technical, in most cases the results appear to bring the same pages or websites to the fore front. Getting a return of your query with 1,000,000 pages and the first 50 to 100 pages are basically the same is no fun.

One strong point that I find lacking in Google’s engine, and this is probably why Yahoo is for women or novices is the fact that I can simply click a category right in sight and get content relative to what I am looking for.

Writing this article springs another provocative question, is it that women have pushed Yahoo to make their engine more novice friendly or have they noticed that most internet users, content seekers, and shoppers prefer to use their service? What is the real driving force behind such simplicity but efficiency?

I will be the first to say, Google has tons of information within its database, but lately, it is even more difficult to find or even get listed in Google. Yahoo on the other hand is much easier. For a while now Google has been in the news, web articles, bulletin boards and basically every news or message portal as the most difficult to get listed or ranked in. As the super power of search engines, why can’t Google’s engine have more visible features?

Experts, information seekers, and generally ardent users of the internet all know and praise Google, for what? Yes they have a comprehensive database, but to gather information is extremely difficult at times. In most cases results from page 1 to 20, depending on your preference listing per page, surrounds the same websites. Why is that the case? If Google is so sophisticated and boast all the technological enhancements, why can’t it be easier to use this tool?

Frankly, if you don’t understand how to put your words together for a search string do not use Google, use the “novice” engine Yahoo. I would really like to see Google with a new face, something that portrays the fact that they understand technology and the way majority, not “techies”, perceive and use any software or available tool.

Sometime ago I got a picture depicting the differences between men and women, the image portrayed the males with a one switch, while the females have multiple switches, bells, whistles etc. At first I thought it was crazy and hilarious, however, over time I have noticed that nothing is really wrong with bells and whistles. In fact, in technology bells and whistles are called options.

These possibilities of options are what women have and will always demand to make they results more flowing and interesting. Bottom-line, heads up for Yahoo for clarity and usability and heads up for Google and their “techie” gang. But remember “techies” Google is finding more and more ways to make it more difficult for you to find your content.

Of note, Google has stated many times that they are in the process, and, have implemented many features to make it easier to find information needed in their databases. However, to me it has shown no improvements as I am yet to understand and know exactly what I want and what I am looking for. As a newbie I would be lost in “Google-Land” but thanks to a real “super-power search engine” Yahoo. Yahoo my friend you might not have as many pages and content as your rival Google, but, keep making it simple and the majority which you have will grow immensely.

Article written by: Christopher Nurse, www.globalhostings.net Thursday, August 24, 2006

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Nurse

The Curse Of The Google Sandbox - How to Break It!

2007-07-26T04:56:00.000-07:00

Who haven’t been in the Google Sandbox? As new website owners, we all experience the Google Sandbox dilemma. I can relate to the pain of webmasters and website owners who are currently experiencing being on the Google Sandbox. And I bring good news: there is a guaranteed way to come out of the Google Sandbox! But first, it is important that you know what is meant by Google Sandbox.

The Google Sandbox

Google Sandbox is such a popular term among webmasters, web marketing specialists and new website owners. Google Sandbox refers to the period when a new website appears invisible on the Google search results even after a month or two of search engine optimization. The most probable reason why new websites are placed in the Google Sandbox is that Google doesn’t see yet the importance of these websites.

New websites can be on the Google sandbox for at least three months. This is a test of patience for the website owner and of course the web marketers who have tried their best in promoting the website. It would be understandable to be on the Google sandbox for at least three months. But what about those websites which seem to be locked on the sandbox for many months already?

How To Get Out Of The Google Sandbox?

Who would want to be in the Google Sandbox forever? Of course, every single website owners aim to finally get hold of Google Sandbox freedom. But what can we do? The best and guaranteed way to get out of the Google sandbox is to focus on your website and not on Google. Forget about the Google Sandbox first and concentrate on more important things in web marketing.

Shift your focus from the Google sandbox to making your website more relevant. You can’t simply get out of the sandbox – you need to impress Google with your website. This way, Google will be able to see your website’s importance and when it does – boom! Out of the Google sandbox you go!

How Earn Google’s Respect

These effective tips in search engine optimization will help your website in its struggle to be free from the Google Sandbox. These are easy steps that are undoubtedly effective.

• Equip your website with the relevant and useful web content. Your website must have a unique content.

• Submit your website to high quality and relevant web directories.

• Create relevant articles that provide useful information about your website’s theme and submit them to article directories. This a good way of generating quality one way links.

• Blogs, forums and other interactive stuffs can add to your website’s relevance.

Why let your website remain on the Google Sandbox when you can let it come out in no time? Don’t be contented being on the shadows of other websites. Instead create your website’s own shadow! Come out of the Google Sandbox now – it’s easy, just follow these tips and soon your website is free!

This article is written by nPresence, an online web marketing agency that specializes in Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click advertising, Content Management Systems, Web Design, Conversion Tracking and Analysis. For all your web marketing needs, please visit Internet Marketing Company Ireland.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Monica_Corral-lorica

Are You Sure You Are Not Spamming The Search Engines? Here's How To Tell

2007-07-26T04:54:00.000-07:00

Webmaster who lack sufficient knowledge about search engine optimization and search engine spamming may already be utilizing spamming techniques without even knowing it. It is important that webmasters and search engine optimizers realize what search engine spamming is to be able to avoid it. Remember that search engine spamming – intentional or not – still causes a number if penalties from the search engines.

The fact is that there are really webmasters who use search engine spamming intentionally. They utilize search engine spamming techniques to boost their website’s ranking on the search results. What they are doing is technically tricking the search engines. This action indeed deserves penalty. But how about those who use search engine spamming unintentionally? The penalty remains the same! So the best thing to do is to be familiar with the search engine spamming techniques and avoid them at all times.

Search Engine Spamming

Technically, search engine spamming is the trick other webmasters use to secure a higher site ranking position on search results. Webmasters who use the search engine spamming technique create irrelevant web content that appears on a highly visible position of the search results. However, search engine spamming does not adhere to the rules set by the search engines so it normally results to penalty and worst – site banning.

Commonly Used Search Engine Spamming Techniques

Here are the three commonly used search engine spamming techniques today. Avoid them at all times if you don’t want your website to get penalized or worst – banned!

• Hidden Text

If you use texts of the same color to the background of the web page, you are spamming the search engines. In the first place, why will you use the same color on the text and the background if you don’t have any other motive than providing your site visitors with relevant information? The reason behind hidden text is keyword stuffing. Webmasters place keywords on the page through hidden text.

• Doorway Pages

This search engine spamming technique works by optimizing a particular page to rank well on the search results. This page, also called the doorway page, contains loads of keywords (which is another spamming technique – keyword stuffing). And the doorway page leads to a completely different website when clicked.

• Link Spamming

Avoid joining link farms for they will do more harm than good to your website. It is true that the search engines value links but they value only relevant links! Link farms offer nothing but irrelevant links.

Knowing these things about search engine spamming, let me ask you again, are you spamming the search engines or not? Beware because these search engine spamming techniques are off to pull your websites down!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Monica_Corral-lorica

Better Keywords More Sales - Three Steps to Better Search Engine Keyword Selection

2007-07-26T04:53:00.000-07:00

Are you among the Web masters in search of the search engine ranking Holy Grail? If so, sooner or later you have to accept the fact that search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your Web sites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination your Web site and then find their way within the Web site, you need to provide them with specific and effective signs. This can be done by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the “Open Sesame”! of the Internet for the search engines and your customers. Find the exact right words or phrases, and presto! Hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are vague or over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it to your site or you seeing any real profits from the visitors reduces drastically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. Aggressive marketing campaign without precise selection of keywords is just a very expensive exercise in wasting time and resources. The right people may never get the chance to find out about your products and services. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven't followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. In the middle of the business battlefield it's hard to be objective. This is why you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of possible search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers' understanding is significantly different.

Your customers are an invaluable resource. The words you gather from talking with them may not have been considered from deep inside the trenches of your business. Only after you have gathered as many keyword phrases from outside resources should you add your own keywords to the list. With this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation. Consider the first step brain storming in which you just gather ideas without bias.

Evaluation step is where you narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your Web site. By quality visitors I mean visitors who are most likely to buy rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, consider three elements: Demand, specificity, and motivation.

Demand is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more demand your keyword has, the more likely the chances are that the visitors use it while searching for your products on the Internet. Demand is sometimes called popularity as well.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Some software will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. Higher demand for keyword means more potential traffic for you.

The only problem with high demand keyword is the intense competition which makes it difficult for your site to show up at the top of the search engine search results. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you. Most search engine optimizing firms emphasize the fact that if your Web site is not on the first three pages, you will likely not see a significant traffic.

In your search for the right keyword, popularity isn't enough. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. Specific keywords that are usually a combination of three or four words indicate that the consumer is really looking to buy something. At least one search engine optimizing guru shared that his data shows most people who type in one or two words in looking for a product or service are doing research and those who type in three or four words are looking to buy.

There is another consideration. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword "gift shop." However, your company specializes in wedding anniversary gifts only. The keyword "wedding anniversary gift" would rank lower on the demand scale than "gift shop," but it would bring you the right customers. Instead of getting a bunch of people interested in baby shower gifts and graduation gifts, with the right keyword phrase, you will get only those consumers with pending need to find an anniversary gift quick.

In short, consumers ready to buy your product or take advantage of your services are the ones who will find you. Also, the more specific a keyword is the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. You always need to put yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivates them to look for a service or product. If you owned a talent agency, which one of the following two headings would appeal to your customers? "New York Job Listings" or "New York Talent Agency." The second one, of course! By using the second keyword combination you target people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are looking for a talent agent services. These are just the kind of clients who are motivated to talk to you.

After choosing the right keyword you must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines and the change in search engine algorithms. Your log files are not enough since they only show you a brief traffic analysis but they do not indicate how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

The most important connection you can make after the visitors enter your site is the connection between the keyword they used to get to your site and the sales you made after they entered your site.

For this, you need to rely on tools that track the visitors’ behavior after they enter your site. There are many programs that accomplish this task and in the next article we will review them and how they work.

Just remember that more traffic is a good thing only if you can convert casual visitors to paying customers. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. Keep the final profitability goal in mind as you search for those illusive profitable keywords.

Vishy Dadsetan writes articles that can actually help your clients. Articles that entertain. Articles just like this one. Additional information is available at: search engine submission, internet marketing strategy, and ppc search engine

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How To Dramatically Increase Your Profit Using Search Engine

2007-07-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

Most people will quickly run away or surrender without even trying in getting to the top of search engine. For them, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is really not for them. But did you know that once you have conquered the search engine, you have no problem whatsoever to make money online? In fact, your online business will keep on growing without you don't have to do anything.

So what if it takes a long time to do, is that mean you just want to throw away your potential income that really can change your life? If you have the desire to make money online more than anyone, you should consider doing this.

One method to increase your ranking in the search engine is by using community forums to build one-way links to your site.

Create accounts on community forums that are specifically related to your given niche. Once you have contributed significantly to the forum by posting useful information and helping newbies, you can then consider adding a signature that links to your site. This will create a one-way permanent link. It is also best to use a targeted keyword for your URL.

When it comes to search engine optimization, most things change. Only two things remain important: the amount and quality of "text" content and the amount of one-way incoming links you have. Reciprocal linking, over-optimized content, and black hat methods of increasing rankings will all vary in effectiveness with algorithm changes.

Each search engine has its own algorithm, but Google always leads with algorithm changes. If you spend enough time working on search engine optimization, tune your site to Google's changes. Forget the rest. In 2-3 years from now, they will be doing what Google did yesterday.

While Google is the most important search engine, it is important to make sure that your site also gets indexed by Yahoo and MSN – both of which have easy-to-access submission forms. These search engines have less competition, which means it will be somewhat easier for you to dominate your niche and pick up whatever extra traffic is available.

If you feel lost, re-read the section above about search engine optimization. It is hard for you to digest at first, but everything will get easier in time. Once you have done that, we will move on to Page Rank (PR).

Find ways to get links to your site from high-PR authority sites. You may be able to do this with article submission services, press release services, and joint ventures. Getting links on high-PR sites will not only confer some PR to you, but it will also increase your rankings, and get you spidered by search engines more frequently.

Even though meta tags have no relevance to search engine ranking anymore, using them can sometimes help clarify the purpose of your website through a number of different ways. The first way is by helping a spider figure out the purpose of confusing pages. The second way is by providing a description for search engines to use when they pull up your site.

Take action immediately to optimize your website. You might now see results overnight, but slowly your website will be notice by the search engine. Take 2 to 3 hours per day for optimizing your website. Sooner or later, you will be surprise to see your website on Top 3 pages of the search engine.

Izrul Fizal has made a living with selling just one remarkable tool and earn himself a residual income every month. Visit his website Make Money Online and How To Start An Internet Business to find out how.

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The Power Of Social Marketing And Self Promotion: Life Beyond Search Engine Optimisation

2007-07-26T04:50:00.000-07:00

The recent report by Hitwise, which showed that MySpace has overtaken MSN search in driving retail traffic, should make all those involved in website marketing sit up and take note. Firstly, it underlines the value of social marketing as a way of reaching your customer base but secondly, the figures also show that the total amount of retail traffic generated by the top three search engines amounts to only 21.95%. Why is this important? Well what strikes me right away is that over 78% of retail traffic is not delivered through the top three search engines. I would thus argue then that there is a hell of a lot traffic that is conceivably up for grabs. The point is do we spend too much time worrying about search engine optimisation and not enough effort worrying about other forms of traffic generation.

Social networking is a good example of one of the other options available. The effect that social networking sites can have can be seen in an analysis of online photo sharing. In the UK figures from Hitwise show, that MySpace is responsible for an astonishing 22% of all Photobucket’s UK traffic. MySpace itself though is only the twelfth most visited site in the UK where as in the US it is the number one site, which suggests that the amount of traffic for US Photobucket is exponentially even greater.

You might ask how this affects me as my product or service is unsuited to social networking? I would argue that there is always way to utilise any channel that has the potential to drive traffic. Admittedly, some products or services are more suited to the medium but any business can make use of video opportunities presented by these or video specific sites such as YouTube. If you can make a short promotional film good, funny or trendy enough then the viral potential is phenomenal.

Social networking or video sites need not be the only distribution platforms. Self promotion should also include regular press releases. Again, there are existing means of distribution through highly regarded sites such as PRWeb and PRNewswire. The key is to make them sharp and relevant and covering something that people are likely to want to read, maybe local success stories or things you or your business have achieved and not just sales pitches. The idea is to drive traffic to your site, which is the place for the pitch. A similar strategy would be to utilise successful EZines in your field by submitting articles of interest that will be picked up upon by readers.

Sometimes old fashioned tradition mediums od delivery can get overlooked. People still read paper newspapers and shop on a high street. Simple line adverts, or handing out leaflets can actually be effective and the forgotten Guerrilla tactics that symbolised some early web marketing such as stickers and stunts can still work well, although they tend to be more effective with trendy brands.

All these methods are on the edges of traditional marketing strategies and individually may only have a marginal effect. If however they are joined together as a suite of ideas then the cumulative result is likely to be much greater than the parts. The common thread of all the above is to get noticed and thus hopefully drive traffic. As the statistics show There is a huge amount of traffic that can be driven to your site that does not necessarily involve search engines and the quid pro quo is that if you can generate a buzz then you may actually see yourself climb the SERP’s anyway as people link to you funky, funny or poignant video or podcast. If you do in fact have a marketing budget then these methods are still (if not more) relevant as the use of professional marketing and PR agencies could substantially improve the response.

I am not suggesting you look to ditch traditional SEO but that you open your eyes to the possibilities that exist beyond. I have deliberately avoided talking about PPC, Blogging or RSS feeds as it is likely that you are probably employing these methods already. Even though these will take up a fair proportion of that 78% on non search driven traffic the point is that by not utilising some of these alternative marketing strategies you are not tapping in to the other potential sources of available traffic. Ultimately, there are probably millions of people who would be happy to view your site, it just you have to let them know you are there and these are extra ways you can do so.

News, information and advice for website marketers. www.bluenyellow.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_M_Simpson

Idiot's Guide to Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T04:49:00.001-07:00

What is search engine marketing?

Search engine marketing involves strategically optimizing the elements of your web site and your web campaign in such a way that your site becomes popular in the major search engines.

There are two primary types of search engine marketing, the paid method, or pay-per-click, and the unpaid method, natural search engine results.

The paid method, or pay-per-click, involves bidding and paying for specific search engine rankings. One advantage to using pay-per-click is that you can quickly dial up huge responses, for example 200-500 clicks per day, which allows you to quickly test ad copy and response rates. One major disadvantage is the price--you are directly paying for each and every click you receive.

Natural search engine results, although they take much longer to implement, have no direct cost. The only cost is that associated with the strategies used to achieve higher natural search engine results rankings.

So how do you do it? What do the search engines look for? Some of the top predictors of natural search engine rankings are the content of your site as it relates to your chosen keyword, your meta-keyword and meta-description tags on your web site, the title of your web site, and the link popularity of your website.

One note here: it is difficult to achieve high search engine rankings for more than a few keywords on any given web page. So the key here is to design different web pages for each keyword you wish to rank highly for, and optimize those pages for that specific keyword.

How to optimize your page? Make sure that every element of your page includes your keyword at least once, and in the copy of the web page itself, the keyword should have between a 3% and 5% keyword density. Keyword density is the percentage of times your keyword is inserted into your copy, as compared to other words in your copy.

So, for example, if your web page were on “search engine marketing” you would make sure you used the term “search engine marketing” in each of the following elements of your web page. Here is an example:

Title: Search Engine Marketing

Keywords: search engine marketing

Description: How to use search engine marketing to boost your sales.

Web page: For every one hundred words on your web page, the phrase “search engine marketing” would occur at least 3 times.

One of the most important things to do to build a strong natural search engine ranking is to increase your link popularity. Link popularity is the number of web sites, other than your own, that link to your web site. Some of the best ways to do this include: Adding your web site to many web directories that are related to your web site’s topic, asking other web sites to add your site to their links page, and submitting articles to the various article directories with your web site link intact, so that each of the article directories are linking to your site.

Sean Mize is a successful offline and online entrepreneur and marketer, and is the author of “15 Steps to Internet Success“. To receive a free copy, simply follow this link: Search Engine Marketing

Are you interested in learning how to build a responsive mailing list? Click here: List Building

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_Mize

How to Get Listed on the Search Engines

2007-07-26T04:47:00.000-07:00

Search Engines. Everybody wants to be on them and the nearer to the top the better. Why? Because search engines bring you people who are actually looking for what you sell. It's like the Yellow Pages. People use them when they're ready to buy and if you show up on the top of the list, you're highly likely to get the first chance at the sale.

Now that we've established the importance of getting listed on the search engines, let's look at some of the criteria they use to list you. A book can literally be written on this topic as the criteria vary from search engine to search engine but the following are some of the common ones that can get you where you want to be.

Buy your way in

The fastest and surest way to get onto the search engines and enjoy a guaranteed decent ranking in the top 10 results is to buy your way in. Almost all search engines offer "pay-per-click advertising" or what the industry likes to call PPC. Ranking using this method usually depends on how much you bid on a key word, meaning most search engines use a type of auction system to rank you. While this is not the only option, it must be mentioned so that if you find any of the following daunting or too much work, you're aware that you do have a choice.

To get indexed without paying isn't easy and to get ranked high and to preserve that ranking is a talent in itself, especially since the search engines tend to revise their criteria from time to time. Given the fact that they do revise, although we've touched on this topic before, we too need to revise what we've said before to keep you up-to-date on what's happening in the industry. Now let's look at how to get listed for free.

Repetition of Key Words

First, we need to explain what are key words. Just think of it like this. The words that your potential customers are likely to type in when searching for your product or service are your key words. You need to have these on your web page and the more often the better. For example, if you sell shoes and your store name is Paymore trust me, no one is going to be searching for Paymore. People are likely to search for shoes. This is therefore one of your key words. Of course, you will have the politically correct carrot who doesn't search for shoes but for footwear, meaning this is another key word you want on your website. OK, there will be some people looking for your store in particular and will type in your store name and that's great and this should work just fine too, but needless to say - I hope - your name would obviously be prominent on your website anyway.

Now, can you therefore try to trick the search engine by putting the key words in succession like this, "shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, and more shoes" so as to ensure a higher ranking than your competitor? As a rule, you should never set out to trick the search engine or anyone else for that matter. The smarter search engines' robots will eventually pick up on what you're doing and boy will they drop you to the bottom of their rankings! That is of course if they don't delete you altogether.

Use Robot-Readable Content

We mentioned robots in the previous paragraph because this is what most search engines use. There are hardly any search engines with staff manually adding websites to their indices. The robots are trained to read text. This means that you should try to use more text on your website than images or flash which they have difficulty reading.

Antiquity

Very important for your ranking is the age of your website. A website bought today will not appear in the search engines tomorrow for free. In fact, the average time to get ranked has gone up to 12-15 months because millions of websites around the world are begging the robots to come look at them. So the earlier you start your website, the higher you will rank, even if it's just one page. This also underlines the importance of getting your website up and running now. If all that separates you from your competitor is who got on the Web first and you both have all of the other criteria in place, the older one will get placed higher.

Updating Frequency

The more frequently you update your website, the higher you will rank. The robots, once they find you and like you, come back at certain intervals to see if you have new content and of course to ensure that you haven't gone out of business.

Your Domain Name

To Google, this doesn't seem to mean too much but to engines like MSN, your name in .com is key. So if your domain name is Matikoor.com and you sell bridal accessories, you could show up high on Google for bridal accessories while on MSN you're likely to be number one for Matikoor. A good strategy is to get both names in .com.

Title

What's the title of your webpage? The search engines pay attention to this too. If you throw in some of your key words there that would also help your ranking.

Links

Was I saving the best for last? Links are extremely important to practically every major search engine, so get as many websites as possible to link to your website. The search engines assume that the more websites linked to yours, the more important it must be and rank you higher.

Unique Content

So we were not saving the best for last because this is the last point on this list and it is not exactly the best but still worth mentioning. Search engines like unique content. This is why parked pages tend to get low rankings if any. What's a parked page? A page with either a standard "coming soon" or "under construction" notice or with a plethora of link ads.

There are more criteria not mentioned above. In fact, some search engines like Google guard their criteria like trade secrets but the above are the main ones that have been tried, tested and proven. So now it's your turn to go try, test and prove.

Aleem Khan is an accredited Internet Expert with the http://www.InternationalInternetAuthority.com which is a safe place to GetYourNameIn.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Aleem_Khan

Recent Changes at Google, Yahoo, and MSN

2007-07-26T04:46:00.000-07:00

There are many changes taking place in the top search engines. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are all adapting to the many transformations occuring within the search industry. Because of these changes, I thought I would take the time to give you an overview of what's taking place within the market and how it affects you as a webmaster. To begin, let's start with Google.

Back in 2003, Google would index and crawl the web about once a month and everything would change all in one shot. WebMasterWorld would actually name these updates with names like Brandy, Florida, and Bourbon.

Google has moved away from these monthly updates to an ever- changing process. You can now see daily changes within the SERPS with the biggest changes occuring during algorithm updates.

Late June and July of this year saw some major changes within the Google algorithm. If your site was hurt from this algorithm change, you should re-examine your site and be sure to follow the guidelines below:

1. Pursue a continuous linking campaign with other quality sites. This can be achieved through article syndication, exchanging RSS feeds, submitting to directories or syndicating a press release.

2. Create a Google sitemap to increase the coverage of your webpages.

3. Make sure your site has a clear navigation system. Every page should be reachable from at least one static link.

4. Avoid all deceptive or manipulative behavior. Don't get involved in linking schemes. Avoid all forms of cloaking and avoid hidden text or hidden links.

Besides the changes taking place within organic search results, there have also been recent changes within Google Adwords. In July of 2006, Google updated their landing page algorithm. These changes have harmed a number of online marketers. Many advertisers who had been paying five or ten cents a click are now required to bid at least 50 cents to a dolloar or more. There are also other advertisers who kept their bid prices, but those bids are now buying only 3rd or 4th page positions when they used to buy first page positions.

Some advertisers have even been effectively shutdown.

However, keep in mind that not all advertisers have been affected. There are four main types of sites that have been hit the hardest. These include:

# one page sales letter websites
# squeeze pages
# adsense sites (particularly those involved in Adsense arbitrage)
# affiliate sites

The new landing page algorithm gives a quality score to every landing page. Fortunately for us, Google has left some clues as to how they are ranking these pages.

Below are 3 general guidelines that will help those who have been hurt by the recent updates.

1. Provide relevant and substantial content.

2. Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information related to the product or service in your ad.

3. Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site's content.

To stay in accordance with the new quality score guidelines, you may want to remove all Adsense ads from your landing pages, create or find more original content for your sites, ensure that your landing page has at least 500 words, and check to make sure that your ad relates perfectly with the content of your landing page.

Google is getting smarter everyday. Our job is not to trick the search engines but to deliver truly valuable information to our visitors. By doing this along with some basic on-page and off-page optimization techniques, you should perform very well in the search engines over the long-haul.

There have also been some recent changes at MSN.

They have changed the name of their search engine spiders. Before the changes, they were all called "msnbot,". Fortunately, they are now starting to group their spiders into separate categories.

# The MSN Shopping bot is msnbot-products.
# The MSN News bot is msnbot-news.
# The MSN Image Search bot is msnbot-media.
# The MSN search bot is still called msnbot.

It should now be much easier for webmasters to decipher what's really going on in their web logs. In addition, webmasters can also block specific bots if they need to, without blocking MSN Search.

Last, but not least, there is Yahoo. This company has experienced some very exciting changes within the past few months.

One of these is the launch of a new Yahoo Search Crawler. The new crawler is faster and more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, website owners should notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the Yahoo crawler.

Yahoo also released an index update in mid-July. You can read all about it at http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000327.html .

In addition, there are a number of other, smaller-based search engines who are leading the way in the future of search engine technology. One of the best examples I have seen is Eurekster.com.

They have developed a social search engine powered by the wisdom of crowds.

Eurekster makes use of its own SearchMemory technology, which remembers the sites a user finds useful and presents them higher in the results the next time they search. Then, Eurekster lets a user share their searches and sites with friends. For example, if you do a search on "internet marketing", you'll see sites related to "internet marketing" that your friends also found useful. These results are marked with an icon.

This personalization helps to increase relevancy in a way that no algorithm can match.

I expect to see many changes within Google, Yahoo, and MSN in upcoming years as they merge search engine technology with social search in order to make search results more relevant as well as personalized. One thing is clear, the future evolution of search is sure to be exciting to watch.

Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews and SEO-News newsletters. You can also find additional tips and news on webmaster and SEO topics by Kim at the SiteProNews blog (blog.sitepronews.com/). Kim’s email is: kim @ seo-news.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kim_Roach

Go for Keywords-Add Value to Your Website!

2007-07-26T04:44:00.000-07:00

So, what are keywords anyway? Little wonders if you really want to know. They are as important for the success of your website as the advertising and other promotional means. No keywords, no SERP.

Linking strategy is probably the most important SEO technique, but keywords follow closely. As a mater of fact, you could exchange as many links as you wish, but, without content, your website has no real value. Without keywords your website cannot be found. People use keywords to find information. They type into the search engines’ search bars different words and phrases hoping to find relevant answers. If you want web users to find your website you have to optimize your web pages for the keywords they use.

It’s not enough to write the keywords in your text, or in your keyword META tag. You need to use keywords everywhere: URL, page title, META description, META keywords, page copy, ALT attributes. You also need to think keyword density and where exactly on the page you should place them: headings, subtitles, first paragraph, last sentence, footers and so on. You have to bold some keywords, use others in text links, in lists and so on. Yet, all these aspects are easier than choosing the right keywords.

Choosing the Right Keywords

How difficult can choosing the right keywords be? Well, if you already know what people are looking for, it is not so difficult. However, if you don’t… you have a big problem. The first problem is that you are not going to be able to reach the right segment of your targeted market and the second is that you will fail to deliver the right message to the search engines. As people trust search engine results when they look to buy something online, your only chance to increase online sales is to be have a high ranking in the SERP.

When you choose your keywords you also have to think about high rankings and branding. What you choose has to be directly related to your products and your business name. Your keywords have to describe what you sell or your services. Some SEO experts recommend that you also add common spelling mistakes at your keyword list. I wouldn’t. If you run a serious business you don’t want it associated to any unprofessional artifice. So describe your products honestly, correctly and explicitly.

You’ll have a long list of keywords and phrases to start with. Unfortunately you cannot use all the keywords in a list for your SEO purposes. Choose the most relevant keywords and start from there.

To determine keyword relevancy you could use Wordtracker – a tool used by most of the SEO experts and gurus around the world. The free Overture keyword tool or the keyword generation tool provided by Google AdWords are perfect if you run a pay per click campaign.

Once you have the list of relevant keywords all you need to do is write the content of your website. Remember: relevant keywords bring value to your website, but you shouldn’t overdo it. Your visitors should be able to read your texts without even noticing you are using keywords. Do you think you can master this art? If not, hire a professional writer. Quality has its price.

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com

Paid URL Inclusion - The Process and Benefits

2007-07-26T04:43:00.000-07:00

From the hundreds of search engines today, some are offering paid URL inclusion. What is paid URL inclusion and how does it differ from the regular free listing on the search engines. Paid URL inclusion means you have to pay for a particular amount annually for some search engines to index your web pages.

Since all the search engines have “crawlers” and “spiders” to index all web pages online, why is there still a web marketing technique like paid URL inclusion? It is true that the search engines will eventually find your web pages and index them; however, it could take at least of couple of months for them to finally index the entire website. This is where paid URL inclusion advances. It offers faster indexing of your web pages.

Paid URL Inclusion Process

Search engines that offer paid URL inclusion service promise websites of a faster spidering and indexing of the website’s pages. Faster indexing means faster visibility of your website on the search engine page results. This is done through an extra “spider” that indexes paid inclusions. This extra spider indexes paid inclusions faster than the regular “spider” indexing web pages for free.

The primary difference between the free URL inclusion and the paid URL inclusion in the search engines is the speed at which the pages of your website are indexed. You know how speed matters in terms of indexing your website, right? This is the reason why paid URL inclusion is so tempting.

Paid Inclusion Annual Fee And Renewal Fee?

Paid URL inclusion asks a specific amount to be paid by the website owner in exchange of the faster spidering and indexing of the web pages. Some webmasters raise questions as to why there is still a renewal fee when in fact the website and all its pages are already fully indexed.

The renewal fee is actually for the purpose of keeping your website on the search engine’s index. Be informed that search engines offering paid URL inclusion remove your website and its web pages from the search engines’ index after the pay period. This means you have to wait for your site to be spidered again. Your website will be lost for a particular duration of time until it is indexed again.

Is Paid URL Inclusion For You?

The fact remains that the search engines will still spider your web pages and index your website whether you pay an annual fee for paid URL inclusion or not. Thinking of the long wait ahead for free search engine URL submission, you may opt to use search engine paid URL inclusion instead. If you want immediate spidering and indexing of your web pages and your entire website, paid URL inclusion is the web marketing service for you!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Monica_Corral-lorica

5 Different Website Linking Strategies

2007-07-26T04:42:00.001-07:00

Website linking can come in many forms and each one has a different strategy. Each strategy has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. Learning these different strategies can definitely help a webmaster obtain better search engine rankings and even more importantly, increased website traffic.

1. Reciprocal link exchanges – This strategy of generally the choice for start-up websites, which have a very small advertising budget. On short term this can produce quite noticeable effects, but it is thought that in the long term they may be more of a hindrance than a benefit.

2. Obtaining media attention (Press Releases)– This is a more advanced technique of obtaining back links. The principle is simple though: You post a press release or better still you launch a press release campaign and then you await for it to be published. The results can be quite dramatic, as the most successful press releases can generate thousands of quality links. The main obstacle is to obtain the media attention to begin with. Journalists require press releases that are interesting and newsworthy. A sales pitch type of press release will get you nowhere. Also you must make it easier for journalists to find your press release by posting it in as many profile sites as possible.

3. Writing articles – This is a very powerful method of obtaining back links. The basic idea is that you post an article which contains at least a link to your website, to other sites such as article directories (e.g. EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com etc) and give others the right to republish the article for absolutely for free, with the basic condition that they will not modify the article itself and that they will give you credit for it. Remember just about every webmasters is constantly on the search for fresh content.

4. Buying links – This is the last method I propose. For this strategy to be successful you must have quite a large budget. The advantages are quite obvious. What you see is what you get. When using this method though, please check the page where the link is located has the page rank it’s supposed to have, that the link doesn’t have the “no follow” tag attached and that the link is permanent.

5. Link Directories – This is a better way of producing links, although it does have its drawbacks. It is vitally important to make sure you choose only those directories that do not require a reciprocal link. Some of the more “unscrupulous” directories don’t actually give you a “direct” link back to your site, but do a redirect through some internal files on their sites. Although human visitors can still navigate to your site, search engines will not regard it as a link pointing to your site.

Also it is also advisable to stay away from badly organized directories, as these tend to be considered “bad neighborhood” links and can cause some serious damage on the long run. As a whole though, this technique is very powerful as it allows even start up websites to obtain decent one-way links.

Most webmasters submit their sites to link directories manually, and this can be a very time consuming and boring process. There is software available that can speed up this process considerably, letting you acquire hundreds of quality links in a short period of time.

Bruce Hearder runs and operates DirectoryLinkSubmitter.com An Easy To Use Software Package that Can Help You Get Hundreds of Quality One-way Links Pointing At Your Web site. Find out more at http://www.DirectoryLinkSubmitter.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bruce_Hearder

Search Engine Marketing---Can It Work for You?

2007-07-26T04:40:00.000-07:00

Search engine marketing is an incredibly lucrative and incredibly under-utilized aspect of any online marketing campaign.

When the internet was in its infancy, those companies who managed to get to the top of search engine rankings naturally were rewarded by high numbers of clicks and sales.

As a result of this, massive numbers of webmasters tried to outwit the search engines and their competition by discovering the formulas for site search engine rankings, and created methods to circumvent the natural and honest method of search engine optimization.

Pursuant to this, most large search engines have outlawed the spurious ‘black hat’ techniques for getting to the top of search engine rankings.

The major search engines have also created pay-per-click additions to their natural search engine listings, giving webmasters and online businesses the ability to ‘buy their way’ to the top of a search engine page, if not to the top of the natural search engine listings.

What is left today for the online business owner, and can search engine marketing techniques be effective for creating traffic and sales?

I think that today’s search engine marketing efforts represent only a small portion of the techniques and potential that is available to the honest webmaster who uses ‘white hat’ techniques.

Although many web companies spend billions of dollars annually to get sponsored listings and ‘buy’ their way to the top of the search engine pages, it is assumed that most search engine traffic is still generated via the natural search listings--that is, the unpaid search listings.

What does that mean to the ‘white hat’ (or honest) webmaster? It means that by effectively performing web site optimizing behavior and various search engine marketing tactics that are perfectly natural in execution (so that they won’t be banned by the search engines in the future), there is plenty of room for webmasters to use search engine marketing techniques to generate more business.

Can it work for you? Of course it can work for you. The biggest question is, are you willing to do the work necessary to make it work for you? Are you willing to study the nature of the techniques used by each of the top ten websites in your top 100 preferred keywords and word phrases? Are you willing to study which keyword phrases people use to get to your website, which keyword phrases lead to buying behavior, and then execute a plan to revolutionize your traffic and sales?

I’d love to send you a complimentary copy of my new book on getting started online: “15 Steps to Internet Success“. To access it immediately, click here: Search Engine Marketing

Sean Mize is a successful offline and online entrepreneur and marketer, and has written extensively on the subject of internet marketing.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_Mize

Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T04:39:00.000-07:00

There is probably no better example of excellence in marketing a Search Engine than those who work for Google and indeed they also are great in helping folks market their businesses using their fine search engine. Google is all about marketing; they help empower businesses, non-profits and even entire governments by helping them get the word out to the masses and abundance of Internet Users World Wide.

Search engine marketing should most likely be a class required of all business students before they secure a piece of paper stating they have earned an MBA, because without basic knowledge of search engine marketing, they are of little use to the Corporations they may work at or even their own ventures for that matter.

Search engine marketing is both a skill and a talent and it is important to know what people are looking for and which key words they are typing in. It means that you must know how to properly have pages which are geared towards attracting these Internet Surfers without diverting what you company is truly about. Search engine gurus of marketing are extremely valuable in today’s business world, so I sincerely hope you will consider this in 2006.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance in the Online Think Tank and solve the problems of the World; www.WorldThinkTank.net/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow

Crucial Steps in Planning Successful Search Engine Marketing Campaigns

2007-07-26T04:38:00.001-07:00

Search engine marketing is nowadays renowned to be a very powerful form of online marketing, primarily aiming to boost the success of a business by increasing its popularity and exposure. Thanks to the long-term benefits it offers, lots of online business owners rely exclusively on search engine marketing to boost the profitability of their business. However, in order to get the most out of any search engine marketing campaign, companies have to establish a set of specific goals and make careful preparations.

Any company, regardless of its nature, size and position on the market, should always establish an efficient business plan before initiating new search engine advertising campaigns. The business plan should be properly designed and carefully analyzed down to the last detail. Without proper previous preparations, the prospects of any search engine advertising campaign are very unpredictable. In order to ensure a stable ROI (return on investment) and great exposure for your business equally among new visitors and already-existing customers, your search engine marketing campaign should be properly designed upon the following structure:

- Coherent, relevant and brief mission statement (description of your business);

- Properly promote your specific selling points;

- Address yourself to the most appropriate categories of clients;

- Establish and maintain contact with your clients.

The first step in creating an efficient search engine marketing campaign is to write a solid mission statement or description. This phase is crucial for achieving a successful campaign, so you should ensure that you come up with the most appropriate mission statement for your business. Your mission statement is the first piece of information that will be addressed to your targeted visitors and potential clients, so it should have great potential in drawing people’s attention, enticing them to find out more about your business. It can be quite difficult to write the most appropriate mission statement for your business while restricting it to only a few sentences in the same time. However, the trick is to include in it the major benefits you offer to your clients, using powerful and memorable words.

A good example of a solid mission statement looks like this: “Our Company specializes in designing and developing highly competitive business management solutions that boost the efficiency and profitability of online companies worldwide.” This statement presents the services you offer to clients, the clients’ benefits of employing your services and the targeted market (in this case online companies). You should create similar structures, always keeping them right to the point and using “catchy” phrases. Never neglect this first basic step when trying to achieve a successful and rewarding search engine marketing campaign.

The second step in building a powerful search engine advertising campaign consists of promoting your unique, specific selling points to your site’s visitors and potential customers. This phase of the campaign requires you to identify and emphasize the unique features of your company, the traits that separate your business from the rest. Remember that your specific selling points may take various forms: superior services or products, more affordable fees, very quick delivery of the products, long-lasting warranty and so on. You should carefully analyze all your specific selling points, and prioritize the selling characteristics of your business, always starting with the ones that you consider most relevant and important.

The third step of your search engine marketing campaign consists of identifying the most appropriate categories of clients you wish to address to. Practically, this phase requires you to mentally portray the image of “the ideal customer”. For instance, your targeted clients might be your already-existing, regular customers, newcomers or, why not, the clients of the competition. After you have marked the overall features of the “ideal client”, you should progress by sketching the traits of your targeted customers in higher detail. You should account for features such as age, sex, marital status, level of income, ethnicity and so on. Undoubtedly, the more information you gather about your targeted customers, the better prepared your business will be at appropriately servicing the targeted market. This phase is vital for achieving success in your search engine advertising campaigns, so pay lots of attention when going through this section of the business plan.

The final step is also considered to be the most important, so you should carefully elaborate this stage. Establishing and maintaining contact with your targeted customers is vital for the success of your business, so you need to come up with appropriate “calls to action”. Remember that in order to sell your products or services to customers you have to maintain a good level of interest among your targeted visitors and keep them on your web pages for as long as possible.

Call to action plans can take multiple forms: determining the potential clients to subscribe to your free e-newsletter, to ask for more information about your business, to ask for advice from your representatives, etc. In order to achieve success in your search engine marketing campaigns, you should elaborate as many calls to action as you can think of. In addition, you should create a set of keywords and design “landing web pages” for each individual call to action. By doing this, you will be able to get the most out of your campaigns and improve your business’ ROI coefficient.

Pay equal attention to all these previously described aspects and you will be able to achieve powerful search engine marketing campaigns which will bring long-term benefits to the online business you are running.

So, if you want to find out more about search engine marketing or about search engine advertising please visit this link.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Groshan_Fabiola

Tactic of Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T04:36:00.000-07:00

Search engine marketing is an act of marketing a website via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities. The other definition is "Improving an organizations visibility within search results when search phrases entered at search sites returns a listing of related web sites".

Search Engine marketing methods include:

1. Search engine optimization
2. Search engine advertising

Search engine optimization:

Every business expands form local market to global market if the search engine methods are applied properly such that the web presence is felt in the search engine. Main tool towards the global presence is website and if it is properly marketed than it will be viewed by many visitors through the search engine. Any of the marketing method will do for the task. A search engine will display search results, by matching the keywords input by the search engine user with web pages in their database. Search engine will display a listing of websites with the correct matches for the user keyword. This makes it important for a website to be optimized so that it contains keywords which match with the words typed by search engine user. Before moving out for the search engine marketing or optimization, one thing should always be kept in mind that what are the keywords that will sell the product. Do a thorough market research or keyword research and see that what the visitors are looking out on the search engines. Provide the relevant information on your web page, for what the visitor is looking out.

Search engine advertising:

After a website is optimized for search engine, a company can go in for search engine advertising. Search engine advertising is a process of paying money to search engines or directories to enhance a sites position; paid placement and paid inclusion programs are included.

The whole process of search engine marketing is not just marketing the site but also making aware of the products to the potential customer.

Being a developer, I can suggest you to visit the site Corporatesitesolutions.com and its pages like Website development, for getting an idea how the website should be designed so that it doesn't get penalized.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nik_Chauhan

Search Engine Marketing Services: Trends and Predictions

2007-07-26T04:34:00.000-07:00

The search engine marketing industry is consistently evolving, sometimes at a pace that makes it hard to believe that search engine marketing services can stay on top of all the latest developments. The one constant for search engine marketing firms, and for the industry in general, is change--usually for the better, sometimes for the worse, but almost always significant. The industry is not for the faint-hearted or those who abhor change. However, savvy search engine marketing firms try to look ahead to anticipate trends. Here are my predictions of issues that search engine marketing services will face in the short term.

More Accountability Demanded from Search Engine Marketing Firms

Search engine marketing firms that use tactics designed to trick the engines into showing results that aren't directly addressing the search query will struggle, as more companies begin to look at the larger goals that lead them to investigate search engine marketing services in the first place. The "traffic-centric" mindset will evolve as companies begin to demand accountability from search engine marketing firms in terms of bottom line increases. Ranking increases delivered by search engine marketing services will be questioned if they do not lead to significant traffic increases, and traffic increases will be questioned if there is no subsequent increase in business generated from the website. This is a good thing for quality search engine marketing firms, since the "snake-oil" practitioners that have given the industry such a bad name will never be given serious consideration by any company that does its homework in the vendor selection process.

Rising PPC Costs and Increasing PPC Frustration

As larger companies with huge budgets continue to jump into the pay per click (PPC) arena, costs will continue to rise. (Average PPC costs have increased 37% from Q1 2005 to Q1 2006.(1)) These well-funded companies will use PPC as a branding tool as much as a sales tool, which will squeeze out many of the current smaller advertisers. In fact, the top 10 PPC advertising companies, based upon the number of PPC impressions, include such names as eBay, NextTag, Vonage, Time Warner, Orbitz, Target, and Yahoo.(2) More large companies will continue to join the fray, many of them throwing ROI out the window and bidding high prices for desirable keyphrases for the sake of branding. This means that search engine marketing firms will find small- to medium-sized companies turning to SEO to achieve results when they no longer can afford PPC.

Increased Interest in Organic SEO

While PPC costs rise, there is also a trend that no doubt disturbs the engines that offer PPC programs. Sixty-six percent of consumers "distrust" paid search ads.(3) Up to 85% of searchers say they "tend to ignore the paid listings"(4), while 87% of commercial clicks take place "on the natural (not sponsored) search results."(5) Three times as many marketers who outsource the management of their natural SEO to search engine marketing firms and who also participate in pay per click advertising recognize a higher ROI from their search engine marketing services than from PPC.(6) These facts, coupled with the fact that Google has recently announced that it will begin to take the relevance of pages into consideration when deciding in what order the ads will appear (which will mean that effective PPC campaigns will need at least some basic organic SEO), point to one obvious result--an increase in the number of companies that investigate organic SEO programs, whether internally generated or provided by outside search engine marketing firms.

Continued Reluctance from Agencies to Pursue Search Marketing

To most, it seems like a perfect fit--traditional advertising agencies joining forces with (or purchasing outright) PPC providers and organic search engine marketing services. However, the average agency is scared to death of search engine marketing services in any form (although some forward-looking agencies have finally jumped on the search engine marketing bandwagon). The reasons are simple: accountability and metrics.

Advertising agencies have for years made money based upon a percentage of what a company spends on advertising. This model has been the accepted norm for decades. However, it raises some ethical issues. What is the motivation for an agency to recommend decreased spending on non-performing initiatives? Moreover, what reasons does an agency have to report on the effectiveness of each of its campaigns? (If an agency's clients dug deeply into any such metrics, they would likely reduce their advertising spend based on the performance of individual campaigns.) Many PPC service providers have adopted this model, even though the goal of a PPC campaign should be to monitor the metrics of a campaign to decrease the spend (eliminating underperforming keyphrases, for example).

Good search engine marketing services offer metrics that scare traditional advertising agencies. If these agencies were to present such metrics to their clients, those same clients may start to demand similar metrics for other campaigns (television, radio, magazine ads, etc.). Until the "percentage of spend" model is altered, large agencies will continue to reject search engine marketing services and will not recommend them to their clients.

Continued Focus on Google for Organic SEO

In general, where Google goes, other engines will follow. Smart search engine marketing services will continue to optimize for Google, which currently accounts for half of searches in the United States.(7) However, instead of trying to trick Google by unraveling the latest, ever-changing algorithm, search engine marketing firms will instead need to use the "piggyback" approach. This approach entails learning from the extensive studies that Google conducts of its users (learning by observing the commonalities of the types of sites that consistently rank highly) and applying those same attributes to client websites. In this way, search engine marketing firms not only make sites better for Google, but also for users. As other engines try to close the relevancy gap in search engine results, search engine marketing firms will be rewarded as the tactics they have used for Google success become the accepted industry standard.

Conclusion

The use of search engine marketing services is still a new, "unproven" channel to many companies. Even so, it is changing the way that many traditional advertising agencies must do business. With PPC costs on the rise, and the effectiveness of the PPC channel coming into question, more companies will investigate the hiring of search engine marketing firms using organic tactics for their Internet marketing needs. Smart companies that outsource organic or PPC advertising will no longer say "what have you done for me lately"--they will say "prove what you’ve done for me lately." Search engine marketing services that are on top of the curve will be more than happy to do so.

References

1. Doubleclick, Performics 50 Search Trend Report
2. Nielsen/Netratings, 2006
3. eMarketer
4. 2005 Marketing Sherpa Study
5. Jupiter Research, 2005
6. iProspect
7. LaMonica, Paul R. "Yahoo, Google Search for Fans on Wall Street." CNN.com, 14 July 2006, http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/14/news/companies/yahoo_google/index.htm.

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, Lockergnome, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld, serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, Cirronet, and DS Waters. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Bures

Search Engine Marketing Tips to Bring Targeted Traffic to Your Site

2007-07-26T04:33:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is all about popularizing your site in search engines. Period. Online visitors heavily rely on search engines to find any thing in the web. Search engine marketing tips are great source to help you in this. It is inevitable that you will have competition in any field and severe competition at that. But what takes you to success is the marketing strategy that you implement for your site to sell your products.

Listed below and some of the search engine marketing tips that are guaranteed to bring your business lead:

Decide who your target audience. You don’t want to be caught up in a situation where you do not even know whom you want to sell your product to. It is your target audience that determines the way you will market and sell your product. Your search marketing strategy must be super efficient to reach out and influence people to buy from you.

Learn all that needs to be known for the search engine marketing of your site. Surely you will not want to implement any policy or strategy that you in the first place do not understand properly. Remember you must never be caught off guard about anything related to your business. More than anyone else you will know what is best for your business.

Pay per click advertisement is a great source to make your site reach out to the maximum number of online visitors. This is an advertising method that is done using targeted keywords that best describe your product and service. Make sure that your pay per click advertisement features at the top of sponsored listings in search engines.

Content management is another search engine marketing tip that can boost your business’s prospects immensely. Through content management you can constantly update all the information in your site. Also you can add many new features to your site that can bring additional traffic to your site. After all lots of traffic is what you want in your site to bring new prospective customers to buy your products.

You must realize that there are many things that can be done for optimizing your site for search engine marketing. However it is vital for you to find out the best method for optimizing your site. Also find out what implementing these methods could do to your business. Be very clear about what this will do to your business and see if this is viable for your business or not.

Online visitors always look for instant gratification. Make sure that the search engine marketing tips for your business incorporates all methods that can attract visitors instantly. For this you have to make sure that you have a great website with incredible design and content that is very easily accessible to visitors. No one will come to your site, if they do not find what they are searching for at once. Visitors will not at all hesitate to go to another site when they have so much of option to choose from.

What you need for promoting your site on the web is a vigorous search engine marketing strategy. If you think that you will not be able to do search engine marketing on your own then it is best to hire professionals to do the work for you. The professionals are qualified and trained to do whatever is required for making your site popular in the web.

Steve Waganer is an SEO specialist who works for Comet Search Engine Marketing. Steve knows what needs to be done to take your site to the top.TO know more about Search Engine Optimization, pay per click,Search Engine Marketing Tips, affiliate marketing to help online business earn profit visit http://www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Waganer

Search Engine Marketing Firms

2007-07-26T04:32:00.000-07:00

In the make-or-break world of Internet commerce, it is imperative for businesses to hire search engine marketing firms to boost sales and get the competitive advantage. If you want increased exposure for your site but do not know where and how to start, then you definitely need the help of a firm that can secure a good position for your site and bring you closer to your target customers.

Services

Search engine marketing firms are a must for every Web site that needs to stay on top of search engine rankings. These firms have a thorough understanding of the ranking parameters of different search engines, may they be keyword-based, algorithm-based, or a combination of both. Search engine marketing firms will be able to set up your site so that its is conducive to these parameters, and also modify and maintain your site’s structure and content to make sure that it stays on top even when these parameters change. The end result? Your potential and existing customers will always land in your pages when they search for your products and services. You just sit back, relax, and watch your site generate higher search engine rankings and increased Web traffic.

Costs

Hiring search engine marketing firms is not at all that expensive, considering all the services they provide. Expect to pay about $1,500 a year – a small price to pay for maximum web success. In most cases, you get your return of investment within as little as a few months. Some companies charge you a flat rate for setup and a separate monthly maintenance fee, while others charge you a percentage of your web marketing budget all through the duration of the campaign. Some also offer to train your organic staff so that they could perform the changes and additions to your site on their own in the future.

Search Engine Marketing provides detailed information on Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Marketing Firms, Search Engine Marketing Services, Search Engine Optimization Marketing and more. Search Engine Marketing is affiliated with Web Site Marketing Consultants.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Bailey

Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T04:30:00.000-07:00

If your goal is to direct your desired traffic to your Web site in order to increase your sales (be it for a product or service), then you must employ search engine marketing. Frequently referred to as simply SEM, search engine marketing is also called ‘search engine positioning’ or ‘search engine optimization.’

Similar to the process of boosting sales through the use of print, radio and television media, SEM is essentially a kind of marketing strategy employed in the web with the target result of maximum exposure as well as visibility for your website. A shopping mall, as much as possible, would want to minimize the window shoppers and bank on the target clientele. Analogous to this situation, SEM targets your preferred traffic so that in can translate to future sales or income.

There are a lot of ways of receiving desired publicity so that people online can be directed to your Web site. You can use linking, advertising through banners, press announcements, or blogging, among other effective available methods. Strategic positioning of keywords in quite important so that when a search related to your product or service is conducted, your website will come out prominently in the search results. What you should remember is that setting up a website and hoping that clients will eventually find your online store or outlet is not the game anymore. After creating your Web site, set it up and arrange your contents in such a way that search engines will automatically locate and show the link to your site in the first pages of the search engine results. This is the path to success in implementing SEM.

There are a number of entities that offer SEM services. It is best to look for one that can fully exploit the potentials of your Web site without going beyond your marketing budget.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Bailey

Organic Search Engine Marketing for Affiliate Programs

2007-07-26T04:29:00.000-07:00

If you want to grab a small piece of the market you need to highlight a unique or new product that isn't saturated in the search engines yet. Of course getting to the point were you can market like that requires tons of SEO to bring the saturation of your site up to an acceptable level.

I still got tons of SEO to do, but say I have a PR6 and I'm getting some organic hits then that's when I start my marketing campaign. First research, CNET, BBC Technology, and other sites that offer product news or new products or upcoming product, add that product to the site with an affiliate link attached. As an example Buy.com allows you to make your own link. Say I was in a position to do that when the new iPod hit the market, traffic would pour in! It works until the large sites saturate search engines.

There is tons of SEO before one can effectively implement such a plan, but if you use this tactic you will make conversions! Its whats called organic search engine marketing for affiliate programs. That is the one way you will compete organically.

And if you develop a site with some visual appeal people will like it and bookmark it. Make a site that puts them at ease visually. Use mild colors and round off the hard corners, put some fun graphics on the site. Your site should say "come on in sit down stay awhile have a beer". "Lets talk computers or movies whatever". Oops I spilled my beer, but your customer doesn't mind because he or she is at ease with the surroundings. When you customer wants to leave, you walk them to the door and say "come again you are always welcome".

Josh Spahn is Web Developer, Affiliate Market Specialist, and Graphic Designer. He has developed such sites as, Wuwhoo.com, and Masternerd.com. His recent goals include building an affiliate based shopping engine and develope a general web directory.

http://masternerd.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Josh_Spahn

The Mystery of Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T04:27:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Marketing has always played a critical role in managing the visibility of a company’s online brand. However with the Internet becoming what is arguably today’s dominant medium, Search Engine Marketing has also risen to become a key driver in a company’s overall brand strategy. Regrettably the maturity of the products and services that comprise search engine related disciplines come at a time when the industry has never been more complicated and difficult to navigate. Even though businesses today have many more options with regard to how they execute their search engine initiatives, I find that many marketing executives struggle more today with their online marketing strategies than they did a few years ago. In today’s blog post I’ll share my opinions on the current state of the Search Engine Marketing Industry.

My experience with Search Engine Marketing predates many in the field. In the mid 80’s I co-founded what was at the time the largest web development company in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. My partner and I later sold that company to the largest web enablement firm in the world where I stayed on for a period of time as their Director of Internet Strategy before leaving to found one of the top 50 Interactive Advertising Agencies in the United States. At last weeks 2006 Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, California it was clear that the industry has shown remarkable growth and made tremendous advances in sophistication as well as in the diversity of product and service offerings currently available, but I question whether things are getting better or worse for the consumer.

In talking regularly with many senior executives, marketing professionals and entrepreneurs one thing is clear…they are clearly not fluent in the area of search engine marketing. While these professionals understand the potential that search engine marketing holds for their businesses they do not understand how to capitalize on it. In fact, many of the people I have spoken with are extremely frustrated at the amount of money they have invested in search initiatives without being able to develop an understanding of the medium such that they have not yet been able to develop a consistent winning strategy in this space.

The major problems that exist within the search industry are tied to the fact that this is still an embryonic medium. There are only so many ways to purchase advertising in more mature mediums like radio or television. Contrast this with the numerous options available to consumers and businesses looking to purchase advertising on the internet: Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click, Pay-Per-Call, Pay-Per-Acquisition, Sponsored Advertising, Internet Yellow Pages, Ezine ads, Contextual Advertising, Embedded Advertising, Pop-overs and Pop-unders, Banner serving networks, Directory Ads, Link Farms, video ads, webinars, etc. Advertising mediums in the infancy of their lifecycle spit out new opportunities faster than you can shake a stick at, with inexperienced vendors cutting their teeth on the advertiser’s nickel. There is rarely a week that passes when I don’t speak to a company who has a horror story to tell about a search marketing company who over-promised and under-delivered and by the time the advertiser figured out what was going-on they had spent thousands of dollars with little to show for it.

Another problem with the search industry is that Google currently controls most of the traffic. Combine Google’s dominant position with the fact that they will share little if any data with advertisers and that they can change the rules of the game at any time and it brings new meaning to the term “Flying Blind.” However the issue of transparency within the search industry is not limited to Google. Most of the search engines play their cards very close to the chest as they try and establish a leg up in the market. Until there is competitive pressure brought to bear on Google the odds are stacked against the advertiser. I met with a client last week that was spending 50% of their Pay-Per-Click budget on Yahoo and MSN because it was recommended to them by their search marketing firm. The problem is that given the advertisers product line and target market Yahoo and MSN would produce virtually no return for them…This is a big problem.

The fact is that the Internet is the medium that can deliver the most velocity and biggest return on your marketing dollar. I also believe that this will continue to be the case as the dominance of the Internet medium will only continue to widen the gap over alternate mediums. Companies cannot afford not to allocate a substantial part of their advertising budget to online advertising, but until the medium matures it will behoove of them to make sure that they work with the best vendors who can keep up with the rapid pace of change in the industry.

Mike Myatt is the Chief Strategy Officer at N2growth. N2growth is a leading venture growth consultancy providing a unique array of professional services to high growth companies on a venture based business model. The rare combination of branding and corporate identity services, capital formation assistance, market research and business intelligence, sales and product engineering, leadership development and talent management, as well as marketing, advertising and public relations services make N2growth the industry leader in strategic growth consulting. More information about the company can be found at http://www.N2growth.com or by viewing http://www.N2growth.com/blog

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Myatt

Guess What Search Engine Marketing Can Do For Your Business!

2007-07-26T04:26:00.000-07:00

So you have finally decided to venture to the field of online marketing. This is just what you need to earn enormous profit through your business. So what if you are the owner of a prospering business, how will people come to know about you if you do not tell them about you? This is exactly where search engine marketing techniques can help you in promoting and earning revenue from your business site. The main purpose of search engine marketing is to take to the zenith of search engine rankings.

The internet is the best place for you to announce to everyone that you have arrived on the scene. Search engine marketing is the method and technique that can help your business prosper in different search engines. There are different factors that need to be optimized for search engines to notice your presence. It is up to you and your SEM Company to decide what you exactly want to do with your site in the web.

Imagine a scenario, where a visitor clicks on your site and is then not able to access what they are searching for. Here is a great opportunity to use a great technique called a landing page. Your landing page must be convincing enough to actually lead the visitor to buy your services. It may not lead to a sale all the time, but you can always tell visitors about your service and ask them to sign up for your newsletter or put up any query that they may have. In this way you can get in touch with them in future and build up a good client information database.

Another way to boost up your position in search engines is through using paid placements in major search engines. For paid placement, you can bid money on the most relevant keyword that describes your product and service. So be assured, that the next time when a visitor searches a product using the keyword on which you have bid the money, your site will be listed at the top of the sponsored listings of search engines. Studies have indicated that about 80% of online visitors can be targeted through sponsored listings in search engines.

Whenever you want to use any method for search engine marketing of your site, it is crucial for you to actually know about all the different aspects of this particular method. After all this is your business site and you must do what you feel is the best source for you to bring business to your site.

Before you engage in any kind of search engine marketing for your business site, it is crucial for you to know exactly these methods can do for you. Doing search engine marketing on your own for your site may not be a great idea, simply because this is an exhaustive process and can be very tiring and time consuming on you. It is advisable to use search engine marketing services form a third party as this is makes more sense. You will not have to worry constantly about how your site is doing in the web.

If you have a business site, search engine marketing is something that is inevitable. You must fare really well in search engine rankings to be able to do good business in the web. Look around for a good search engine marketing firm that will handle the work for you. Take some time out of your busy schedule and check out which companies will be actually able to do the work for you. After looking around carefully choose the best search engine marketing firm to do the work for you.

Steve Waganer is an SEO specialist who works for Comet Search Engine Marketing. Steve knows what needs to be done to take your site to the top.TO know more about Search Engine Marketing, pay per click, affiliate marketing to help online business earn profit visit http://www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Waganer

Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T04:25:00.001-07:00

First let me say that you should write for your audience and not the search engines. Now, with that being said, you will at some point have to consider Search Engine Marketing. To get major traffic to your site, you need the help of search engines.

If you ask 100 webmasters you will probably get 100 different methods of getting recognized by search engines, but they will probably all agree on one method. Quality links to your sites! If there is a site ranking well on Google and they link to a post you wrote, that will give you a favorable chance of getting ranked well. Now, will one link put you on the first page of Google? Probably not. You need quality links from numerous sites.

First let me tell what I mean about Quality links. If someone who just started a site links to your site, it will not be as important as someone who has an established site with numerous pages that rank well. How do you get quality links? Write Quality posts! Search Engine Marketing starts with quality content. If you have excellent content, you establish readership, which in turn will develop return visits from readers. Return visits from readers gives you a better chance of ranking well with search engines. High rankings drives traffic to your site, high traffic helps your rankings with search engines. It is sort of a double edge sword, but the key is quality content.

Once you have established a site, start writing posts or pages and add to it daily. Do not write just to be writing. Write about meaningful ideas or subjects. Write about things you are passionate about. Sell the sizzle! There will be more ideas for Search Engine Marketing, but this is the foundation. Start here and we will add to it as we go.

Written by Chuck Russell
Make Money Online

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chuck_Russell

Search Engine Marketing for MSN and Yahoo! Still Worth It

2007-07-26T04:20:00.000-07:00

Statistics released by comScore show that Yahoo! MSN and Ask Jeeves are definitely forces to reckon with. Each of them had over 40 million searches carried out on them last month, in the US alone: Top US Search Engines in October 2005 Top US search engines in October 2005 Search engine Audience (thousands) Google Web Search 5,281
Yahoo! Search 68,031
MSN Search 49,748
Ask Jeeves 43,705
AOL Search 36,092
Yahoo! Local Search 20,270
MySpace Search 8,083
Infospace Search 5,942
LookSmart 4,402
Lycos Network 5,249
Source: comScore Media Metrix
It is still worth it to optimise for MSN and Yahoo!

Google's market leadership is definitely not a given fact. Yahoo! and MSN Search are hot on the heels of Google, and Microsoft seem to be hell-bent on dethroning Google. Taking that into consideration, and the fact that Yahoo! and MSN's combined search total is well above that of Google it is a must for all webmasters to optimise their sites for the MSN and Yahoo! search engines too.

Note that search engine optimisation for MSN and Yahoo! are significantly different processes and involve attention to different factors than when optimising for Google.

We provide 100% ethical search engine optimisation services. We have an open policy, where we will explain everything we do, and will not use any sneaky SEO practices that could risk getting your site banned.

Other articles to read:
• Google Analytics for SEM (http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/google-analytics.php)
• Link development & Spam mass (http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/spam-mass.php)
SEO Weekly (http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/)

Search Engine Marketing for MSN and Yahoo! still worth it

Pay Per Click Management

MSN adCenter

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Farhad_Divecha

Google Analytics for Better Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T04:14:00.000-07:00

Urchin visitor tracking is now renamed 'Google Analytics' and is available to everyone for free! For those of you lucky enough to have signed up in the early stages, Google Analytics will open up a world of information you probably never knew about visitors on your site. For those not so lucky, you'll have to wait till Google gets their act together and reopens the doors for new sign-ups to the analytics system.

Why you need Google Analytics website visitor tracking

Google Analytics provides free information about the way visitors to your site interact with it. It is an invaluable tool that all webmasters should use if they don't already have some form of visitor tracking solution in place. Here's 10 reasons why you need Google Analytics on your site:

1. It is free. And it offers just as much if not more functionality than most expensive visitor tracking solutions!

2. You need Analytics to understand how visitors use your site

3. You can identify where visitors leave your check-out or sign-up process and modify it to prevent losing leads

4. You can identify which pages and links visitors click on most and spend most time on, and position these pages and links appropriately

5. Analytics also tells you which sites users came to your site from

6. You can find out the most popular keywords users type into a search engine to find your site, thereby helping your search engine optimisation efforts

7. Visitor segmentation by new vs returning users, geography and referral source will offer invaluable insight when planning future business

8. Analytics integrates seamlessly with Google AdWords so that you can have almost end-to-end visibility in your search advertising results

9. Analytics allows tracking of other non-search-engine marketing media

10. Analytics will save you money and help you gain more customers

Pros and cons of Google Analytics

The benefits of using the Google Analytics solution are numerous. The fact that it's free is mere icing on the cake.

* The setup is very straightforward and takes hardly any time

* It is a great solution providing a wide range of reports with a lot of flexibility

* Multiple sites to be tracked under one login

* Tracking campaigns from a wide variety of media is possible

* A/B ad testing is easy

* It integrates with all marketing media and can be used as a single portal to track multiple campaigns

* In depth reports on site navigation and use are invaluable

* Ecommerce tracking is included

Whilst the Google Analytics package provides a vast number of useful bits of information, it lacks two major features which most search engine marketers need - the ability to track individual user activity or trace activity back to an individual user level and the ability to track activity akin to click fraud. The eCommerce tracking features are not very straightforward to use.

Most irritatingly, though, just like any other Google product offering, the customer service associated with Google Analytics is abysmal, if not completely non-existant! How Google Analytics might change search engine optimisation

By offering a free web site analytics solution, google have made a very sneaky and superbly calculated move in the war for search engine supremacy. Now that they have visibility not only into how Google users search for your site and whether they convert into sales on it, but also into how all visitors, even from Yahoo and MSN reach your site, how they use your site and whether they leave your site without making a purchase. Armed with that sort of usability information, Google could not only undermine all your search engine optimisation efforts, but also use the data they collect about MSN and Yahoo! search results with respect to your site and use it to strengthen their stronghold on the search landscape.

1) Google Analytics for SEM (http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/google-analytics.php)

2) PPC Management (http://www.accuracast.com/services/ppc-management/)

3) Google Adwords (http://www.accuracast.com/services/ppc-management/google-adwords/)

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Farhad_Divecha

Free Search Engine Marketing: Four Steps To Save You Money

2007-07-26T03:45:00.000-07:00

Search engine marketing (SEM) helps you to get more business from your Web site. However SEM usually involves Pay Per Click advertising, which is expensive in competitive areas. What if you didn't need to rely on expensive PPC advertising campaigns for excellent search engine marketing results?

If you're relying on PPC and other advertising to bring traffic to your site, you're missing out. You can use the search engines to bring you completely free, targeted organic traffic. This search engine marketing strategy not only saves you big money, but also saves you time as well, because you don't have to monitor your SEM every day.

The biggest benefit of these four steps of free SEM is not only that they're free, but also that they keep giving you a return over time, unlike advertising, because the money that you spend on advertising is gone for good.

Let's get started.

Step 1. Develop your keywords collection

Search engine marketing starts with good collections of keywords. The keyword collections that brings you targeted traffic will boost your business inexpensively every day for months and years to come.

Your keyword collections should include these groups:

* Your brand keywords. These are the keywords which are specific to your business, including your business name, your tagline (slogan or motto), and the names of your products;

* Your product/ service keywords. This group includes the keywords for all your products. This list is small, and should be consistent with your Web site's structure;

* Your primary keyword group. This group covers all the terms and words that your customers use to find you and your products. For example, if you're selling women's clothing, then you'll need to add all the generic women's clothing terms. Although these generic terms won't give you sales directly, they help the search engines to categorize your Web site;

* Your keyword phrases group. The phrases are three or four word terms that people use to reach your site. The best way to build a list of these phrases is to search your referrer logs for the phrases that people are using to find you.

Step 2. Create content using your keywords

The search engines are indexers. This means that your keywords need to be on your site. Remember however that you're creating keyword-rich content for your site's visitors and sales conversions, as well as for the search engines. Ensure that all the content on your site is not only readable, but is also informative: the search engines (led by Google) are beginning to penalize obvious "highly optimized" content. (This is content that's obviously written for the search engines, rather than for people.)

Step 3. Enhance your web site with landing page development

From the search engines' point of view, you don't have a site, as such. You have a collection of pages, and each page is an entry point AND a destination. Therefore, you should look at every page on your site as not only a doorway for your site visitors, but as a pathway down which you can guide them.

In a sense, every page of your site is a "landing page". Usually a landing page is a page that a surfer reaches by clicking on an advertisement. However, in your search engine marketing efforts, you're not paying for advertising; your site's visitors are finding you through organic search, by entering a search query. Although this traffic is "free" you want your site visitors to do something -- ultimately to buy from you if you're selling products and services.

Therefore you need to construct every page so that you optimize your marketing results. Each page should lead your visitor onward to a response, or get a response right on the page. Look at each page with a visitor-action mindset: make it clear what you want your visitor to do: visit another page, ask for more information, buy, sign up for your mailing list -- ASK for ACTIONS.

Step 4. Analyze your referring links

Your site's referring links are a gold mine. They tell you how your visitors arrived at your site. If they arrive via a search engine, you'll see exactly which terms the visitor typed into a search engine query box to find you.

Study your referrers at least once a week, and make a list of all the search terms. You'll find treasures that you wouldn't anticipate. Use these nuggets of information. Create content around the nuggets which offers information and which asks for actions.

There you have it: four easy steps to free search engine marketing. Although these steps take time to set up, they will repay you a thousand times over the years for the time you spend.

Angela Booth is a veteran copywriter and marketer. She develops marketing strategies for businesses large and small. Visit her creative copywriting site at http://angelabooth.com/ and her Creativity Factory marketing copywriting blog at http://www.angelabooth.com/wp/ NEW: subscribe to Top Words, Angela's exclusive free marketing tips ezine: http://angelabooth.com/Top_Words/subscribe.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Angela_Booth

Search Engine Marketing - Link Building Strategies

2007-07-26T03:41:00.000-07:00

Link building is a pretty important factor in any web marketing campaign. Here are a few things to keep in mind when building links to your site.

1. Submit to all major search engines and directories. This may seem basic, but trust me, many people still don’t know the basics. Make these sites your initial targets: Google, Yahoo (paid), MSN, bCentral (paid), DMOZ (Open Directory – Good luck, don’t hold your breath), Business.com (paid), GoGuides, JoeAnt, and Gimpsy. This should get you started with several solid inbound links.

2. Make sure to focus on building internal keyword based links. Once you start to get listed in the above referenced search engines and directories, this will work to increase your keyword targeted traffic. A great way to do this is to create content pages that you can link to from other pages within your site.

3. Do a search for your competitors and find out what sites they are listed on. This is key and will help you find specialty directories and sites geared towards your niche market.

4. Use Press Releases and Articles effectively. Make sure your press releases have a link to your site; this is best done by creating a signature or “about” footer with your URL. For articles, make sure they are original, informative, and relevant and make sure you use a signature footer with your URL.

5. Don’t give up. You will want to invest some time every month to increasing your sites inbound and internal links. If you are launching a new site, you will need to devote considerable time to link building, and also you will need to exercise patience as it will take a few months to see the effects of each link. Make sure to maximize secondary search portals as well. Some are very inexpensive but are good sources of inbound links such as Linkopedia or SiteSnoop, and others are just not worth the money (I wouldn’t pay much for a not well known directory). Ultimately, you will see the evidence of an effective linking campaign in the form of an increasing Google Page Rank.

Happy Linking!

Anthony Kirlew is an Internet Marketing Specialist and a life long entrepreneur. Among his diverse business interests, he is the founder of The Web Traffic Team located at http://www.webtrafficteam.com, an Internet Marketing firm committed to helping businesses increase their revenues, both online and offline, through effective Internet Marketing strategies.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anthony_Kirlew

Search Engine Marketing 101

2007-07-26T03:39:00.000-07:00

Search Engines are one of the most popular methods of finding information in the 21st century. Gone are the days of opening an encyclopedia to find the answer to a question or skimming the yellow pages to locate a local specialist. Search engines are helping us tackle every conceivable problem that we happen to face in our daily life. Need to do research on the Civil War? Car having problems? Curious about evolution? The possibilities are only limited by your imagination. Search Engines provide a means to possibly answer any question that anybody has at any time. So how can this help us in promoting our business?

To start, let’s discuss how search engines work, without boring you with too much. Search engines consist of a number of very sophisticated software programs that gather and organize information from the internet. The first important program is called a “robot spider” that is used to index, or “find” pages posted on the internet. The search engine then uses an algorithm, or mathematical equation, to determine how important a web page is in relation to a particular word or phrase (referred to as keywords or keyword phrases.)

Let’s use an example to better understand this concept. Say you went to Google.com and entered the words “los angeles pizza”. The results are numbered starting with #1; Google is telling you that, based on its very sophisticated mathematical equation, that the number one listing is the most relevant web page for the words “los angeles”. Hopefully, that # 1 listing will provide you with the information you are looking for.

Now imagine if you were a pizza shop owner in Los Angeles, and your websites home page just so happened to be that # 1 listing on Google. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see how this listing is an important marketing tool for your pizza business.

Now, before you jump out of your seat, hold on, because it gets better. Another software program the search engines use has the ability to keep track of how many times a word or phrase is being searched. This is where the dynamics of search engine marketing really start to shine.

In traditional marketing, like television or radio, demographics are used to determine what audience you should target your business to. A commercial for a kid’s cereal would probably be shown during a children’s television show. TV companies would charge more for an ad spot that ran during a show that attracted more viewers for a specific “target market”. Super Bowl ads are the most expensive because the program attracts the attention a millions of 18-35 year old men who tend to spend quite a bit of money on consumer products, thus the crazy amount of money that is spent of advertising.

With search, however, the information that is collected helps us target our websites (which are a basically commercials that run 24 hours a day) to a more specific audience; we can actually pinpoint roughly how many people searched for the words “ford mustang parts”. Now if you are someone who sells ford mustang parts, this information is very important to you. Ten years ago, the only way of marketing your business would be to purchase advertising that probably targeted a large number of people, usually in a car trade magazine. You would have a good idea about your audience, but you didn’t have any real numbers of how many people were looking for your product. With search engine marketing, it’s possible to focus marketing campaigns on just people that are actually looking for the products or services you sell, saving you precious time and money that would otherwise be wasted on those not interested in you. This is why search engine marketing is especially important to the small business owner, who usually does not have deep pockets to spend on marketing and advertising to begin with.

Search Engine Marketing has taken the business world by storm, and has propelled search engines like Google to become huge, billion dollar corporations through their advertising revenues. Traditional media has begun to transform as the barriers between television, radio, print, and the internet begin to blur. The internet has introduced a new performance-based marketing and advertising platform that will spill over into these other forms of advertising. Understanding the actual process of marketing your website through these search engines is crucial in understanding how the marketing industry is evolving but requires a balance of research and continuous implementation. If you don’t act now, this new world of marketing and advertising could mean big profits for your competition while leaving you behind with the rest of those unwilling to embrace technology.

Eric Hebert is president of evolvor media, an internet marketing and content development solutions firm. His passion includes introducing the internet to business, and looks foward to being a part of the transformation many businesses are experiencing as technology develops.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eric_Hebert

Search Engine Marketing For The Beginner! 7 Bare-Bone SEO Basics!

2007-07-26T03:36:00.000-07:00

#1: Narrow down your list of keyword phrases to 3-4. Make sure they are highly targeted keyword phrases for your business. These are the keywords you think people would search for in Google, Yahoo or MSN (the major search engines).

For example if you sell auto parts, your keyword phrase would be auto parts in New York and not just auto parts.

When people search for your site, they search for targeted phrases, and not just keywords these days! This is great news, because it is incredibly hard to get the ranking 1-10 for one keyword!

#2: After you have chosen your phrase, check it. Yes. Search for those words in Google, Yahoo and MSN (these are the big guys). If your keywords are extremely popular, you may want to rework your phrases. Targeting a keyword that is not highly sought after could lead to big profits in niche markets. I had a small business that did very well with the keyword “vegan baby.”

#3: You’ll want to look at your ‘tags’ or have your web designer look at them. This is what you or your designer is looking for. These tags include meta tags, title, header and anchor tags. They look like this ---

&lt;title&gt;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=…&gt; in your code. The tags are html code that lists the different words in relation to your product on the web page. Make sure you include your keywords in these tags.

#4: Content is King! Write often and update often. Search engines love new information. Write normally and filter in keywords when appropriate.

#5: Incoming links! This is also called link popularity. Other sites linking to you are a great way to increase your popularity and improve your website’s ranking.

#6: Outbound links! Links to other sites are important, too. Be careful to not confuse your reader; put them where appropriate.

#7: I really like this free tool for evaluation. Give it try. http://www.freewebsubmission.com/web-page-analyzer.html

Of course there are other things you can do to help your rankings, but these are the big ones. Good luck.

Jen Blackert, Client Attraction Marketing Coach, is a results-driven marketing strategist that teaches entrepreneurs how to attract all the clients they need. Her methods are based on the universal laws of attraction. Visit her website at http://www.jenblackert.com and her marketing podcast at http://www.insightsintomarketing.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeneth_Blackert

Search Engine Marketing - Optimising Your Website For Yahoo!

2007-07-26T03:27:00.000-07:00

SE optimisation is a hot topic in internet marketing, so we have written a series of primers on the important factors in getting high search engine rankings. Each search engine is different and different search marketing techniques need to be used to get good rankings on them all.

Unlike Google, Yahoo places much more emphasis on links, meta tags, and text content, and less on site age. The important considerations for a high Yahoo ranking are as follows.

Links

Yahoo like Google, feels that a good search engine needs to monitor links as an important factor, because it is the least easy to manipulate. However, Yahoo is less strict than Yahoo, when it comes to evaluating the quality and the nature of links. It does not have an equivalent to page rank, although it does monitor the keywords in the anchor text. Links also seem to mature in importance on Yahoo, and they made need to be in place for several weeks before they are recognised. Yahoo has less bias towards information sites than Google, and so commercial sites can find themselves getting a higher ranking quicker and commercial links are more highly valued.

Meta tags

At the top of most web pages, there is a information for search engines that is not presented to human readers by their web browsers and these are know as meta tags. These are used by web designers and optimisers to tell search engines what the page is about. They include a page title, a page description, and a list of the keywords that relate to the content. Yahoo reads and uses these meta tags, but places less emphasis on them than it has in the past.

On page keywords

When Yahoo crawls the text on a web page, it looks to see which keywords are important. It will look to match the prominent keywords that it found in the Meta tags to see if they are also present in the readable content. Keywords should be:

Prominent – they should feature in the page headings and they should be at the beginning and the end of the page. They should be in bold or italicised text as the crawler will see this text as more important.

In Links - Keywords should be paced in or near internal and external hyperlinks because of the importance that crawlers place on them.

Used Often - How often is a point for debate and it varies with sectors. However, you can generalise by saying that the density of the keywords in your text needs to be monitored to make sure it meets and appropriate level in your sector.

Never be tempted to take short cuts to achieve Yahoo rankings as they will always cause problems in the end. Also remember that while optimisation is important, there is no substitute for new, unique content.

Mark McCormack is a twenty year B2B marketing veteran, with extensive experience of internet marketing. His business, Markmedia, offers interim management and consultancy advice in the UK. Their website is http://www.markmedia.org.uk. Mark can be contacted at mark@markmedia.org.uk.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=MarkD_McCormack

Search Engine Marketing - Optimising Your Website For MSN

2007-07-26T03:15:00.000-07:00

MSN is the easiest of the search engines to get a competitive listing on. The important factors that need to be considered for MSN are as follows.

On Page

MSN reads and uses meta tags when ranking sites, so proper keywords at an appropriate density should be included. Title and descriptions should also include the keywords prominently and in the exact phrase that you want to rank on.

MSN also looks for keywords in the text and measures the same factors of prominence, density and close to links that Yahoo does.

Off Page

MSN has a high tolerance for reciprocal links and does not seem to apply any ageing or stability criteria to them.

When Microsoft finally decide that they are in the search engine business, things may change. But for the moment the fact is that you can put together a new site, add a few low quality reciprocal links and get a high ranking on MSN relatively easily. That is not always a bad thing. In fact, it is healthy to give new site some traffic and some exposure, to avoid an internet where the rich get richer, in search engine terms.

However the pitfall that I have seen is where sites get a good MSN ranking and then feel that the good Yahoo and the good Google ranking are only a matter of time. Each search engine places importance on different criteria and it measures them in different ways. Some links that get picked up by MSN will never be added by Google. So, celebrate your MSN ranking, but persevere with the search for top quality backlinks. Remember, this is a long term program and it will produce results in the long term.

Mark McCormack is a twenty year veteran of B2B marketing with extensive experience of internet marketing. His business, Markmedia, offers interim managment and consultancy advice in the UK. Their website is http://www.markmedia.org.uk and Mark can be contacted at mark@markmedia.org.uk.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=MarkD_McCormack

Search Engine Marketing- SEO - What's the Need

2007-07-26T02:22:00.002-07:00

Here is a bird’s eye view for you on SEO i.e. Search Engine Optimization. The need of SEO is mainly for the visibility of your website in the competition of the market you belongs to. SEO helps your website to rank on the SE’s where the competitors are working hard to get on the top rankings. It helps your business to be visible & available to your prospect customers via Internet.

The basic rule of Search engine Optimization (SEO) is to provide service or an informative website written for the visitors with search engine’s in mind as well. The concept in this is that the visitors should be able to read the content and navigate the website, in short it should be user – friendly.

Once your website is complete & ready to be launched over Internet, you need to take a slow step-by-step approach to get listed in the Search Engines. SEO is an ongoing process, those who are willing to invest their time and put these techniques into practice are the ones that will benefit and are more likely to be successful.

There are ‘n’ numbers of websites available over the Internet to provide Information on the same product or services, which you are providing to the visitor (customer). SEO helps you to rank over the results of search engines on the top positions or rankings to provide the information or services of your business to the customers.

The key for which the optimization of the website is done is known as the “Search phrases” or the “keyword”. For e.g. if I want to create a free email account, over a search engine I will use terms like: free email account, free email, email for free, etc. These are the keywords, which I used to get an appropriate outcome for my search query. That’s why this is the key of optimization to select the list of appropriate keywords.

Keyword Research is the essential part of SEO. This research includes searching for appropriate list of keywords focusing on the business or services of the website. People feel that doing SEO is very complicated but the truth is that there is a wealth of information all over the web that can help you in getting good ranking for your website.

Getting results from SEO – You should have patience. It’s an ongoing process and it takes time to get on the top rankings of the search engines. You will start with low ranking on targeted keywords sometime, but as the optimization process will go on the ranking will improve. Till than keep on building your links and optimizing the website.

I came across few people who use to say that “ SEO is a truck and PPC is a Car, that’s why there are less lady SEOs”. I want to comment on this statement as I have been in this industry from such a time and as per my view: SEO is a Formula1 racing Car it’s not about a man or a woman it’s about the craze to drive that Car and most importantly to be careful with the speed. F1 car needs lots of mechanism and techniques at the time of their making and when they are on road they beat the heat of competition and that’s what SEO is. I hope a lot of people who are into Search Marketing will agree.

There are a lot more in SEO as Keyword research is one of the essentials of SEO there are lot more like; link exchange, meta tags, etc.

Preeti Sharma is working as an IM Specialist. Internet Marketing and music is her passion and She is a PG in IT Marketing from Bangalore, India.

Free Article Directory Internet Marketing Blog

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Preeti_Sharma

Search Engine Marketing- SEO - What's the Need

2007-07-26T02:22:00.001-07:00

There are a lot more in SEO as Keyword research is one of the essentials of SEO there are lot more like; link exchange, meta tags, etc.

Preeti Sharma is working as an IM Specialist. Internet Marketing and music is her passion and She is a PG in IT Marketing from Bangalore, India.

Free Article Directory Internet Marketing Blog

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Preeti_Sharma

Search Engine Marketing- SEO - What's the Need

2007-07-26T02:22:00.000-07:00

There are a lot more in SEO as Keyword research is one of the essentials of SEO there are lot more like; link exchange, meta tags, etc.

Preeti Sharma is working as an IM Specialist. Internet Marketing and music is her passion and She is a PG in IT Marketing from Bangalore, India.

Free Article Directory Internet Marketing Blog

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Preeti_Sharma

What Is the Difference between Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization?

2007-07-26T02:18:00.000-07:00

I took it for granted that people implicitly understood the difference between Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. However, I had to change my thinking when, in a meeting, I got asked this very question; what's the difference?

In my view the root of the answer lies in the early days of the Search Engines. We did not have the Google AdWords and AdSense or the MSN AdCenter or Overture. What we had were Search Engines and the art of making it to the top of the pile was a very technical one, hence the phrase Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization by definition is therefore a mostly technical skill which revolves around ensuring that what we code, how we code, ensures that our site appears as high on the search rankings as possible for our given keyword or key phrases.

The landscape changed quite dramatically with the introduction of paid advertising. With products like Adsense and AdWords we now enter the realm of Search Engine Marketing. Advertisers now have the ability to drive their visibility on the search engines right to the top of page one on Google, simply by bidding for their respective keyword.

Search Engine Marketing by definition is therefore no longer a technical skill, but now has all the aspects of marketing a product or service. You are faced with the same questions as you would be if you were marketing in the physical world. Factors like brand, price, positioning and unique selling point become much more important.

A business who wishes to establish an online presence would be silly to ignore the basic fundamentals of Search Optimization even if they have the budget to drive traffic to their site through Search Marketing. My recommendation to any company who are going to create a web presence and intend selling a product is that you need both.

The other question we need to answer is whether the two are mutually exclusive, inclusive or is there some overlap? There is a definite overlap between the two and the easiest way to look at this is the "keyword" link. In classic Search Optimization one would optimize based on selected keywords which one wants to rank for. Often use would be made of tools such as Keyword Density Analyzers to determine what percentage of total text does a specific keyword or phrase take up.

In Search Marketing we still focus heavily on keywords, since we need to bid for those same keywords in terms of our online advertising. In fact the entire keyword scenario moves up a gear as we try to uncover a broader base of keywords that will bring in targeted traffic at a reduced cost per click. The key to Search Marketing becomes exploiting the "long tail of search", which refers to the larger selection of less frequently searched terms.

Ken Metcalf is a professional engineer, also holding a business commerce degree. He writes articles in his spare time on technical topics ranging from low level programming to The SEO Blog which deals with search engine optimization. For more information on using Search Engine Technology visit The SEO pages here

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ken_Metcalf

Search Engine Marketing Advice - Implementing a 301 Redirect

2007-07-26T02:15:00.000-07:00

In the earlier days of the web, programmers used a line of coding called a META REFRESH to re-route visitors to another page if a page was updated or changed on a web site. For those unfamiliar, here is what the code looks like:

< equiv="Refresh" content="4;url=http://www.webtrafficteam.com">

In this example, content = 4, relates to the length of time (in seconds) the page will display until forwarding to the URL listed. All one would need to do is have this snippet of web coding placed in the HEAD section of the page, and it would automatically redirect you to the URL, in this case www.webtrafficteam.com If you are going to use this piece of code, you will need to remove the extra spaces at the beginning and end of the code; they were added for formatting the article.

The search engines soon caught on that this coding was being used to manipulate the search engines by those who would obtain a high rank on a page and then re-route that traffic to another site which wouldn’t normally rank as well.

So how do you avoid being looked at as an unscrupulous web marketer? Enter the 301 Redirect. A 301 redirect is simply a technical means of re-routing a visitor to a new web page without the search engines thinking that you are doing something to manipulate search results. As a side note, it is also a great way to hide an affiliate link.

The short of it is that you can add this code to a web page and now redirect your page without fear of hurting your search engine rankings - for now that is. Using the code below, simply change the URL to your destination URL and upload the page to your server. NOTE: If you have never done this before, please use a test page or folder so you don’t take your site down unexpectedly.

Here are the 301 redirect code samples:

Below are samples of coding used to perform a 301 redirect. If you are running on a Microsoft platform, you should use the ASP (VB Script) code and if you are running any flavor of Unix (i.e. Linux), you should use the PHP code.

PHP – Unix/Linux platform

< ?php // Permanent redirection header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: http://www.destinationurl.com"); exit(); ? >

ASP (VB Script) – Microsoft Windows platform

< %@ Language=VBScript %> <% response.status="301 moved permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", " http://www.destinationurl.com" % >

I hope this helps you implement effective redirects that don't get you in trouble with the search engines.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anthony_Kirlew

Create a Buzz in the Internet through Search Engine Marketing!

2007-07-26T02:14:00.001-07:00

Search engine marketing simply means promoting a site online. In this internet age there are numerous online sites for various products and services. Simply having an online site will trim down your site just to me a mere presence in the World Wide Web. Websites must have appropriate publicity to make new sales and profit through these sales. There are a number of successful search engine marketing strategies that can help your business grow by leaps and bounds.

There are many advantages of using search engine marketing for your online site. Search engine marketing strategy is cheap compared to any other forms of marketing strategy. You have the option of spending less and earning more through this type of marketing. Another major benefit of this marketing strategy is that the advertisement for your site will be running for 24/7 throughout a week, month or year. Search engine marketing is very essential as search engines decide on the public pattern of online shopping.

A recent study undertaken by a leading research agency shows that 90% people make use of search engine to find information for products online. Major search engines like Google give page ranks to sites to measure their importance for online users. Different elements of designing and other things are taken to consider in determining the relevancy of a website. These findings have made search engine marketing all the more important for a website.

Search engines make use of spider programs to search a website. Spider program is used to gather all sorts of information about a site. Some of the information gathered by the spider includes instances of the site being uploaded, presence of links and the type of links, age of the site and such other things. Google gives page ranks to sites on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest ranking for a site.

Pay per click is another tool used for search engine marketing. In pay per click, you can put up your site for advertising in a search engine or search engines can put up some ads in your site for generating traffic. This is a good way for making your site visible online and also earning revenue through pay per click. If a site advertises directly on a search engine, it can be awarded higher search engine rankings.

One more strategy of search engine marketing is to create a buzz about your site in the internet. This can be done by making your site visible everywhere in the World Wide Web. For this the link to your site can be put on discussion forums and articles written for promoting your website. This is one way of bringing traffic to your website.

The content of your website is another factor which helps search engines in determining the relevance of your site in the internet. The content of your site must be updated regularly with all the relevant information. Remember there are different types of visitors to a website. Content must cater to the needs of one who is looking out for brief information and also to the one looking for in depth details about a product and service.

Search engine marketing is a difficult task. It is best to get professional service to market your site to search engines. There are many Search Engine Optimization companies that are capable of undertaking search engine marketing in a professional way. Adopting the proper search engine marketing strategy will surely spell profit for your online business site.

Austen Eddie holds a masters degree in computer science. He is working for Blue Nirvana. For Web designing, E-Commerce NYC, Internet Marketing visit http://www.bluenirvana.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Austen_Eddie

Don't Let Search Engine Marketing Keep You From Getting Ahead Online

2007-07-26T02:12:00.000-07:00

Let's be honest, when we think about being successful online, Search Engines come to mind and having your website indexed high enough in these Search Engines is your main focus.

Beware, solely concentrating on search engine marketing alone may very well keep you from getting ahead online.

Let me explain, so much time may be spent in just one area which in this case is search engine marketing, that some tend to lose focus on the main objective, your customers.

Waiting for Search Engines to index a new website may be a timely process and there is never a guarantee that you will place well at all. No Indexing, No Website Traffic.

So what do you do?

First lets change the term from Search Engine Marketing to Internet Marketing. Simply stated, Marketing to the Internet as a whole and not just search.

Imagine having your website generating targeted traffic without your site even being indexed well at all.

Here's how: Buzz Marketing or Viral Marketing. This is the process of spreading your website message widely across the Internet were other website's are acting as a traffic portal to your site which builds links and ultimately doing the Search Engine Marketing for you.

Articles, Press Releases, Forum Marketing, Ebook Marketing and more. These potential marketing materials are picked up by other high traffic websites for their content value.

Websites need to supply their visitors with new fresh quality content and these materials are indexed by search engines, which generate visitors to your site without your site being indexed.

How? With your signature line which contains short but important details about your website and or business along with a link to your website. The more websites pick up your content the more links, which lead to more website visibility and traffic.

Market to Search Engines with out directly Marketing to Search Engines.

Note: All content created should be optimized in the same manner as your web pages would be, with targeted keyword and keyword phrases as well as good keyword weighting for your targeted terms.

Separate yourself from your competition with a solid well-rounded Internet marketing campaign strategy that is designed to serves your visitors and the Search Engine Marketing precess will take care of itself in time.

This article was written by Wayne Hagerty certified Search Engine Internet Marketing professional with years of SEO experience. Discover how to increase traffic to your website. FREE internet marketing news, and more. Succeed online, visit us today at: http://www.pixseo.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wayne_Hagerty

4 Steps to Improve Your Search Engine Marketing Strategy

2007-07-26T02:11:00.000-07:00

Search engine marketing can be a complex and scary topic. Endless opportunities to advertise and market, constantly changing trends and technologies, and overly complex solutions all come with the territory. So, what you don't need when you're evaluating or creating your search engine marketing strategy is lengthy explanations about how different techniques work. Instead, seek out advisors who can guide you with simple explanations and techniques based on real results. That's exactly what the following article is about. It's a simple list of four things business owners can use in creating or evaluating their search engine marketing strategy.

1. Establish Your Internet Marketing Strategy Goal

Many consultants will tell you to set goals about what you want to achieve with your website. Forget it. Those are distractions from the real question you need to ask yourself, which is

"What is THE purpose of my website?"

Once you answer that question, all other aspects of search engine marketing strategy can be leveraged to help you achieve that purpose. Typically, people use their website for many different purposes. Regardless, you still need to answer this question. The focus you will get from it will help you create a more effective strategy.

Here are the top three most common answers to the question "What is THE purpose of my website?"

1. To sell things

2. To generate leads for my sales team

3. To educate my target audience

It can be this simple! Just decide which of the three answers above suits you best (or create your own) and then move on to step 2.

2. Establish a Search Engine Marketing Plan

There's a reason why search engine marketing is so hot. It works. It consistent generates leads, sales, etc. at a lower cost-per-lead or cost-per-sale than traditional mediums like TV or direct mail advertising. It makes sense when you think about it: when people want to find something online, they go to Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. and search for it.

Search engine marketing is all about SHOWING UP when people search for what you sell, offer, or have on your website. There is a growing body of knowledge (books, articles, etc.) on how to do this. And like anything else, it has become over analyzed and too complex. To further complicate things, some search engine marketing techniques are ethical and legitimate, while some are not. The best approach is to create a search engine marketing plan that focuses on two aspects:

1. Search engine optimization - showing up in the "free" area of the search engine's results

2. Pay-per click advertising - showing up in the "paid" area of the search engine's results

For search engine optimization, first realize there is no "silver bullet." There just isn't a way to easily get ranked consistently high in the search engines. It is a combination of factors that always come down to one underlying truth: build your website according to web standards, with a focus on accessibility for all.

Just like search engine optimization, there is no "silver bullet" for pay-per click advertising, either. Instead, the formula for PPC success is in well-placed bids (what you will pay to have your ad show up) combined with meaningful landing pages (where people go when they click on your ad).

3. Conduct Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The goal of search engine optimization is to make changes to your website to get higher rankings in search engines. Yet, search engine optimization is a confusing sector. On one hand, there are "snake oil salesmen" ready to get you a number 1 ranking with their latest trick. On the other hand, the things that actually do work are very simple, and frankly, just not very "sexy."

The best strategy to take is a common-sense approach to SEO: develop standards for your website that ALL pages must adhere to. If you do this, and enforce it, you can then branch out to some of the other "niche" aspects of SEO.

Here's a sample list of SEO standards to enforce on your website:

1. Write descriptive HTML page titles that really describe the page it is on (in 255 characters or less)

2. Write a summary sentence that really describes the page it is on (in 255 characters or less)

3. Write page content that is focused on

4. Write descriptive ALT text for all images that describes the concept the image illustrates and never use images for text

5. Build all pages to comply with current web standards observed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Only once your web pages comply with the above standards should you start more advanced SEO techniques, including keyword targeting, 301 redirects, link building (getting more links to your site), RSS news feeds, blogs, and SEO-specific metrics and tracking.

4. Leverage Pay-Per Click Advertising

Pay-per click advertising helps you get more traffic from search engines through advertising in search engine results. You pick terms that people search on. You bid a price per click on your ad that you are willing to pay. You ad shows up when someone searches on that term, and, if you're lucky, they click on your ad and come to your website.

So, pay-per click advertising really boils down to 3 components:

1. Picking keywords to advertise on (i.e. target keywords)

2. Determining what to bid for those target keywords

3. Writing copy for the ads that show up when people search

Picking keywords is all about knowing what terms your customers, clients, etc. would use when searching for your product or service. There are several tools to help you generate ideas. The best tools also check to see how many searches-per-month your target keywords receive. You typically want to find keywords that generate a lot of searches every month, but are focused enough for your business. For example, a company that sells Keen high-performance outdoor sandals probably would be best served bidding on "keen sandals" versus "sandals" which could include searches for the all-inclusive resort, Sandals.

Determining what to bid for your keywords can be a highly-scientific process, sometimes managed by complex software and several key metrics. To keep it simple, let a tool like Google Adwords Traffic Estimator recommend to you what to bid at first. Start there, and start small. Your best bet is to lock-in a low daily budget limit until you are comfortable with the impressions your ads are getting, the flow of traffic from the ads to your website, and what those people do once they get to your website.

Writing ad copy comes down to writing a headline that people will click on, and creating compelling copy below that headline/link that will get people to click.

Headlines are best created by following what magazine covers do: focus on getting attention through eye-catching, short phrases. Using words like best (i.e. "Best Tips for a Summer Barbeque"), ultimate (i.e. "Ultimate National Park Vacations") and number-based lists (i.e. "Top 5 Hybrid Cars for 2006") have all been proven to work.

Writing effective ad copy below the title/link is really about reinforcing the term(s) search for. This means using the keywords in the ad copy, and starting the copy with an action verb.

By following the approach above, you can create or evaluate your search engine marketing strategy, focus on what matters most when executing your plans, and more effectively achieve your goals.

For more information and weekly tips on developing a search engine marketing strategy, visit Agility Web Marketing (http://www.agilitywebmarketing.com).

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Regis_Hadiaris

SEM - Defining Your Goals for Your Search Engine Marketing Campaign

2007-07-26T01:40:00.000-07:00

SEM - Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a field where companies now spend tens of thousands of marketing dollars annually. In the field of Search Engine Marketing, like any other field, there are the good guys and the bad guys so buyers need to be informed and have some basic knowledge to effectively ascertain whether or not they are getting value for the dollar spent. Also, you need to do your due diligence (check references, results, etc.) to avoid unethical firms. Some may not realize what part ethics play in effective SEM, but beware that an unethical firm can actually make your web site's ranking worse, and sometimes you can suffer the ultimate fate of having your site banned from a search engine based on an SEM firms unethical practices.

What are your goals for your search engine marketing campaign?

Perhaps you are launching a new web site or a new business and need a web site. It is critical that you include search engine marketing in your overall marketing plan regardless as this can save you lots of money in the end. I recently spoke with a business owner who, after a short period, was going out of business. One of his chief complaints was how much money he had spent on advertising and received little or nothing in the end for it. I can't help but to think how much more effectively that money would have been spent in SEM, as the results do not go away in a few weeks like print advertising.

Perhaps you have an established web site and you want to increase your sites ranking or increase your conversion rate, or just make the site more profitable. Make sure you have clearly identifiable goals for your SEM campaign with regard to how many search engines you are looking to get listed in, how many monthly visitors you are looking for, and the like. It is CRITICAL that you have an effective web stats program to monitor this; otherwise you are throwing your money away. Also, you need to look at your stats yourself, don't just leave it up to the company. Let them know in advance that you will be monitoring the stats along with them as this will build in some accountability. If they have any problem with this that is a sure sign to stop the negotiations right there. Make sure you have consultation time built in to your contract, so you know what is going on with the process. You should speak with the firm at least monthly to monitor progress or analyze any reports that you receive from them. You should also establish up front whether or not you want written reports, which range from simple to elaborate with prices from inexpensive to very costly. I am not a big fan of large elaborate reports because they are not cheap and in the end you might be paying a lot of money for fluff, hype, and broken promises for the future. Here are the basics of what you need to know about your SEM campaign:

1) are we getting web traffic?

2) where is it coming from?

3) are we converting visitors?

4) if not - why not, if yes - how can we get more visitors to convert?

5) what is being done to increase web traffic or customer conversions?

6) am I spending more money on SEM than I am making? (which might make sense initially, but can't sustain your business for the long haul).

Did you hire the right search engine marketing firm?

First, lets talk about the Good Guys (a.k.a. white hat SEO firms) - The good guys work hard to get your web site ranked well in the search engines across the board. They usually employ a broad spectrum of techniques which include maximizing your exposure in quality search engines and directories, as well as web coding and content analysis, and increasing quality content through techniques such as copy-writing, article submission, and blogging. This is a time consuming process and they should be paid accordingly. You need to be willing to commit to a minimum of 6 months, and ideally a year to truly evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign, which is why it is so important to start off with the right firm. The questions always remain:

- what happens if you don't see any results?

- how much should I pay?

- can I get my money back?

Let's take these in order. First, depending on the age of your site and what you are looking to accomplish, your results may vary. A new site will see a huge increase in traffic, as it is not hard to go from zero to anything. If the site has been established for a while and you are seeking to improve your rankings and traffic, you should see slow but steady increases of traffic, but you may see some (upward) spikes if they are able to get you some strong inbound links or good press.

Pricing for SEM is all over the board. In the end, you should pay what you can afford. If you have a limited budget, you NEED to become a student of SEM and learn how to do this yourself otherwise you may go broke in the process. If you are launching a new site, it is not unrealistic to have over $1,000 just in fees paid to the directories to be listed. Make sure your contract spells out what you are paying for and while I do believe that companies should charge to do submissions, I don't believe they should mark up the search engine directory fees (they are high enough already). Make sure you know what will be done with respect to pay-per-click campaigns, as you do not want to just have someone using your money to buy traffic. Once the money is gone, the traffic will be gone as well if you do not have a long-term plan. I do think it is helpful to use some paid search as you are growing your site, because it is one of the fastest ways to get visitors to your site. I prefer to use the big boys such as Yahoo (Overture), MSN, or Google over the smaller pay-per-click sites such as 7Search or aggregators such as Enhance. It is my experience, that the quality of traffic is just not as good at the secondary pay-per-click sites. Some people swear by the little guys (pay-per-click sites), saying it is more traffic for less money, but I believe you get what you pay for. How much you spend on actual paid traffic depends on your industry and how competitive the terms are, some are pennies per click, and some are several dollars per click.

Most companies do not offer a money back guarantee as you are usually paying for consulting or actual work that is performed. If you feel that something illegal or unethical has taken place, or if the company you choose breaches their contract, then by all means pursue your refund legally (call your lawyer, go to small claims court, file complaints with the Better Business Bureau and/or the Federal Trade Commission).

This leads us to talking about the bad guys of SEM. It isn't always easy to spot a fraud, but there are some sure signs. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. This sounds cliche, but I investigate companies and "opportunities" every single week, and it is sad what I see out there because so many of these companies have such a strong appearing web presence, but if you do just a little research, you will find out that it is a sham. Here are a couple of pointers with regard to staying away from bad SEM firms:

1) No one can guarantee results - PERIOD. No SEM firm has any control over ranking, other than if pay-per-click is used and that is a moving target which is costly and competitive to stay #1 in.

2) Always check out the firm. Do a Google search on the company by name, and perhaps the owner or CEO if you can find that information.

3) Do a whois search on the domain and make sure the addresses match what is on the site. If the site says they are in Ohio, but the domain is registered in the UK to a UK address, you may have reason to question that.

4) Never work with a firm that uses automated web site submissions or cloaking. These are two of the most common black hat SEM practices that will very likely get your web site banned. Visit the Google Webmaster Help Center for more info on unethical SEM techniques.

5) Get a second opinion. When a doctor recommends a procedure or a new medicine, most of us will do our research and may even ask another doctor. Your SEM campaign will very likely cost you more than most doctor visits, so it should be worth it to call another firm for a consultation. It is not unreasonable for a firm to charge for such a consultation and it can be money well spent.

6) Look for the firms affiliation with a search marketing or Internet advertising organization. The key here is to make sure that organization is legitimate and not made up or owned by the SEM firm you are checking out (a whois check will usually let you know). Do your research on that organization as well to know what practices that firm has committed to upholding. Our firm, for example, is a member of SEO Pros, an organization of SEM firms committed to best practices in the field of Search Engine Marketing.

You are now armed and dangerous! You have been empowered to make a wise choice in your SEM firm selection, after making the wise choice to perform a search engine marketing campaign.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anthony_Kirlew

Search Engine Marketing Ethics: Don't Believe The Hype

2007-07-26T01:33:00.000-07:00

Getting to the top of the search engines, and staying there, is an ongoing process. This does not mean it is expensive to stay at the top. In fact, in most cases, it's rather affordable. But beware, there are pitfalls along the way to search engine Zen.

The old adage, "If it sounds too good to be true", applies to SEO (search engine optimization). There are many companies that will promise top results using less than ethical methods. Including slick salesmen that will convince you that all the top sites cheat the search engines in order to stay on top. You will run into web site owners that mask keywords to get top positions making it sound very tempting to follow in their foot steps.

Don't be fooled by such hype. These are short term solutions that can lead to a permanent ban in the top engines. Once you are banned in Google, Yahoo, MSN or ASK, you may as well dump your site and start over. If you're looking for long term success on the internet, don't cheat the search engines.

One of the cheats I have been seeing lately is masking content with “noscript tags”. The noscript tags are used to define an alternate content (text) if a script is NOT executed. People have been taking advantage of this and filling it with content that visitors don't see, but the search engines do. While this does work, it is short term and believe me when I say, you will be caught. You will have no warning, no second chances. You will wake up one day and your site will not be found.

There is no phone number to call, your emails go unanswered, and traffic to your site drops off overnight. Your income dries up and it's all over. It can take six months or more to undo the damage and, in some cases, it's permanent. The major search engines are always on the lookout for new cheats. When found, they will program the search engines to drop the sites using these methods. Without warning, you're gone. Also, don't forget, your competition watches your site and is looking for ways to rank higher than you. Your competition may report your unethical methods to the search engines.

If you're planning to be around for the long haul and want some success on the internet, then you need to be ethical in your promotion. Unless you have daily time dedicated to studying SEO and making the needed changes, you should contract with a reputable SEO company. You need a company that studies the SEO industry on a daily basis to keep on top of what it takes to rank at the top for the long run. A company that is above cheats and quick fixes. A company that offers solid optimization that can keep you on top of the search engine results. A company that will take the time to target your specific audience to get you visitors that are interested in your product or service.

Many SEO companies will promise thousands of visitors a day. Unless those visitors are interested in what you have to offer or ended up at your site and did not find what they searched for, they will remember you. They will remember that you did not have what they wanted. They may leave disappointed and your good name will have a black mark next to it. Don't get sucked into damaging your image by slick salesmen.

When looking for a company to handle your SEO, first and foremost, be comfortable with the people you will be directly working with. They will need total access to your web site and server to make the needed changes. At times, the verbiage of your site may need minor changes. A word or two may need to be changed to improve keyword density. You need a company you can trust with your company's image.

In today's business world, you must have a web site. After all, your competition does. Your site must be marketed ethically and monitored daily. Changes must be made ASAP when conditions change. Hire a professional to handle SEO. When your business is booming, it's too easy to put SEO on the back burner. Before you know it, your rankings will have dropped from top to bottom, as well as your bottom line.

About the Author:

Mark Hochhaus co-owner of Technet Internet Marketing has been developing web sites and optimizing for search engines since the early days of the Internet. To keep abreast of his latest articles, visit: Technet's SEO News Blog: The Optimizer

The Frustrated Marketer Tries To Grasp Search Engine Marketing Strategies

2007-07-26T01:28:00.001-07:00

Who wants to be a statistic? Well frustrated marketers don't because that would put them in the percentage of Internet marketers that are not succeeding with their online home business, but give that frustrated marketer a search engine marketing strategies course they can understand and apply and see if they want to be a statistic then. That information could move them from 85% of failing marketers into the 15% that have learned to earn online.

Give the frustrated marketer the correct tools, which in this case is knowledge on search engine marketing along with some patient guidance and that frustrated marketer will become the fascinated marketer who can't believe it could be that easy to get listed in any search engine and to start a flow of never ending targeted traffic to their web site.

I was a frustrated marketer and so many of the people have met online were the same. The thing we had most in common, other than being a frustrated and somewhat desperate marketer, was the fact that we kept jumping from strategy to strategy without applying the right focus or giving the strategy the adequate time to succeed.

How many fish do you think you would catch if you put your line in the water long enough to get it wet and then yanked it back out again, moved to a new spot and started the process all over again. After a few fishing trips with no fish you would become frustrated too.

Marketing online is like fishing without keeping your line in the water, so your first lesson is to stay in the game until you have given adequate time to your strategy, whether you are fishing or marketing.

Another problem the frustrated marketer has to deal with is fishing with the wrong bait. All they catch are fish they need to through back because they are not the target species they are looking for. Your bait here, the keywords you use, need to attract the right fish. If you don't get it right you will be getting visitors, drawn by your bait, that just turn around and leave as soon as they arrive.

The next problem I picked up on was the fact that if you go fishing in your bath tub you will likely go hungry yet a lot of frustrated marketers are doing just that by not finding their right target group.

So like fishing if you don't do your research you will remain a frustrated fisher-person, or in this case, a frustrated marketer that scratches their head at the term, search engine marketing.

If this example of a frustrated marketer sounds a lot like you I am sorry to hear it, but there is a light at the end of tunnel, if you turn around and head in the right direction.

You have two roads you can take. The first can be expensive, but if you have been throwing your money away for quite a while it may be an option. That option would be to hire a search engine marketing specialist or expert. They can have you setup and receiving targeted traffic to your web pages in a very short time, but you do have to pay for that type of service. On the other hand...

You have a second road, which isn't paved and will take you quite a bit longer. That would be to learn search engine marketing for yourself. The downside to this method is the amount of time required. The upside is the fact that once you learn search engine marketing strategies that work you can apply them to any web page you want and it only costs you your time and not that hard earned cash.

I choose to take the second road and am no longer a frustrated marketer. I have also helped others learn simple search engine optimization strategies that helped to move them from the negative stats side to the positive side and they to are no longer a frustrated or desperate marketer.

James Mann has written a FREE 7 day search engine optimization ecourse that has help many Internet marketing newbies, including his friend Ned The Newbie, otherwise known as Gary.

FREE 7 Day SEO Course"

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Mann

Search Engine Marketing - What Does It Take To Rank These Days?

2007-07-26T01:26:00.000-07:00

Intro.
Search engine marketing has changed so drastically over the past few years, that one wonders where it may be heading next. Currently, Google, Yahoo, and MSN search engine host 95% of all searches done online, and there doesn't seem to be any signs of serious changes. But what can we do to rank highly in them consistently?

One-way links
It seems that inter-site linking is all the rage, and most know that just exchanging links with random websites will not get you the rankings you want, and they are right. The days of exchanging links with any and every website out there are over, and have been over for sometime. One is better off identifying their niche, and focusing on obtaining one-way links from websites and directories. This can be done in a variety of ways such as:

Writing articles and submitting them to directories
Submitting your website to top directories such as joeant and skaffe
Giving away free information with the stipulation the user link to where they got the material, which is you
Actively participating in forums that match your products, and niche
Start a blog and keep it updated

Tags
Fortunately, there are head tags that still work over all search engines. The title tag, and the description tag. The meta keyword tag no longer matters in Google, and Yahoos search engines too much, though they are still weighted by msn. Msn actually likes this tag quite a bit, so I would recommend still using your keyphrases in this head tag.

Keywords
When first starting out, Its best to start with smaller keyphrases then move in to larger ones. This will get you traffic, and keep you afloat, while you go for the bigger ones. Not only that, it gives you sense of accomplishment, and keeps you moving forward. This is very important, as many people get stuck in a rut after about 3-4 months with no rankings, and give up. It's important to start small. Not only to pay bills, but to keep you going in the right direction.

Link Exchanges

Yes, link exchanges still work. Believe it. Though there are quality standards these days.

Only exchange link with websites that are in your general niche market. For example, if had a fishing related website, I would not want to exchange links with a cleaning service website.
Do not exchange with website with a single page link directory, with 200 links on it. First off, Google only indexes the first 100 links on each page, and secondly, these types of sites are starting to be punished by Google, Yahoo.
Only exchange with a website that has a clearly defined link directory, that is broken down into categories, and is linked from their homepage.
Do not exchange with websites that have a grey bar, when using the Google toolbar. This indicates they have been punished by Google, and for linking to them, you could in turn be punished.

Keep at it
This could quite possibly be the key to ranking for competitive phrases. You have to stay positive, and keep working steady, everyday. This of course, comes with the stipulation that you have identified the best keyphrases for your site, and are confident of your ability. Rankings do not happen overnight, and for more competitive phrases, might not happen within the year. This is the harsh truth, but, with the right knowledge, and strict work ethics, you can certainly achieve the success you expect online.

This article was written by Anthony Sulecki, the writer of the WPS Search Engine Marketing Solutions book. He is always open for questions, and email.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tony_Sulecki

Search Engine Marketing - The Importance of Tracking Pay Per Click Campaigns

2007-07-26T01:20:00.000-07:00

So you’ve implemented a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, visitors to your site have gone up, sales have started to increase and all is well. You would be forgiven to think that the job is done, so sit back and watch the money roll in. However, there is still another vital stage of running a successful PPC campaign – Tracking.

Why is tracking important?
With any marketing campaign, be it online or offline there are bound to be mistakes made, some small, some not so small, the goal of tracking is to find out which parts of your campaign has been a success and more importantly, what hasn’t and why. Tracking your PPC campaign will enable you not only to gain a greater understanding of your customer but it will also give you a greater understanding of your website and how your customers use it – unfortunately very few visitors to your website will use it exactly how you intended no matter how well it is designed!

So what should you track?
Work out what you want to get from your PPC campaign, if you sell a product online you are likely to want more sales, if you offer a service you may well want to track the number of enquiries from your website. Whatever it is you should at the end of it be able to assess whether your campaign has met your expectations and given you a positive ROI.

Often in a PPC campaign, specific landing pages will be set up for each advert. Measuring the number of conversions from visitors who landed on these pages can be a great indicator as to what the customers wants to see when they get to your site.

Different websites are going to want to track different things, so it is important you take a step back and really work out what factors should be taken into consideration when judging whether your PPC campaign has been a success. You may well want them to make a purchase online, sign up for your weekly newsletter, or both of these. Whatever the goal is, you should make sure you track it.

How can I track my PPC conversions?
Here are 3 ways of tracking your PPC campaign success:

1. Web log files – Using software such as Click Tracks which analyses your web logs and provides you with detailed information on visitors to your site both those who have come through organic listings and those from PPC.

2. Search engine conversion counters – Both Google and Yahoo offer free services with their Adwords and search marketing products. Not only will these give you conversions but will also provide other important metrics such as clicks, click through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC) and the total cost of the campaign.

3. Pressing the off switch and then turning it back on again – Not generally recommended for obvious reasons, but this is a crude way of judging what effect your campaign is having.

Tracking your PPC campaign is by no means easy and it can take a long time to work out exactly what you need to track. However once you have an efficient tracking system in place it will become a lot easier to understand your customers and provide you with valuable information as to how you can refine your campaign to maximise ROI.

Paul Barrett is an account manager at search engine marketing specialists, SiteVisibility. SiteVisibility helps its clients attract, convert and retain profitable customers through their websites.

For more information, visit Site Visibility

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Barrett

Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T01:19:00.000-07:00

Estimates suggest that approx 7.3 million pages are being added daily, to the repository called web (Cyveillance Study) & that this rate of addition of information, is continuously accelerating.

With this level of energy & inputs going into the web everyday then, no wonder the indexing & cataloguing services (that we popularly understand as search engines) are increasingly becoming important players in the web site visibility scenario. In fact, with their capacities to influence online traffic & sales, the search engines are becoming very powerful arenas for marketing.

So of late, businesses have started to give a serious look at promoting themselves well with search engines. This domain of search engine marketing then is increasingly becoming a revenue driver as is an important brand building exercise. Companies typically look at it now, as a strategic initiative.

Inspite of increasing importance of online promotions, there is a lot of haze about what search engine marketing is? What does it entail? What are its parameters? This small SEM FAQ attempts to remove this obscurity by answering some of these questions.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - What is it?

Search Engine Marketing is essentially an art of being able to achieve two things for a web site:

Deep indexing of the site. This is simpler terms means being able to get as many pages of the site into the search engine database.

Better Ranking of the site. This essentially is the craft of making the site/page rank well for specific user queries.

Are there different types of SEM?

Yes, essentially SEM is of two types.

In the first, the consultant will have to change the web site ( called search engine optimization or SEO for brevity) for doing proper SEM work. Thereafter the site has to be continuously interlinked with best of other online resources. This will ensure good editorial listings for the site.

Typically this work takes 6 to 8 months to produce stable & lasting results.

A shorter yet paid way of promoting a site with search engines is Pay per Click(PPC). In this SEM campaign, you can bid on your search phrases & when those phrases are searched, your advertisement will appear on the results page. Once some one clicks on your ad, the bid amount is deducted from your account.

Does SEM help?

A good SEM campaign is a means to an end. It can get your site to rank well for your business search terms. However the sales & revenues on your site are driven entirely by the user experience & the business merits.

SEM gets the traffic. Site has to sell.

What does SEM entail?

To achieve deeper indexing & a better ranking the SEM starts at the level of web design. When one is conceiving of creating a business presence online he has to keep two factors in mind:

User experience in navigating the site.

Spider experience in navigating the site.

These two users will see different pictures of the same site. The human user will see the browser supported, colorful front end. The spider( software, search engines send to crawl the web for information) will see only the text on the site.

So different strategies need to be adopted for each set of users. As web designers are engaged for formulating the site for end users, simultaneously, SEM consultant should figure in to optimize the site for spiders.

What are SEM tools?

The elements that SEM consultants play with to achieve their ends are:

Text (most crucial as spiders are image blind)

Tags (HTML tags are important components in the SEM tweaks)

Internal linking (The site navigation & links effect the sites indexing & ranking)

External linking (A site is also known by the company it keeps)

Then there are hundreds of do & donts that should be implemented within a site. However, bear in mind that there are no set rules for SEM only ‘Best Practices’. This is a very experience specific domain. So your site is promoted as good or as bad as your consultant is.

Another characteristic of this domain is the fact that Search engines keep tweaking around on their ranking criterion as well as technological prowess. Hence an SEM consultant has to be always on his toes with his ears to the ground. A difficult posture to adopt in any part of the world. This is because there is a very short gap between him & obsolescence. If you are not keyed in, the industry would have moved on, in as short time as a quarter.

When to start SEM

Ideally SEM should commence along with the plan for the web site construction. This is because the results of SEM will be best, if the site has been built base up keeping the SEM principles in perspective.

However most of the businesses come to the SEM mindset almost as an afterthought. This is when their sites have languished in the search engine indexes for a while that they realize the need to start promoting their wares online.

So if you have not undertaken SEM at the start of the web design process, start as soon as possible, for it is not a short sprint but a marathon The results start to show up after a good length of time. Hence the opportunity cost( in terms of lost sales) for a delayed SEM campaign can be huge.

Do all businesses need SEM?

No some sites automatically would rank well. For example .edu, .gov domain sites are given a preference by search engines. Hence most of them would not need SEM. Also all non commercial sites which are authorities in their respective domains will fall in this category as well.

SEM is most important for the businesses who sell good/services online or who have a offline delivery model, yet source their inquiries online. Another category are businesses who intend to establish an online brand or beat competition.

Vikas Malhotra is a successful Internet marketer utilizing both pay-per-click marketing and search engine optimization to increase website traffic. To learn more, visit http://sem.mosaic-service.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vikas_Malhotra

Search Engine Marketing - Playing the Search Engine Game

2007-07-26T01:18:00.001-07:00

Search engines wait for no man. Write a book about searching and it’ll be out-of-date before it hits the printers, let alone the shops. So, how can you keep track?

One of the biggest holy grails of search engine marketing is cracking the Google algorithm. I’m sure you’ve heard the debates about optimising content, using the right keywords, creating titles, getting in-bound links and the like. It might feel that the search engines are toying with you. As soon as you catch up, they are off again.

But, there are some very real reasons for these advancements, over and above the sadistic ones. And, perhaps it can be boiled down to two simple (and conflicting) elements:

• Competition: more and more businesses are coming online every day.

• Expectation: customers expect more from the sites they are referred to – i.e. they expect sites to be highly relevant to the searches they are making.

In short, with more and more businesses trying to create advantage from the online world, search engines are having to ring the changes to give their users what they want. It’s not about making it difficult for the businesses and sites. Rather, it’s about giving users the most relevant information – something that’s becoming more and more difficult as the competition grows.

So, what does this mean to you? Well, I believe website owners and search engine marketers can learn something from the user-focused strategies of search engines. As marketers we need to keep an eye on the algorithms, of course. But we need to keep a sharper eye on our customers. What do they want? And, more importantly, how can we give it to them? By thinking more about users and potential customers rather than links and algorithms, search engine marketing can truly earn its ‘marketing’ tag.

So, wearing that tag, here are five things you could be thinking of right now:

• Working with other sites: It’s not a crime to work with others if its mutually beneficial. Think about the coffee-shop-in-the-bookstore phenomenon. Perhaps there’s a gap in another business’ site that you can fill that will help them as well as you?

• Deep links: Take the searcher to what he or she is actually looking for. Use deep links for your organic and paid-for listings, so vistors don’t have to look for what they want.

• Publicity pieces: If you’re writing a publicity piece (an article or press release, for instance), make it useful, interesting and newsworthy. You could write an article using some of the top search terms for your business. But, make sure it’s worth reading or it won’t be acted on.

• Directories: Pick the business directories with the best custom, and forget the others. You should be looking for good referrals rather than just another link.

• Anchor links: Create anchor text (information and links that you supply to other sites) that is relevant to the audience of that site, or the topic covered on the page. The anchor text is essential in attracting profitable custom. Remember again, it’s not just about getting the link.

Damon Lightley is a search engine marketing consultant at Site Visibility Ltd. Site Visibility is a UK based search engine marketing company that helps clients increase online customer acquisition and retention using search engine optimisation, pay per click and online marketing campaign measurement techniques.

http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Damon_Lightley

Writing Press Releases for Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T01:16:00.000-07:00

Press releases are one of those mystical pieces of self-promotion. Whilst the wily press release hangs around in the shadows, a journalist picks up the content and writes his or her own version of events. Read a story in the press, in a magazine or on the web, and you probably won’t think the idea originally came from the keyboard of a marketer.

If this marketer can get it right though, a press release is a great way of getting publicity. And specifically, the publicity that’s the most effective and the hardest to come by – that of third-party endorsement. Well, third-party endorsement is not strictly true. But, because the journalist is writing an article that’s essentially made up of his or her ‘own’ words, readers will think that it is an independent view on a product of service.

So, what do press releases mean for the world of search engine marketing? Not surprisingly, the internet is an extremely useful medium for distributing marketing messages. Get it to the right places and it’ll be picked up by the websites where people will find your name or see what you do. Of course, this is a great way of promoting a product or service, improving brand recognition, or getting links back into your site.

Play your cards right though, and you can get more than visibility on other websites. For starters, search engines like Google place a great deal of importance on ‘link popularity’ when it comes to rating sites against search terms. Link popularity is the amount of other web pages that link into your site. The more links you have, the better a search engine will rate you.

Also, search engines list news items as readily as they do website pages. Millions of internet users (including journalists) use Yahoo!, Google News and other sites to look for stories and information. These sources are usually updated with fresh content that’s less than 30 days old. So, they will always be a useful resource – and a resource that marketers can make good use of.

What about the press release itself? Well, there have always been rules about writing them. And, whilst the old print-based tips still stand (newsworthy topic, targeted messages, concise wording and important information at the top), there are some new things to think about for distributing on the web. Optimisation is the name of the game – and, in particular, the use of keywords. If someone is trying to find information like yours, you need to second-guess the search terms they might use. Then it’s a case of using these terms to the right levels in headers and body copy.

Distributing press releases is certainly a marketing tactic that’s worth taking notice of. Get it right and you might be surprised at the results. Don’t be surprised when you see your own words in black-and-white, that’s all I’m saying.

http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Damon_Lightley

Are You Confused By Search Engine Marketing?

2007-07-26T01:14:00.002-07:00

This week almost by accident I came across a book on a website which may finally clear my confusion. I find that there is so much to learn that such a publication is a great help.

With this in mind you may be interested to know more.

Everyone knows you can't sell what people can't find. That's why driving more traffic, especially TARGETED traffic to your web site is essential.

Building incoming links to your site, buying pay per click ads, and helping your site show up better in search engines are what the gurus tell us.

Most small business owners don't have the time, money or inclination to sort the facts from the fiction. The gurus usually only cover part of the topic.

For the first time, to my knowledge, there's a helpful internet marketing book written specifically for small business owners.

Are you also confused by what search engine marketing is and how it can increase your bottom line?

How pay-per-click campaign work?

What it takes to get your site in front of potential buyers?

Why solid links are important?

What you can do to make better conversions?

My time on the internet has taught me that there is a plethora of great information written by very competent people. I have always believed in the power of the written word to further knowledge.

With these beliefs firmly in mind it is my responsibilty to pass this information to you.

I hope it helps.

Article by Michael Harrison, Author, Publisher and Business Consultant. Go to: http://www.be-your-own-business-expert.com/Search_Engine_Marketing.html

**Attn: Ezine Editors / Site Owners / Webmasters / everyone** Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your site as long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content and include our resource box as listed above.

You can use other articles similarly from http://www.be-your-own-business-expert.com/Article.html OR subscribe to our FREE newsletter issued weekly. Each issue is packed with motivational, business and personal development material.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Harrison

Search Engine Marketing and Website Content

2007-07-26T01:14:00.001-07:00

What is one of the main keys to successfully positioning your website in the search engines? The simple answer is, Content!

Why is content so important to your website?

Many businesses feel that having a small amount of content is enough, and the rest of the website will sell itself! This may be the case with a small percentage of business websites, but in the majority of cases you will lose out by not having strong content throughout your site. Read on, and you will find out why...

The aim of most businesses with a website is to successfully market their website and increase sales. This is a much cheaper form of advertising than other main stream advertising media.

There are quite a few components that make up a successful internet marketing campaign. They include,

1) Competitor Analysis
2) Keyword research
3) Linking - Internal and External
4) Coding your meta tags i.e. Header Tag, Description Tag, Keyword Tag.
5) Well optimised Content

The focus of this article is website content. That website content is a very important element in most successful internet marketing campaigns, cannot be stressed enough.

Now don't get me wrong; I am not saying website content is the only component you need to have for a successful internet marketing campaign, other elements are also very important. Content is a very strong element if the search engine is to correctly identify where a website belongs in its search engine listings. Other elements used in search engine marketing -see the elements listed above- can be manipulated to try and deceive the search engines, but good solid website content will give you an advantage over your competitors that have little or no content.

Why will it give you an advantage? If your website content is dedicated to a particular subject or theme, then search engine logic will be able to determine where your website will best fit within its search pages.

Even though this article is mainly focused around the benefits that strong content brings to your search engine rankings, don't focus purely on the search engines when writing content for your website. After all, the main purpose of having a website in the first place is to attract customers who will buy your product or service, not search engines!

Website content should have the following components:

1) Relevance to the product or service you are offering;
2) Incorporate targeted key phrases throughout;
3) Focus on the relevant sales message per product/service, as well as making it informative.
4) Free information, articles or hints and tips.

1) Relevance to the product or service you are offering;

Many websites make the mistake of covering multiple products or services on a single page. Not only can this be confusing for visitors to your website, but it also means that your overall keyword density on each page is weak. The aim is to ensure your relevant keywords appear often enough throughout your content to give you the opportunity to attain high rankings in the major search engines for your targeted keywords.

Note: Wherever possible, make the focus of each web page relate to one particular product or service.

For businesses that offer a range of different products or services, this can sometimes be quite difficult to effectively manage and organise. This is where it is of more benefit to hire a professional web designer to manage the structure of your website more effectively. Your website needs to be clear and concise for your customers as well as being effectively optimised for the search engines.

2) Incorporate targeted key phrases throughout;

Key phrases are an important part of any search engine marketing campaign. Most search engine marketing specialists will tell you that your keywords should make up approximately two to five percent of your content for optimal results.

Note: This percentage range is an estimate as there is no documentation provided by any search engine company to support this.

I will not go into too much detail here regarding key phrases, however there are many articles available on the net that go into more detail.

3) Focus on the relevant sales message per product/service, as well as making it informative.

a) Relevant Sales message:

"Click here to find out about our special offer for the month of December!!!"

This statement is referred to as a "call-to-action". A Call-to-action triggers a user to perform a certain action; in this case the action performed is clicking on this special offer. Various sales and marketing research shows that when a call-to-action is used, the conversion rate to sale or enquiry is significantly higher.

b) Detailed information relating to the product or service being sold:

There are two main types of users that visit websites: those that like detail and those that want the information they are looking for delivered in brief summary.

For the purpose of this example, let's refer to:

Detailed person - Person A
Summary person - Person B

An article like this is written to target "Person A", as "Person B" generally isn't interested in reading an article of this length.

With this in mind, when writing website content that has a sales focus, ensure that you provide your summary or sales message in the initial one to three -short- paragraphs, and then continue with the detail in the following paragraphs.

Alternatively, where it fits the structure of your web page better, provide your product or service summaries on a main page, with links from each category to a page dedicated to the full content information.

The last thing you want to do is overwhelm someone with so much information that they don't end up reading anything, and opts out for a website that provides information that is delivered in a much simpler format.

4) Free information, articles or hints and tips.

Create reasons for your customers to keep returning to your website!

How do you create reasons for visitors to return to your website? Free information that relates to or compliments your product or service is a great way to keep visitors coming back to your website, i.e. if your website focuses on bathroom tiles, provide free tips on how to care for your tiles, or on the best method for laying the tiles for those that want to "do-it-yourself". You could create a dedicated section within your website titled "Do-it-Yourself".

By providing free helpful information, not only are you adding extra fresh website content; you are also providing extra reasons for your customers to keep returning to your website.

Note: A visitor to your website may not want to buy from you today, but if you can give them a reason to remember your website when they are ready to buy, there is a very good chance you will get a sale from them at a future date.

How often should you add Content?

Ideally if you could add or make changes to your website content everyday it would greatly benefit your site in terms of search results. However, unless you have someone managing your website full-time, this is often difficult to manage.

I recommend that you make at least small adjustments/changes to your website on a weekly basis, and add fresh content on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis. This will keep the search engines interested in your site, and when you do make changes they will be quickly picked up and listed in the search engine results.

For any content on your website that is no longer relevant, or is out of date, either remove it, or where applicable archive it on your site. Blog software is ideal for effectively managing articles or updates on your website. Just ensure that if you do setup a Blog on your website, that it has the ability to archive and sort your articles and updates effectively.

Writing Articles

Ideally I recommend you write articles or hints and tips yourself wherever possible. The benefits to you and your business will include;

- Credibility in your customers' eyes as they will feel comfortable about your confidence and knowledge of your product.
- Fresh original content for your website which search engines (especially Google) love.

If you are unable to write content for your website due to time restrictions, or feel you don't have sufficient skills to write a professional content, there are other resources available to you:

-Free articles sites where you can download and use articles on almost any subject you can think of.
- Hire a professional copywriter to write your content for you. This is a more expensive option, but gives you the added advantage of fresh original content.

Having a website that is rich in well optimised content will have your website well on the way towards being successful in your search engine marketing campaign. Don't be discouraged if you don't have much content on your website now. It is never too late to get started, and no time is better than the present to get started!

Note: To-date, no matter what search engine algorithm changes occur, content has always remained an important component for search engines to determine where a website will rank for specific keywords within their results.

Andrew Seidel - Search Engine Placement Specialist for Quantum Web Solutions in Sydney, Australia.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Seidel

Choosing A Search Engine Marketing Firm For Your Business

2007-07-26T01:12:00.000-07:00

Each day more companies are turning to the Internet to provide a targeted way to market their product/services and generate leads and sales. Marketing on the Internet provides a greater return on investment and is more cost effective then most traditional marketing avenues. It can be incorporated with conventional offline marketing to result in lower cost, expanded reach, better measurement and accountability.

For companies to be successful they need to concentrate first on the foundation of their business – their products, services and customers. A combination of specialized technology and skills is required for Internet marketing due to the ever changing markets.

Any search engine marketing firm that you choose should concentrate on two key areas that have a direct impact on your business and have access to the latest commercial seo tools. The first area of concern should be helping your business increase the number of relevant visitors to your website. This can be done thru optimizing your site for the search engines or pay-per-click advertising on Google Adwords for example. Sponsored or paid advertising on such sites as Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing can provide an immediate flow of targeted website traffic provided one has properly chosen the right keywords for your business offering. The second area of focus should then be on what I call “conversion optimization”. This is basically increasing the percentage of those visitors that respond to your business offering before leaving your website.

Here’s a list of questions a search engine marketing company should be able to help you with

Which search terms really matter when it comes to attracting the maximum number of relevant visitors to your website?

How does your company’s website stack up against your competitors for those terms?

What specific type of action do you want your website visitors to do? Examples: Sign-up for newsletter, download company brochure, schedule a live demo, etc.

Where is your company dominant and where do you have opportunities to grow?

If you choose the paid advertising route in the beginning to generate immediate targeted traffic then a good search engine marketing firm should be able to help you streamline the process from the impression of your ads to conversion, testing the offer that is presented at each step, and boosting overall conversion rates. A Web Analytic tool is absolutely essential in helping you better understand visitor behavior, identify user experience issues, time spent on your site, and overall campaign conversion tracking. Be sure a web analytics tool is part of the seo services you decide to invest in.

Market-Vantage LLC - A Search Engine Marketing Firm - specializes in Integrated web marketing, helping B2B and B2C companies develop and implement effective Internet marketing strategies for positive impact on business. Please call us at 978-448-4333 or email us at drd@market-vantage.com for a free initial consultation to discuss your specific situation in confidence.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Darryl_DeLong

Rocky Relationships: Four Problems You Can Have With a Search Engine Marketing Company

2007-07-26T01:10:00.000-07:00

Not all relationships go smoothly. Even the best relationships have their rocky parts. What can you do to prepare for the bad times?

1) Limitations
Just because you grow, doesn’t mean that your search engine marketing company will. This means that you may need to seek a company that can fulfill you needs, or even hire someone on who can take care of your needs. Either way, just be aware that there is the possibility that you and your current company may part ways down the road as you get bigger. A good way to prevent this is by making sure that the company you start with can handle a wide variety of problems, and that it looks like it will grow with you.

2) Seven Year Itch
There seems to come a time in most relationships where one or both partners want to try something new. Business relationships aren’t particular immune to this phenomenon; marketing companies decided to drop clients as they decide that they don’t want to deal with certain kinds of clients, and your company may decide to go in an entirely new direction, and your current search engine marketing company can’t go with you. Just make sure that you occasionally ask for, and receive backups, of what the company has done for you, and you will be well prepared for when this happens.

3) Death Of A Partner
The vast majority of businesses do not survive. That is a sad, sad fact. Unfortunately, when the search engine marketing company that you needed to do your marketing is no longer in business, it can be severely disable your business. As above, just make sure that you get the occasional back-up of all files related to your business, and you can pass those files to your next company.

4) Lack of Performance
Rarely, a search engine marketing company will start out doing what you want them to, and then stop doing it as well, either do to personal problems, personnel changes, or other issues. At that stage, you need to discuss the problem with the person, and find out if the problem is just temporary. Based on that, decide if looking for another company is in your future.

Being aware of problems before they happen allows you to solve the problem before it happens. These tips should help you to prepare for most of the problems you will face.

Get expert answers and more information on Search Engine Optimization services as well as other expert advice the latest Internet Marketing topics at Marketing-Helpers.com . Marketing-Helpers.com is a resource for business owners, managers, and marketers find the answers and services they need to operate a highly successful Web site. Get advice from experts like Bryan Hornung and we'll show you how the best way for you to connect with a search engine optimization specialist or search engine optimization company to increase web site traffic with a managed search engine marketing services.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bryan_Hornung

Search Engine Marketing – The Full Package

2007-07-26T01:08:00.000-07:00

After conducting extensive research I have come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of misunderstanding surrounding the subject of Search Engine Marketing. The greatest misunderstanding is in confusing the terms Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

One would think that those individuals claiming to be SEO experts should be knowledgeable about the subject and recognize the clear distinction. Apparently this is not the case; the internet is full of misguided information, from so called experts. Proving, I suppose that the industry is liberally spattered with cowboys.

To start, let us first define the term “Search Engine Optimisation” (henceforth referred to as SEO).

SEO

SEO is the process of manipulating the structure and content of a website in such a way that it will perform better in the search engine’s organic listings. The techniques involved can be sub-structured into several areas of activity, as detailed below.

1) Page readiness – Search engines expect to crawl clean HTML code. Every page of a website should be validated to eliminate errors and sloppy coding.

2) Site readiness – Search engine web bots follow the links on your web pages and thereby find new pages to index. If a web bot meets a broken link it cannot continue spidering your site. Make sure you have no broken links. Also, provide a site map. A tool for creating site maps is available at my website, www.pro-seo.co.uk/ror-sitemap-generator.shtml.

3) Keyword selection – It is vitally important to select the right keywords for which a particular page is to be optimized. The most obvious keywords are not always the best choice, and are often mega-competitive. Choose wisely.

4) Site structure – Your website should be structured in such a way that each page can be optimized for a maximum of two keywords. Do not try to optimize for a lot of keywords on one page. Remember, you have to write for your users. Writing copy is a balancing act that keeps both users and search engines happy, and is better achieved on a well structured site.

5) Copy writing – the visible text on your web pages should be structured to include the two most important keywords for that page’s content. Get the keywords into headers. Work the keywords into paragraph text, having your keywords appear near the beginning, near the middle, and near the end. Make some keywords bold, some italic and some underlined.

6) HTML tags – The most important of these is the Title tag. Get both keywords for that page into the Title tag, without repetition. For example, if your main key phrase is “diet plans”, and your second phrase is “diet supplements”, the Title tag should read “diet plans and supplements”. Do not repeat the word diet, to search engines it may look like spamming. If your main concern is to improve your Google ranking, you may have overlooked the Meta keywords and Meta description tags, don’t, there are more search engines than Google and they can all bring traffic. Also, get the keywords into H1 tags, H2 tags, alt attributes, and very important, your link text.

And after doing all that for every page in your website you may be asking: so where does SEM come in?

SEM

SEM includes SEO plus all the other things you can do to boost your visibility in the search engines and increase targeted visitors to your website. A condensed list may be as follows:

1) SEO (see above).
2) A link building strategy.
3) Pay per click (PPC) campaigns.
4) Banner exchanges.
5) Press releases.
6) And any other activity that will get your website noticed.

SEM then, is the full package. Whereas SEO techniques are a vital, but not the only, component of that package.

Richard Brennan is a search engine optimisation and marketing consultant, and founder of proSEO Zone.

proSEO Zone specialises in improve Google ranking techniques.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Richard_Brennan

Improve Your Search Engine Marketing by Writing Articles

2007-07-26T01:05:00.000-07:00

If you’re looking for an effective and low-cost way to get targeted visitors to your website, writing articles could be well worth your time and effort. Getting something published is a surefire way to get links into your site. Moreover, increasing the number of links to your site can have a marked effect on your search engine marketing efforts.

Increase links to your website
Boost your site’s position in search engines
Improve credibility
Get targeted click-throughs

“Increase links to your site exponentially”

There’s always a market for informed opinion on the web. Free content providers have sprung up to cater for this demand. They publish articles that will interest their readers, and also allow other sites and e-zines to use the content.

Writing articles and distributing them across these sites is a great way of increasing your visibility. As well as offering relevant and intriguing content, your article should always include a short sentence about your business, what it does, and (most importantly) a link to your site. If your article hits the right note, a reader will probably click through to see what else you have to offer.

“Link popularity and your rating in search engines”

Of course, getting links published on other sites is a great marketing tactic in itself. But, these links also work hard for you when it comes to search engines. The major search engines place a great deal of significance on ‘link popularity’ when they rate websites. Link popularity is the degree to which other web pages link to your website. The more incoming links you have, the more clout this gives your site when the right search terms come up. If you can supply ‘searched-for’ opinion in your articles, you’ll find they are picked up readily and that your site climbs the listings without any further promotional effort on your part.

Another thing to remember is that search engines index articles as freely as they do websites. Write popular words and your business could have multiple listings where and when you want them the most.

“Improve on credibility and targeted click-throughs”

Writing informative pieces can certainly improve the credibility of a business. Web users trust someone more if they know a bit about them. They trust experts. And they are more likely to believe editorial over advertising space any day of the week.

The key to getting credibility and targeted click-throughs from articles is to write on a subject you know about, and about something your business caters for. If a web user has already chosen to read your article, he or she is probably already interested in your business. The perfect scenario is for your your byline to answer the needs already outlined in the article above. Of course, once you’ve done that, you’ve really cracked it.

Damon Lightley is a director at search engine marketing specialists, SiteVisibility. SiteVisibility helps its clients attract, convert and retain profitable customers through their websites.

For more information, visit Site Visibility

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Damon_Lightley

Search Engine Marketing 101

2007-07-26T01:04:00.000-07:00

There are eight elements that are required to get listed and ranked by major Search Engines and Directories, like Google, MSN, AOL, Yahoo, Excite, Looksmart, Lycos, Netscape, All-The-Web, Ask Jeeves and many others.

Those elements are: Statistics, Content, Meta Tags, Submission, Reporting, Links, Tweaking and Patience.

Getting listed and ranked by major search engines does not happen by sheer luck. It takes some organic (on-going) effort. Web site owners who wish their sites to show up, when people are searching the engines uisng keyrwords/phrases, need to pay close attention to, and address the following major elements.

Statistics - The first step is to monitor your web site and see how much traffic you are currently getting and from what sources. How much traffic comes from Search Engines and which ones produce the most traffic is critical information. You can automate this process using tools such as Web Trends. Analyzing the traffic report can also tell you a lot about its. For example, if you find out that most people are "entering" to your home page and "exiting" from home page, that tells you that visitors do not find your site serious, or attractive, and you need to improve the look&feel of the site, or improve its usability.

Content - Your web pages should be content rich. This means that your pages must be well written and based on the keywords and phrases that best describe your company's products or services. As an example, if you make "copper jacketed clamps" and "heavy duty vises", you need to write a web page specifically for those phrases and other keywords/phrases related to your business.

Meta Tags - Meta tags are the HTML codes that go at the beginning of your web page that list your title, description, keywords/phrases, and other important elements. Not all Search Engines use Meta tag information. However, the ones that do will rank your web site high, if you use the proper tags.

Submission - Submission is the manual process that requires submitting your URLs to the Search Engines in which you want to be listed (indexed) in. After you submit, some Search Engines can take weeks or months before your web pages are indexed. You will want to submit every month or so until you see that your web pages are being listed. When you do get listed, your listing might start out low, but with on-going tweaking, your pages should rise up higher in the rankings.

Reporting - Keep a monthly record of your ranking for each keyword/phrase on all the Search Engines you submitted your site to. Using this report you will always know how well the pages are ranked. Over time, this report will help you determine if you need to make any further changes to your pages to improve their ranking.

Links - Creating links going from your site to other sites, links on your pages (linking pages within your site), and links from other Web sites that directly point back to your web pages are very important. The more specific (based on your keyword/phrase) these links are for a particular page, the higher ranking you will get on Search Engines like Google and others.

Tweaking - It might take a few months before your pages are indexed by the search engines. Once they are indexed, and positioned, it will be time to decide what changes are necessary in order to obtain an even higher ranking. Remember, it is an organic process. These changes might require modification to the page content, and tweaking the HTML code and Meta tags.

And finally, Patience - Getting your pages to rank high on the major Search Engines will take patience and persistence. The process of making your pages Search Engine friendly (optimized) is an organic process. Therefore, one has to stay with the process for as long as it takes. The results are well worth the effort.

Hadi Shavarini is the General Manager and co-founder of Blue Robin Inc.- Building eBusiness Infrastructures. Hadi has been involved with web development since mid '90s. http://www.bluerobininc.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Hadi_Shavarini

Internet Search Engine Marketing Get Traffic to Your Web Site

2007-07-26T01:02:00.000-07:00

Lets start off with the Domain name. If you are planning on starting your own web site and have not chosen a domain name as of yet and want to get targeted traffic from the search engine marketing then consider a good keyword domain that is related to your web site topic. This simple technique has proven to work with search engine marketing for indexing (position) and overall keyword weighting. Now there are other factors to get considered by search engines like properly preparing your meta tags in the html. The meta tags that still hold importance to search are Title Tags, and Description Tags. Keyword tags do not hold the same importance like it use to. Another important factor is on page keywords, these are relevant keywords found on the body text of your website and choosing the proper keywords with relevance, keyword weighting (4-7%), as well as keyword proximity will be the difference between your website getting listed page 40 or page 2 or even page one in search engines.

Another important internet marketing puzzle piece for search engines is link building. This is the process were you get your website links listed on other important websites. There are different ways do accomplish this - reciprocal links and one way linking. Reciprocal linking involves you trading links with other webmasters, be sure that your website topic is relevant to link partners site. The other link building option is one way linking; this process involves you submitting your site to directories in the proper categories. Which is better? Research has shown that one way linking holds more importance to internet marketing In search engines that reciprocal. How many links should I drop? Never stop dropping links. You should continuously do link building it shows your site as importance to search engines. Remember when submitting links to have you text link contain important keywords relevant to your site.

The work involved for Search Engine Internet Marketing is extensive and to be honest hard if not done correctly. Organic search is a process and takes time so be patient and try to collect as much information as possible when entering this field before getting started.

Now there are internet marketing paid options that deliver traffic to your site faster than the initial process of search engine optimization. Don’t shy away from paid options because if you want to be successful online you really should consider FREE and PAID internet marketing for you internet business website. Some paid options include PPC or paid per click. This process is very fast way to get targeted traffic to your website by bidding on PPC keyword text ad placement in search engines. The more you are willing to bid the higher your placement will be in search engines. This option can run you a few dollars a month to a hundred dollars a month or even a few thousand a month depending on what you are selling and marketing and the size of your internet marketing budget. If your PPC campaign is not done correctly your budget be gone before you can blink so be sure to research this option before you jump in.

Another paid option, which has taken the internet by storm, is Million Pixel Home Page internet marketing. These NEW search engines marketing explosion is returning high amounts of traffic for a fraction of the total cost of PPC. Reports are showing great click through rates, increase in sales as well as overall increase in website for those sites that are participating. The cost is affordable and is a one-time payment in which the Million Pixel Home Page webmasters keep your website link on line for at least 3 years. This type of internet marketing will pay for itself time and time again. These Million Pixel Pages create traffic by creating buzz with unique SEM techniques that get visitors in and visiting your site and besides people seem to love them. It has been proven and it really works.

Remember the lifeline to your websites is traffic, with out it you website will never be discovered and never succeed. The above options are proven methods you should consider. Research all option before jumping in, the more you know the better.

This article was written by Wayne Hagerty certified Search Engine Internet Marketing professional with years of experience. To get continuos traffic to your own business and website is as simple as visiting the Million Pixel Page a new hot online traffic generating system. Learn more about how his unique Internet marketing platform can bring your site continuos high volume traffic for years to come. Get traffic now at: http://1-millionpixelpage.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wayne_Hagerty

SEO Guidelines - Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T01:01:00.000-07:00

SEO guidelines also known as Search Engine Optimization set the rules used by major search engines like GOOGLE, Yahoo, and MSN, etc. to judge whether or not to include a website in their search engine results. Believe it or not , having your website included in Google results is not part of the Bill of Rights under the constitution. There are Search Engine Marketing guidelines that govern which websites are included and those excluded from their results.

SEO Guidelines – Thou Shall…

Write your pages for people, not for search engines. It seems obvious, doesn't it? We have all gone to web pages with garbage content written to deceive search engines for top rankings. When discovered (and they will be discovered), these websites are banned. Other SEO guidelines prohibit offering different content to search engines than your visitors. Called ""cloaking", it's unethical and another trick to avoid for high search engine rankings. Instead, focus on providing useful content your visitors are seeking and update your site frequently with fresh content.

SEO guidelines - Thou Shall Not...

Here are some important search engine optimization methods to avoid when using SEO methods on your website. These are unethical techniques that may lead to having your websites removed from the Google index. OUCH!!! That hurts! Once banned, your site will not appear in GOOGLE results or partner sites.

SEO guidelines clearly ban link farms that create multiple links to your site to raise your page rank by unethical means. Sooner or later your site will be caught and penalized for breaking SEO guidelines. In particular, avoid links to web spammers and software that auto submits your pages to search engines.

SEO guidelines – Search Engine Optimization

Create web pages free of hidden texts and links seen only by the search engines. Instead, use search engine marketing strategies without redirects to other sites. Instead of garbage content, search engine optimization promotes useful reader content. Do you like to read the same thing again… read the same thing again… read the same thing again… neither does the search engine. After all, search engines are people too!

Compucall provides of Search Engine Marketing services for B2B and B2C companies through the deployment of search engine optimization, pay per click, leading Web Analytics tools, and other reliable SEM techniques.

Johnny Mayer is a content writer for Compucall.USA Web Marketing, LTD.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Johnny_Mayer

Search Engine Marketing: The Race for Popularity and Profit

2007-07-26T01:00:00.000-07:00

Search engine marketing (SEM) can deliver large numbers of qualified prospects and the most cost-effective marketing vehicle for driving qualified traffic to your website. Search Engine Marketing is the first solution in the industry, helping you to optimize your site’s relevancy and visibility to improve your search ranking options.

A comprehensive search engine marketing campaign should also aim to persuade prospects to take the specific actions you want them to take.

The following group of search engine marketing services is available to help you exceed your online marketing goals:

Natural Search Engine Optimization. This is also known as organic search engine optimization. A specialized process that involves analyzing your websites’ underlying code, architecture and visible content and making enhancements so that the location is returned more prominently in the natural search result of spider- based search engines.

You also have to evaluate and update continuously your natural search engine optimization methodology to keep up with the ever- changing search algorithms used by the major search properties and to keep pace with any changes made to your website as new pages are added or updated.

Natural search engine optimization includes:

• Search Engine Submissions. Present the pages of your site so that they will be included in the indexes of the major search engines and returned prominently when customers and qualified prospects doubted keywords that relate to your website's offering.

• Directory Submissions. Submit key sections of your website to appear within the four major online directories.

• Keyword Research. Find out which keywords and phrases will bring the most qualified traffic to your website.

• Website Content Enhancement. To make your site more appealing to search engines you should develop and enhance your website's content and navigational structure.

• Website Competitive Intelligence. Be able to detect what your competitors are doing and find out how you are going to position yourself against them

• Website Conversion Auditism. Determine the obstacles that your website poses to visitors that try to perform a “conversion action” (buy, register, download, request more information, etc.). Be able to learn how to build momentum toward conversion

• Link Popularity Enhancement. It helps increase and improves the quantity and quality of external websites that link to pages on your site in order to improve your site's visibility within search engines.

Pay Per Click Advertising Management. A search engine marketing that requires you to pay a fee every time someone click’s your websites from the ad that you placed on the search engine results. The more you bid to pay per click for a specific keyword and more effective, the higher your website will rank in the paid search results.

Paid Inclusion Management. A critical component of your comprehensive search engine marketing strategy.

Web Analytics. Use to measure and maximize the results by breaking down the website statistics to a smooth level and organizing the data into practical categories.

International Search Engine Optimization. Ensures that your website achieves outstanding visibility within foreign search properties.

Having a success search engine marketing, websites should be designed nicely and wonderful. But the most important thing, people should visit your site. No matter how beautiful it is with all the bells and whistles it will be useless if you’re site is not being visited. The more visitors you have the higher possibility of securing orders and getting more clients and the higher chances for the search engine marketing success.

Jay Peterson writer, web designer marketer. http://www.TicTacWebsites.com is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your small business online in just 5 minutes with http://www.tictacwebsites.com loaded with 30+ business features.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jay_Peterson

Do-It-Yourself Versus Professional Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T00:59:00.001-07:00

Professional search engine marketing can sometimes be costly which encourages website operators to do their own search engine optimization and manage their own pay-per-click campaigns even though professional services has definite benefits.

If you would like to put forth the effort to learn about search engine marketing, to devise your own marketing campaign and to manage the marketing process yourself rather than obtaining the assistance of a professional service, then I certainly wish you the best in your pursuit.

I strongly believe that internet business operators, or any business owners for that matter, should take advantage of the opportunity to save money any time they can.

However, we should all also be conscious of the time and effort that we put into our businesses and consider the cost savings and other benefits that might be realized if we were to outsource some activities that don't necessarily utilize our expertise.

Professional search engine marketing is one of those outsource services to be contemplated.

The obvious advantage of doing your own search engine marketing is cost savings.

On the flip-side is the disadvantage of time spent learning about search engine marketing and actually designing, implementing and managing the search engine marketing campaign.

Another advantage of doing it yourself is, you will learn more about your industry and the use of data from website logs and pay-per-click programs that will be useful to you in developing your business strategy now and in the future.

You may even come up with some superb ideas for expansions or for marketing your company that you otherwise would not have thought of.

Professional search engine marketing services that you might consider include market research, keyword research, search engine optimization, development of keyword copy, development of strategic coding on your website, and the design and implementation of linking campaigns.

Pay-per-click planning and implementation which consists of research, strategizing, budgeting, bidding, development of advertising copy, and campaign management or additional services that are offered by professional search engine marketing providers.

In making the "do-it-yourself versus outsourcing" decision, you may consider outsourcing some of the tasks while taking personal responsibility for others, or delegating some of the duties to members of your staff or marketing team.

The main benefits of contracting a professional search engine marketing company or specialist are access to individuals who are experienced and have expertise in the field of search engine marketing and time savings.

Search engine marketing is not an easy task and it certainly has the potential of taking time away from other business development activities that could use your attention.

There is a definite learning curve to be considered if you intend to do your own search engine marketing, especially in regard to search engine optimization.

Pay-per-click campaign development and management isn't too hard to learn and manage; however, search engine optimization which enables you to improve your website's rank in the search engines without spending precious advertising dollars is a bit more difficult to grasp.

You see, the search engines' main function is to provide users of the search services with the best possible results that relate to the keyword terms used.

Thus, the search engines frequently change their rules regarding how they rank websites, probably to weed out the websites that spam the search engines in attempt to get a good search engine rank when they really aren't offering high quality information in regard to what the search engine users are looking for.

If search engine optimization is not your profession, you'll likely have a hard time keeping up with search engine optimization techniques that are effective while a professional provider of search engine optimization services would be more apt to keep up with effective strategies.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you're getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_J_Enders

Million Pixel Home Page Ads Search Engine Marketing - How It Works

2007-07-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

The New HOT Search Engine Marketing craze that is generating Huge amounts of traffic to websites that participate.

How do they produce high traffic?

One of the most important reasons this new Search Engine Marketing system produces traffic is the Buzz going around the internet from forums, articles like this, word of mouth, press releases and the fact that it is a brand new way of Internet Marketing that has never been seen before.

Here is what you need to do if you would like to receive the benefits from this amazing Search Engine Marketing traffic generator.

#1- Look for a Pixel Page that is fairly New, very little current ads ( I have listed a link to a great one below ). Reason being is that you really benefit greatly by having the opportunity to place your Pixel AD were ever you want.

Note: Look for middle available sections as well as top left hand corners ( the way people read the paper ). Also another important reason is that when other interested people that want to place there ads clearly spot your Pixel Ad first. This generates curiosity on what’s behinds door number one = Tons of traffic for you.

#2- Choose the amount of pixel space you need and want to purchase. Prices for pixels normally cost about $1.00. This is one of the most inexpensive yet extremely effective ways of Internet Marketing I personally have seen in a long time.

#3- After you decide how many Pixel Advertising spaces you wish to purchase and were to place them on the Million Pixel Page Grid now it is time to create your Search Engine Marketing Pixel Ad.

#4- When putting together your Pixel Ad be creative, you don’t have to purchase a large amount of Pixel Page Realistate if your thumbnail Pixel Ad is creative. It has been reported that a ton of the small mini Pixel Ads, because the are unique and eye grabbing are receiving close to the same amount of traffic to the larger sized Pixel Ads.

That is all you need to do. These Pixel Page sites will bring a continuous amount of traffic for years to come. This type of Search Engine Marketing will pay for itself over and over again by generating more sales, and tons of new unique visitors to your site.

I found one Pixel Page that is really new and the story behind it really touched me because I can relate. I really expect this Million Pixel Home Pageto generate High amounts of traffic for me and position placement is wide open ad the moment so get in, get on board and receive the benefits this Pixel Page is bound to give. Check it out Now at: http://1-millionpixelpage.com They are also giving away a $100,000 cash prize.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wayne_Hagerty

Search Engine Marketing Company Business Possibilities

2007-07-26T00:56:00.000-07:00

Services provided by a search engine marketing company are high in demand as new internet businesses emerge and e-business continues to grow at rapid rates. Search engine marketing consists primarily of search engine optimization and management of pay-per-click search engine marketing campaigns.

However, there are several service options that a search engine marketing company can offer that the target market seeking search engine marketing services will find to be desirable. Consulting, coaching, training, copywriting, and actually providing hands-on marketing services are among the opportunities that are available to be exploited by a search engine marketing company.

While some seasoned internet business operators seek assistance from a search engine marketing company, the primary target audience for services offered by a search engine marketing company consists of new and aspiring internet entrepreneurs.

Since newcomers to the field of internet business and internet marketing don't generally have much experience in dealing with internet marketing techniques, this target market is in great need of assistance regarding all aspects of internet business and internet marketing.

Thus, the range of services that can be provided by a search engine marketing company is virtually unlimited and the services and advice offered in addition to search engine marketing services will be both needed and appreciated.

The standard search engine marketing services provided by a search engine marketing company include research and planning for search engine optimization and pay-per-click campaigns and actual administration and management of search engine marketing programs.

Common tasks associated with the search engine optimization services provided by a search engine marketing company include keyword research, copywriting, development of metatags, website optimization, and linking campaigns. There are other types of tasks involved in search engine optimization that may change from time to time due to the nature of the search engines.

Ongoing optimization services such as monitoring the search engine ranking and adjusting the website for optimal performance are also search engine optimization services provided by a search engine marketing company. Pay-per-click services that are generally provided by a search engine marketing company include keyword research, search engine analysis, keyword bidding, budgeting, pay-per-click campaign management and ongoing monitoring and administration of a company's pay-per-click advertising campaign.

While many internet business operators want to outsource their internet marketing and search engine marketing tasks wholly to a search engine marketing company, there are even more who really have a strong desire to learn about internet marketing, including search engine marketing, search engine optimization and pay-per- click advertising, so they can be responsible for their internet marketing tasks themselves rather than relying on a search engine marketing company to provide full-service marketing and search engine marketing services.

This is a niche segment of the target market that provides even greater income opportunities for a search engine marketing company.

An expert search engine marketing company is generally well- versed in many different internet marketing areas and can provide superb consulting or coaching services. Information marketing through the publication of books and e-books is another viable revenue generating possibility for a search engine marketing company.

Another possibility for a service to be provided by a search engine marketing company is training either through online courses, seminars or one-on-one or group coaching sessions. A search engine marketing company can offer a wide array of services for their customers, or they can limit the scope to niche markets providing individual services like search engine optimization or keyword copywriting.

So, if you are really interested in opening a search engine marketing company, review the different service options that you are capable of providing. Do some market research and identify a specific target audience, then begin to market your search engine marketing company and the services you have selected to provide.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_J_Enders

Successful Search Engine Marketing: Four 'Must Dos'

2007-07-26T00:55:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I attended a seminar on search engine marketing organized by Hitwise, the competitive intelligence provider. The event, held in our home base of Singapore where paid search marketing still has a long way to go, was an attempt at creating greater awareness of the potential of this channel in a lukewarm market. Apart from a speaker from Hitwise, the select panel also included representatives from Yahoo, MSN (representing the search engine side) and eBay & B2B media company, Global Sources (representing successful search engine marketers).

Towards the end of the seminar, the panelists were asked to name the one advice they would give to individuals or companies considering search engine marketing. Their responses summarized the key things that any search engine marketer--even someone who is considerably experienced--would do well to remember.

Experiment: Contrary to what some people might lead you to believe, one will be hard-pressed to find a single, permanent path to paid search marketing success. Like any other science, one needs to continue to experiment--- be it with the keywords being targeted, or the bids and campaign budgets, the ad creative or the landing page where users are led to from the ad. One of the biggest advantages of most pay-per-click (PPC) search engine marketing campaigns is that it is conducive to lots of experimentation, so make the most of it.

Start small: PPC search marketing, while one of the most cost-effective marketing channels, can still drain the advertising dollars very quickly, if one doesn't watch campaigns closely. Small to medium-sized businesses, in particular, will be best served by starting with smaller budgets, experimenting and progressively increasing their spend after they achieve a certain minimum threshold in cost-effectiveness that works for them.

Get the message in context: Your messages have to be absolutely in context to what the user is looking for. Context and relevance (see next point) and may sometimes be a bit confusing and interchangeable, but that is because these are essentially two of the most critical pillars of search engine marketing.

Relevance of the ad results can be viewed as a match with the fundamental motivation that drives a user to take the action that he/she eventually takes, while context is about the influential environment that can sway a user another way--- it is like identifying the right bait, or the underlying or even dormant motivation of the user If you can get context and relevance to be congruent, such that the user gets exactly what he wants when he wants it, you have maximized your chance of getting the highest quality click, and possibly the best return on the dollar that you just paid the search engine. On to relevance....

Keep your ad and site content relevant: This almost goes without saying, but it is often overlooked. The success of a PPC campaign depends on the relevance of the keywords selected, the relevance of the advertising message (remember that an ad is competing against the perception of relevance of the organic search results as well as against other sponsored/ paid ads), and last but certainly not the least, the relevance of the content on the page that the user lands after clicking on the ad message. Constantly evaluate all of the above for relevance, and work on making those as relevant as you can to what the user is looking for.

Manoj Aravindakshan is Director of On Target Media & Marketing Services, a Singapore-based marketing services company, offering paid search engine marketing (PPC) and search engine optimization(SEO) services, in addition to a range of other online marketing and web content services.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Manoj_Aravindakshan

Successful Search Engine Marketing: Four 'Must Dos'

2007-07-26T00:52:00.000-07:00

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Manoj_Aravindakshan

Website Promotion & Search Engine Marketing Tips

2007-07-26T00:46:00.000-07:00

If you are a small business or website owner, you will probably believe that once a website has been created and published the web development project is finished.

But in reality, the real work is just beginning. In order to create a money-making site, traffïc must be generated and driven to the website. There are several effective methods that can be implemented as part of a Search Engine Optimisation 'SEO' strategy to create this web traffïc.

While all methods may not be required to realize successful traffïc generation, some combination of most, if not all, will probably be needed to create traffïc, maintain traffïc and finally, grow traffïc to your website with long-term, lasting results. Consider implementing these strategies: - Dynamic content is necessary for search engine recognition, and by updating the website frequently, the search engines see your website as an active, not stagnant, website. How often should changes be made? At the very least, monthly. But the more frequent the changes, the better.

There are some tried and true methods you may want to employ:

Monthly newsletter (or weekly)
Tip of the day that rotates to the page using a scrïpt from an existing database of information at your site.
RSS feed to public news feeds that update hourly or daily at the least.
Changes to contact information, staffing, clients, etc.
Checking links frequently to make sure that they are active and valid, and changing the link text from time to time will register as a change to the page.
Simple modification of content from time to time should be done in between these regular maintenance tasks which will update the website.
Good links management will result in a stronger weïght given by the search engines for search positioning. The algorithms used for weighting one page over another require link popularity assessment for successful traffïc to your website. Link popularity is also one of the main considerations for Google Page Rank.

How do you achieve link popularity?

It can be tedious and requires careful attention to the selection of the links, but there are several means that can be employed:

Reciprocal Links: Search for relevant and desired web pages with which to trade links.
Purchase PageRank-based links: boost your relevance and weïght in the eyes of search engines by purchasing links for a period of time, three to six months until you have achieved a better ranking.
List with directories: paid or unpaid directory listings that are relevant to your website will give your website additional exposure.
Anchor text: create the links with link text in mind, utilizing relevant keywords where possible.
PageRank consideration: link only with websites that have decent PageRank (PR); i.e., PR of 3 could be a minimum but a PR of 4 would be a better minimum requirement from those pages who want to exchange links with you.

Remember, creating a website is only the first step. Driving traffïc to your site is the next important task. Layout a plan of action and follow-through. You are not going to realize success until you spend the time and energy - or pay someone else for their time and energy - to get the job done.

The above search engine optismisation techniques, if implemented correctly will improve your website search engine visibility & ranking.

Providing Web Site Marketing & Search Engine Optimisation throughout Ireland & UK.

QDOS Internet Marketing & SEO Consultants Ireland

contact michael

by Michael Quinn QDOSInternet.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Quinn

Cost Effective Paid Advertising Thru Search Engine Marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC)

2007-07-26T00:45:00.000-07:00

Every business requires sales to function. Every business owner often wonder, how do I get more sales?

Most businesses often start with the traditional marketing methods such as flyers distribution, mailing of sales brochures, cold call, cold fax and of course word of mouth.

Now, all there any more cost effective marketing method? There definitely is .

Search engine marketing to lower the cost of acquiring customer and branding. It has effectively done so for many fortune 500 companies and SMEs, so why not you?

What is search engine marketing, pay per click? Yahoo and Google, two of the biggest search engine offers an online marketing service which you will pay to them to display your advertisement when people search for keywords related to your business.

Example

I am in the web design industry. I selected the keywords, Web design company. (There is broad base, exact match and other options when defining your keywords which I will touch on later.) Someone on the internet either uses Yahoo! and Google search for the word, web design company and my advertisement in text will show up. For Yahoo!, on the top of the search results while for Google either on the top 2 of search results or the right side of the search results.

How can this lower cost for acquiring customer?

For different industry, the cost is different, but for most industry, it cost between $0.50 to $1.50 per click to bring one visitor to their web site. Now, assume your average cost per click is $1.00 and assuming your web site is well built to convert visitors contact you to become a sales lead. We assume a 10% conversion to sales lead per 100 visitors. So, for 100 visitors, it will cost you $100.00. In every 100 visitors, 10 people will contact you regarding your business products or services. So, $100.00 divided by 10, it will be $10.00 per sales lead. Now, isn't this the cheapest way of acquiring sales lead?

No? Consider word of mouth marketing, if you value your work at $20.00 per hour and it takes you 1 hour to get the message across for every person you meet to promote your business. Wouldn't that cost you more than $10.00 per sales lead?

The best part of search engine marketing?

Search engine marketing is targeted, people who only are interested in your products will search for keywords related to your product. (Of course you got to know what is the best keywords to advertise.) Search engine marketing budget is restrictable. You can set whatever budget you want for your marketing effort online. The process is always the same except the result is only vary by the amount you are willing to spend.

Thus, many companies who think they cannot afford to market are wrong. Search engine marketing is available for every business, however, do it the right way by doing some research yourself or hire the professionals to get the best result.

Adrian Lee is CEO of VibrantStyle A Singapore Internet marketing company that builds web sites that focus on professional SEO friendly web design & web application.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adrian_Lee_W.J

Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Marketing Versus Search Engine Marketing Services

2007-07-26T00:43:00.000-07:00

Search engine marketing services sure can decrease the amount of time you are required to devote to your business to make it a success. However, even though there are many advantages to search engine marketing services, there are disadvantages to be considered as well.

Before you make the critical decision to hire or not to hire search engine marketing service providers, be sure you have weighed the pros and cons as they relate to your particular situation. After all, each and every woman-owned business is unique, so what works for one business owner may or may not be right for you.

The primary advantages to contracting search engine marketing services are: 1) not having to manage your search engine marketing campaigns saves you a lot of time, and 2) when you contract professional search engine marketing services, they likely have more experience in search engine marketing than what you have.

Disadvantages are: 1) search engine marketing services can be expensive, especially with ongoing monitoring of your marketing campaign, which is crucial, and 2) there is some potential that you will not get search engine marketing services that are worth what you are paying for them.

The main toss-up in deciding between do-it-yourself or search engine marketing services is between time and money. If you've got more time than you've got money, doing your own search engine marketing is likely best; however, if you've got more money than time, using professional search engine marketing services is probably for you. The second consideration is whether to master the learning curve so you can do your own search engine marketing, or to rely upon professionals to take care of it for you.

It is important to realize that ongoing monitoring and adjustments to your search engine marketing campaign is necessary, so consider that when reviewing your options. Some businesswomen opt to have search engine marketing services plan and launch their search engine marketing campaign, and then they take the reins in managing the campaign over the long-run.

Search engine marketing services generally offer a variety of service options. Search engine marketing services that design and run your marketing campaign always begin with research. The research should include analyzing your competition and identifying keywords and keyword phrases that will optimize your website for the search engines.

They may include natural search engine optimization and other optimization services that involve strategic placement of keywords and keyword phrases in your web content and meta tags. Building link popularity is also generally a part of the natural search engine optimization process.

The design and management of pay-per-click advertising campaigns is often an option provided by search engine marketing services, as is paid inclusion management, and online public relations. Paid inclusion programs may include getting paid listings in directories, portals, newsletters, ezines, or other online, industry-based publications that will direct targeted traffic to your website and increase your link popularity. Most search engine marketing services provide ongoing monitoring and maintenance to ensure that your website receives the best possible results from your search engine marketing and paid advertising.

Link popularity is one of those things that remain constant as a tactic for getting a good rank in search results. However, professional search engine marketing services should know that link relevancy is just as important. You can have tons of links coming into your website, but if they are coming from websites that are totally irrelevant to yours, they will not usually accomplish the objective of boosting your website's performance in the search engines. Last but not least, search engine marketing services should be able to provide you with detailed reports that clearly demonstrate the services they are providing and the results, in terms of traffic, that those services are generating.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_J_Enders

Search Engine Marketing Made Easy

2007-07-26T00:42:00.000-07:00

Search engine marketing isn't rocket science, although many seem to think that getting adequate ranking in the search engines is a complex and impossible task. Without a doubt, search engine marketing is one of the most complex types of marketing because the search engines' rules and preferences evolve constantly. But, considering that the majority of website visitors find the websites they visit through the search engines, search engine marketing is absolutely the best medium for internet marketing.

Search engine marketing and search engine optimization experts may talk to you about complex things like algorithms, which are really nothing more than mathematical formulas that reflect the website ranking rules of particular search engines. Unless you are a mathematician and you can get your hands on a search engine's current formula, you will never in a million years understand algorithms, so don't waste your time trying to. You can be successful in your search engine marketing efforts without knowing a thing about mathematical formulas.

Sometimes, the best way to get good ranking in the search engines is through trial and error. You try different things, see what works, and run with it. Sometimes, it may be best to hire a search engine optimization specialist or consultant. Generally, search engine optimization services are pricey, and because search engine marketing requires ongoing efforts, they can get really expensive. However, if you can afford it, hiring a search engine consultant to get you on the right track is a great idea.

From my interviews with women who own their own internet businesses, a comment made by one lady stands out in my mind. She said, "I knew that getting listed in the search engines was critical to the success of my business. I tried to achieve ranking on my own, but I got so confused by all the information about search engine optimization that all I really knew was that I definitely did not know what I was doing. I couldn't really afford to hire a consultant, but I had to redefine some priorities to get it done. Without the search engine marketing consultant showing me the way, my business would have never gotten off the ground."

Whether you choose to pursue search engine marketing on your own, or with a consultant by your side, there are a few things you need to know about search engine marketing:

There is no magic search engine marketing formula for achieving top ranking in the search engines.

There are a number of different search engines. The most popular ones are Google, Yahoo and MSN. Each of the search engines has their own rules for indexing sites, set their own algorithms, and change them frequently. Be wary of search engine marketing information that claims to be "the secret" or "the magic formula" for achieving top ranking in the search engines.

Relatively, also be wary of search engine optimization companies that guaranty top ranking. If you are offered such a guaranty, get it in writing and check the company's references and do some independent research in regard to their reputation. Doing an internet search for the company name will likely give you some good information about their reputation because whether they are good or bad, they are likely to be the topic of discussion in internet marketing forums.

You have to submit your website to the search engines.

Search engine marketing requires that you submit your website to the search engines. The search engines use something called spiders to index websites and the spiders may incidentally pick up your website at some point, but to ensure your site is considered for indexing, you need to submit it to the search engines. To do that, you need to find and read the guidelines for submission for each search engine.

Using an automated search engine submission tool isn't a very good search engine marketing tactic because they generally submit the exact same information to every search engine without considering the individual search engines' requirements. When you submit your website to the search engines, you cannot expect immediate indexing. Sometimes it takes up to six weeks to get listed.

There are three search engine marketing factors that are consistently important to achieving desirable search engine rankings.

Though the search engine marketing rules and relative strategies tend to change frequently, three factors remain important to achieving a good rank. They are content, keywords, and links. Content is important because the search engines cater to those searching for information, not those providing it. When the content of your website is relative to the terms a browser is searching for, your website will be more desirable for indexing.

Keywords and keyword phrases are the terms that people use when searching for something in the search engines and they are central to your search engine marketing efforts. For your search engine marketing efforts to be fruitful and to generate targeted traffic, you need to do keyword research and find out what terms your target audience is using. Rather than using the most popular, competitive keywords, it is best if you can choose niche phrases that provide targeted traffic but aren't highly competitive.

Link popularity, based on the number of links connecting to your website, and link relevancy, the relevance of those links to your website, usually tend to play a role in search engine rankings. Thus, part of your search engine marketing campaign should be to establish relevant links to your website.

To build your link popularity, find relevant websites and request that they link to your website, or offer to trade links with them. Getting your website listed in online directories that are relevant to your industry as part of your search engine marketing efforts can also enhance your link popularity.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_J_Enders

Why Search Engine Marketing is a MUST!

2007-07-26T00:40:00.000-07:00

What is the most important part of marketing a website? I have always wondered what it is about a website that will bring people to it. Turns out that the biggest factor is usually search engine marketing. It is, actually, becoming increasingly important in the marketing process of any online presence. Search engines can drive very qualified traffic to a website because the process of searching for something in an inquiry is initiated by the user. If someone is searching for what your site has, then that makes them all the more important to your site.

The main reason that search engine marketing is important is simple stats. According to a number of studies done, there are approximately eight hundred million people who access the internet. Of that number, 86% of them seek their information via internet search engines. The same research says that the majority of those seeking search engine help for getting information will only look at the first two or three pages listed by the search engine. So, you want your website as high as possible. The best way that you can accomplish a high ranking is by an aggressive search engine marketing campaign. There is no better way to get a piece of that eight hundred million people.

Search engine marketing is based on knowing how these search engines work. Search engines use software that looks all over the web for content to index for the engines use. The software need to find text machine readable content on sites to index and categorize it. It looks for meta tags, content on the pages, and filenames. The better your content in terms of hitting search engine friendly topics, the better your chances of being ranked highly by the software reporting to the search engine are. So in an effort to improve your ranking, you need to make sure you are aggressively using search engine marketing for your site.

The reason that search engine marketing has become so big is because, simply, search engines figured out something. They realized that it is not just important to make sure people find what they want and that sites have equal opportunity to be found, but rather that they themselves need to make money. The search engines now worry more about finding the most significant information so that advertising revenue can be used on the search engine sites. The decision to use that as a base is much more realistic to the search engine companies than the idea of charging users for a search.

Having a presence on the internet is important to business and many individuals. However, to be effective it is important that people find their way to your website. Basically, you know that exposure equals revenue. In order to make that exposure a reality, marketing is the key. More specifically, search engine marketing is important. By ensuring that your website shows up early and often in search engine searches, you can draw many more people to your site than just through traditional marketing techniques.

If you would like the latest information on internet marketing , or find more of my personal articles like the one you just read, visit my marketing site!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Luck

Search Engine Marketing - How Effective Is It?

2007-07-26T00:38:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Marketing is possibly the most credible form of advertising!

In the majority of cases, for a search engine user to find your website they need to go into their favourite search engine and type in keywords for what they are looking for. Due to the accuracy of results provided by search engines these days, there is a very good chance that an internet searcher will find the type of business they are looking for within the first two pages of their favourite search engine, especially if they are using Google, Yahoo or MSN.

When a business uses television advertising, newspaper advertising, or any other type of form of advertising, they are targeting a very broad range of consumers, and many viewers of these mediums have no interest in the product they are viewing. There are advantages to this; after all if an advertisement is well designed, it may create a need (or want) in consumers which will entice them to go out and buy that product or service. Television advertising is the best medium for creating needs that weren't previously there as television stimulates the consumer through both visual and sound to capture the consumers' attention; a main reason why television advertising is so expensive as a marketing option.

Unlike most forms of marketing, the internet gives you the opportunity to provide considerable information to the consumer.

If your website is well organised and laid out, with out overwhelming the consumer with too much information, it can provide the information needed to sell your product or service.

The information on your website should cater both for the people looking for a brief overview of what you offer, as well as a more detailed overview for those people that like to drill down into detail. Unless your website is purely an information website where people want to spend considerable time reading through everything, then you should avoid going into lengthy detail. If you have too much information, people will often lose interest altogether and will likely close your website and start looking at your competitors.

I strongly recommend that if your website is not bringing in the business that you would like, you make it a priority to have a professional company like Quantum Web Solutions analyse your website and give you advice on how to improve it, and start generating more business for you.

Why is this so important? Because in today's ever evolving internet market, more and more consumers trust the internet and search engine results before other advertising mediums to bring them the product or service they desire. If you are not positioned well, then you are missing out on valuable business.

Andrew Seidel - SEO Specialist and Search Engine Marketing Consultant in Sydney, Australia.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Seidel

The Importance of Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T00:37:00.000-07:00

Business recognises the importance of SEO like never before. The growth in the search engine marketing field has been incredible, far exceeding most other industries. In the past achieving listings in search engines has been very much taken for granted by many businesses, being treated as less important as the standard marketing methods such as newspaper, television and radio advertising. With more internet consumers utilising search as their first options for finding a business of choice, search engine marketing has come to the forefront of marketing.

A few main advantages of search engine marketing over other marketing methods are:

1. The cost by comparison is quite low to perform search engine marketing over other forms of marketing.
2. Internet users are often much more qualified by the time they find your site as they have been searching for your specific service or product.
3. Your advertising is running seven days a week, twenty four hours a day. To attain this kind of exposure through any other form of marketing would blow any businesses marketing budget out the window.

The fact that SEO is a much cheaper form of advertising (and an extremely effective one) has not gone unnoticed for many savvy businesses. Realisation that cost of acquisition is markedly cheaper means that many companies are directing increased resources from their marketing budgets towards search engine marketing campaigns.

In the search engine marketing game, Google is clearly the leader. Estimates vary as to how much of the market Google actually has, but most estimates are around 75%. This being the case; while it is important to focus on Google, Yahoo and MSN when optimising your site, the majority of focus should be spent on Google.

If you don't have a proper SEM strategy in place, or part of your marketing budget set aside for search engine marketing, I suggest that you seriously rethink your marketing strategy and look at the benefits that your company or business can achieve through having a strong presence in the search engines. You can be fairly certain that your competitors are either utilising search engine marketing, or seriously considering it.

Do you really want them having a competitive advantage over you with your business being left behind?

Andrew Seidel - SEO Specialist and Search Engine Marketing Consultant in Sydney, Australia.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Seidel

Search Engine Marketing Inspiration From Inside the Box

2007-07-26T00:36:00.000-07:00

You've seen it action for as long as you can remember. Sometimes your in awe in what you see other times your simply bored with it and decide to focus on something else .

You've been getting marketing lessons even before you decided to start your own business.

But because you expect it to be there regardless and it's as common now as the air you breathe you may or may not have picked up on some of these valuable lessons .

Be warned...this style of marketing , credibility building , online link building and branding may not be for every one at this time but do add it to your long term to do list for your business plans .

I promise you it will be well worth it and it will do wonders for your bottom line .

So just what is this over looked gold mine ?

It's called reporting , the box I'm talking about is your television and you know where to go when you want the latest news .

Quick brand test...

When you want to watch the news what channel do you turn to?

Yup , they've done a good job at branding and earning the amount of trust you've given them.

Think about it , do you have the time to go all the places and get this news first hand for yourself?

Do have the money to spend to go to far away places to get the cross country and over seas news you receive?

Guess what , your not the only one.

In your niche market are their offline events that others want to go to but can't afford to go or simply dont have the time?

How many of those people do you think would love to hear your report...to hear what all they had to miss this time ?

Some of these same people will buy from you, link to you, tell others about you.

This is a great way to enhance your natural search engine marketing efforts and boost your over all credibility level.

So...when ever you get the chance start going to offline events and be the trusted reporter your target market turn to with out having to think twice where to go to when they want their fill.

Your content will start showing up all over the net therefore increasing your link popularity , dont forget ezine owners who will email your content to there list and word of mouth buzz spreading through out different forums.

When you go to these events dont forget to take some pictures with some of the main keynote speakers . This will do wonders for your credibility as well.

Jermaine Tabor an SEO Specialist provide advanced Seo Training via his newsletter that you can apply to your site/s right now to boost your rankings in major search engines .

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jermaine_Tabor

Search Engine Marketing Inspiration From Inside the Box

2007-07-26T00:31:00.000-07:00

You've seen it action for as long as you can remember. Sometimes your in awe in what you see other times your simply bored with it and decide to focus on something else .

You've been getting marketing lessons even before you decided to start your own business.

But because you expect it to be there regardless and it's as common now as the air you breathe you may or may not have picked up on some of these valuable lessons .

I promise you it will be well worth it and it will do wonders for your bottom line .

So just what is this over looked gold mine ?

It's called reporting , the box I'm talking about is your television and you know where to go when you want the latest news .

Quick brand test...

When you want to watch the news what channel do you turn to?

Yup , they've done a good job at branding and earning the amount of trust you've given them.

Think about it , do you have the time to go all the places and get this news first hand for yourself?

Do have the money to spend to go to far away places to get the cross country and over seas news you receive?

Guess what , your not the only one.

In your niche market are their offline events that others want to go to but can't afford to go or simply dont have the time?

How many of those people do you think would love to hear your report...to hear what all they had to miss this time ?

Some of these same people will buy from you, link to you, tell others about you.

This is a great way to enhance your natural search engine marketing efforts and boost your over all credibility level.

So...when ever you get the chance start going to offline events and be the trusted reporter your target market turn to with out having to think twice where to go to when they want their fill.

When you go to these events dont forget to take some pictures with some of the main keynote speakers . This will do wonders for your credibility as well.

Jermaine Tabor an SEO Specialist provide advanced Seo Training via his newsletter that you can apply to your site/s right now to boost your rankings in major search engines .

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jermaine_Tabor

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) vs Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2007-07-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

While Search Engine Optimization and Advertising are specific tasks to engage, Search Engine Marketing is the key component that actually determines hXow you will optimize and advertise on the web. It is the research, analysis, strategy planning that will determine the execution methods.

There is a distinct difference between SEM and SEO.

* SEO is the process of making changes to the HTML code of your web pages to be content rich in your specific niche and key phrase. This would include such tasks like modifications to your keywords, description, title tags, comment tags, alt descriptions, and title descriptions of anchors and the actual text of your web page.

* SEM on the other had is the process of integrating a variety of methods to insure the SEO work is successful. These methods will include research for your business, competitor analysis, link exchanges, articles, news, newsletters, audience analysis, and ultimately the method employed to generate traffic to your website.

It is the same distinction between the words "marketing" and "advertising".

* Marketing is the process or technique of promotion, selling and distributing a product or service.

* Advertising is to make your product or service publicly known; an announcement to call public attention by emphasizing qualities to arouse a desire to purchase.

There are two words that are feared in the SEM world: Patience and Change!

You will need ongoing commitment to making search-engine ranking a long-term investment in your website. You will need to give it time and energy - it isn't a quick fix.

Considerations with search engine patience:

* Search engines often change their ranking formula.

* Each search engine has its own algorithm (formula) to determine site ranking.

* META tag keywords are not a magic bullet to improve your ranking.

* Search engines can take many months to index new information, so patience...patience.

Search engine spiders can be extremely slow to index new information, so be patient! It may take months to see your changes affect your search engine ranking. Remember, a website is a dynamic marketing tool that you are building over time. Treat it well, give it a little love and attention, and your long-term rewards will be well worth your efforts!

If you thought nowadays search engine marketing can still be done by acquiring (and using) an auto-submission software, drop this thought immediately. This brings us to the other feared word, "change"! It is inevitable for technological changes to take effect with search engine algorithms. Websites drop rankings from 8 to zero over night. Because things keep changing, search engine marketers need to devote a good deal of time staying on top of the SEO industry and its trends. Watch your page ranking, your website statistics, your Alexa traffic ranking. All of these tools will allow you to find out if there are any significant changes occurring on the web.

Melih Oztalay is the CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing providing businesses with turn key marketing solutions on the web. Please visit SmartFinds at http://www.hsfideas.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Melih_Oztalay

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Authority Websites

2007-07-26T00:28:00.000-07:00

Search engines have become wiser and have put more scrutiny upon deciding page ranking and which websites are really important. Spending time on traditional on-page optimization and link building strategies will not get you that top ranking in Google. Don't get me wrong, you cannot stop doing these tasks, however, the marketing of your website will need to include a variety of other methods if you want to get top rankings. Search engines are looking for clean quality content to provide to their users and we will see the search engine market become more competitive.

Traditional search engine optimization will continue to be part of your efforts excepting for our methodology will change. You will continue to work on link exchanges, keywords, descriptions, titles, headlines, image alt descriptions, comments, and content. Now you will focus your keywords to be very specific and watch you density. Your descriptions will not be as long, but concentrate on more concise descriptions. You will want to watch your HTML coding to make the process easier for the search engine spiders. Try using fewer tables and consider Cascading Style Sheets. The link exchanges will have to be more specific to your industry and with websites that are authoritative in nature.

Authoritative websites is the direction to consider for 2006. Not only making your website an authority for your target market, but to exchange links with other websites that are authoritative for that same target market. What are authoritative websites to link with? Basically there are is a relatively small set of websites that can be trusted as authority, or expert websites. Government sites, university websites, well-recognized news sources, and recognized industry news sources are all examples of sites that can be considered as “expert” websites. These sites, unlike the average website on the Internet, can be trusted to “link honestly”.

Take the following example. I recently went to Google, MSN and Yahoo and searched on the term "internet marketing consultants" and the result on the first page for all three search engines were somewhat surprising. Instead of finding a page full of businesses that provide internet marketing services over 75% of the results were websites that were resources for internet marketing. A careful review of each of these websites revealed all of them to be content rich in their field of internet marketing. They did not provide any services other than information for others to use about internet marketing. For the purpose of this writing these results indicate (1) that making your site an authority for your field and industry is very important to achieve top ranking, and (2) you want to seek out these types of websites to create inbound links if possible and feasible. Otherwise engage a reciprocal link exchange.

Getting noticed by authority websites can be difficult, but with some creativity it can be done. If you make your business newsworthy, news outlets within your industry and without will pickup your news story and hopefully link over to your website. Traditional marketing and public relations requires you to make your company known as an authority within your industry. You should want your clients to know that you are the best source for whatever it is you sell, and that they should trust you. You gain this trust by being visible, not just through your website, but through the websites of other trusted sources such as news outlets. These types of marketing methods would include engaging in public relations, networking, attending trade shows, and talking to news sources both within your industry and outside of your industry.

Your website is a business. No different than a retail brick-and-mortar store you will spend as much time working your website as a regular any regular business. Do not believe that the comfort of your home or that you are working with computers and technology you are able to run your business any easier. The only thing that has changed is the venue, everything else is the same. You have to provide quality content, engage in activities that make your website known, and make your website the absolute best in your target market.

Melih Oztalay is the CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing. Internet marketing is not only about knowledge and experience, but also about imagination. Visit SmartFinds here.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Melih_Oztalay

Search Engine Marketing - The Past, The Present, And The Future

2007-07-26T00:27:00.000-07:00

1997 – 1999 were the early years of search engine era. Internet Marketing and more specifically search engine marketing mainly consisted of submitting your sites to the search engines. These "voices from the past" are still heard today when this or that Search Engine Optimization company and / or automatic submitting software will claim to do search engine promotion for you by submitting your site to hundreds and thousands engines and directories. The search engines' indexing programs, called "robots" or "spiders", looked through all of the HTML code of a page and used some page ranking algorithms that they kept in secret.

Those days were spammers' Heaven: it was rather easy to get your site ranked high. You could just use your keywords lots of times on the page, in the META tags, HTML comments etc. and hide it from the human visitors by making the text tiny or completely invisible with the help of HTML tricks. The search engines didn't have any sophisticated technique to recognize this kind of spam, and such sites usually got high rankings very easily. Today, you still can find some samples of this primitive optimization (however you will have to give it a hard try, because nowadays most of such Web projects have been banned by the search engines for excessive keyword usage).

The only exception was Yahoo which has always been indexed by humans who could in most cases identify and ban spamming pages. Gradually, search engines started recognizing spam and applying corresponding penalties to Web pages using spam methods. However, search engine optimizers were always one step behind the search engines in finding new ways of cheating the indexing algorithms. Hence each search engine is committed to delivering only relevant results to its visitors, the engines needed to take control away from the spammers and auto-submitters. Many began to try different ways of indexing.

The Rise of Google

If someone is asked today about the first search engine to remember, the answer will be Google in 100% cases. Google has started its way to be the King of search engines in 2000 and in 2002 its right for this title has been firmly established, with around 70% of searches done on the Internet. While other search engines were focusing on transforming to universal portals, Google kept a simple and – which has become its distinctive feature – fast interface that solely targeted delivering relevant search results.

Google also developed advanced features such as indexing and searching PDF (portable document format) and SWF (shockwave flash) files. Additionally, Google's sophisticated techniques to use the "off-the-page" factors made it extremely spam-resistant. Google's dominance has become steady in 2000 with Yahoo having switched from Inktomi to Google as secondary search result provider. Now, Yahoo uses the combination of Overture's and own search software and index repository, thus being fully independent on Google, however, without any slightest impact on the dominance of the latter.

Global Consolidation

By 2001, the results of all major engines were produced from a number of mixed / hybrid sources. Yahoo search results combined Yahoo-directory listings, Overture (PPC) results, and Google results. MSN provided results from Overture (PPC), LookSmart , and Inktomi.

The years 2002 and 2003 brought major reshuffles among search engines: in this period, Google purchased Blogger.com, Yahoo bought Inktomi, and AltaVista and AllTheWeb became a part of Overture. Also, there were many shifts caused by emerging search engine partnerships. Further in this course we will give you a complete and actual chart of relationships between the contemporary search engines.

Search Engine Marketing Today

If you thought nowadays search engine marketing can still be done by acquiring (and using) an auto-submission software, drop this idea since now on. Search engine marketing requires an integrated approach to improving site content, quality and popularity. For a Web site to reach its top potential, it must incorporate target audience analysis, competitive analysis, cost per click optimization, and - last but not least - copywriting and copyediting. And, because things keep changing, search engine marketers need to devote a good deal of time staying on top of the SEO industry and its trends.

Today very few (and mostly inexperienced) optimizers / marketers would use spam methods to achieve high ranking. In many cases, spamming and the so-called "black-hat" SEO is recognized by automatic spiders, for these become more and more intelligent. Even though we describe major spamming methods in the end of this course, we do it only in the sake of your awareness. We do NOT recommend using them, as there's no guarantee at all they can help, whereas it's very possible that your Web visibility can be seriously damaged as a result.

The Future of Search Engine Marketing

Search engines have already developed into sophisticated systems, and no doubt they will continue to enhance their technical aspect, with improved capabilities to index pages that are located deeply within the site (many links away from the initial page). Also, their abilities to handle dynamically generated pages (e.g. shopping carts) can be expected to grow. Among other perspective trends are advanced non-HTML content indexing (such as PDF and graphics), improved ability to rapidly integrate new content such as news using XML feeds or other technology, organization of search results into logical categories (sometimes referred to as clustering), and other advanced features. For insights into the future of search, you could visit Google Labs ( http://labs.google.com). This is the beta area where Google showcases some of its upcoming technologies.

However, the traditional "highest-bidder" approach makes SEM feel more and more like traditional print advertising. The Integrated Approach to SEM anticipates that in future, best marketing efforts will aim to leverage the three components: paid advertising and analytics, all-sided site and content optimization and qualitative off-the-page factors enhancement. That is why we prefer to call the functions provided by Web CEO "Search Engine Marketing" rather than "Search Engine Optimization". When all is said and done, it is the traffic you get and the way this traffic converts that matters – not even your site rank on a search engine. You can rank worse than your competitor, yet the percentage of your visitors that turn into buyers will be so high that you actually outperform your competitor several times.

About the Author

Carmen is the VP Client Relations of Ms. SEO Inc., a Calgary based Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing Company. Ms. Seo Inc. works with their sister company Ms. Hype Inc., a Calgary Website Design Company, and their parent company Cre8 Hype Solutions Inc., a Calgary based Internet Marketing Company, to offer their clients a powerful online presence.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carmen_Jackson

Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T00:26:00.000-07:00

As part of your overall Internet marketing strategy, it is important to devote resources to search engine marketing. This component of your marketing mix has become increasingly critical due to the importance that search engines and directories play in how prospects access information. Search engines have the advantage of driving highly qualified traffic due to the self-selection process initiated by the searcher in choosing their search query.

Research shows that there are more than 8 hundred million people in the world have the habit to access Internet. 86% of them tend to locate information via search engines. In addition, research shows that most people will only look at 2 to 3 pages of search results, so your ranking among the results is becoming increasingly important.

When developing your search engine strategy you need to understand how search engines work, how they are different from directories, and how to maximize their effectiveness in making sure that your business gets as much exposure as your budget allows.

Search Engines populate their databases for search results through robotic software programs that crawl the web looking for content to index. This crawling requires that the software find text-based machine-readable content to index and categorize a site. The content accessed is from the meta tags (title, description, keywords, alt image tags), filenames and content on pages throughout your site. Spiders tend to look at the root directory, 1st level files and occasionally will spider your site to 2nd level content. To determine a site’s meta tags, right click your mouse and select View Source.

If your site has not been developed with search engines in mind, you could have difficulty in having your content properly indexed. Search engines also determine relative rankings of results based on certain algorithms that include factors like link popularity, site traffic, site content, etc.

When search engines first evolved, they were based on a “free” business model, where conceptually all sites had an equal chance of being indexed and displayed in search results if their developers optimized with some basic steps. While the basic steps are still an important part of your search engine marketing strategy, they no longer are enough. This is due to the fact that many search engines (and dot bombs) found that it wasn’t just about capturing eyeballs, but was also about making money. This has led search engines to modify their business models to capitalize on all possible sources of revenue generated by their traffic and/or technology. Traffic was seen as a logical source for advertising revenues and technology was felt to be transferable for use at other sites requiring robust search engines.

To date, most search engines have not elected to go towards a subscription-based model where searchers get charged for accessing information. These new business models require that site developers work even more closely with marketing strategists to ensure that the most effective business decisions are made.

Phillipe Wu is the marketing manager of a SEO company hosting B2B portals - B2BChinaSources.com & B2BManufactures.com. Find information of LED Manufacturers, Machine Tools, O Rings and other products and manufacturers from Taiwan & China.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Phillipe_Wu

The Changing Face of Web and Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T00:24:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, search engine placement was arranged by your average Web designer and/or Webmaster. The Webmaster would simply submit a site to search engines manually or use rudimentary software that was widely available.

Keyword relevance was largely a matter of link popularity and the Webmaster assigning a simple keyword meta-tag to each page of your site. The system used to work reasonably well, or so it seemed. That is no longer the case.

Today, submission to the major search engines like Google is largely irrelevant, although there is a complex mix of PFI (pay for inclusion) and PFP (pay for performance, sponsored links, PPC ads) that require complex submission of details.

Today's Methodology

In today's Internet economy, sophisticated and complex programs - called spiders - surf the Web looking at the source code of Web pages. They sort through the complex web of formatting tags, programming script, multi-media, page titles, and content that the user may or may not see, to ascertain how to rank each page of your site for each and every word and word combination that it finds.

These spiders index the words of each page found and add it to the engine's database, making them available as keywords for search engine searchers. In this new environment, sophisticated software programs that analyze the various search engine algorithms and how they rank selected pages have moved to the forefront of search engine placement.

This has spawned a large industry of SEO (search engine optimisation and marketing) experts and specialist SEM firms.

What Does Keyword Based Marketing Offer?

If implemented correctly, SEO can offer a higher return on investment than nearly any other marketing strategy (online or offline). Placing high in the search engine ranking positions (SERPs) is a great way to attract first time visitors. Placement in the search engines can largely determine the "reach" of your online marketing strategy.

The stakes in this battle are being raised all the time as the number of users going online increases - which in the U.S. alone approaches 100 million - with over 60% of those users spending some 48 BILLION dollars per year for online shopping (Greenspan, 2002, cyberatlas.com).

With broadband prices in Australia falling rapidly and the rate of Internet takeup extraordinarily high, the Australian consumer is showing similar enthusiasm for online sales. Unfortunately, many potential buyers - some say as many as 70% - give up because they cannot find the good sites to shop at, because they are poorly keyword indexed or the actual site has poor navigation and design.

When any business is making plans to improve their Search Engine positions, they need to understand that optimisation of your site for the Search Engines is not a one-shot job. It requires ongoing monitoring and tweaking in order to keep ahead of both the competition AND the changes the Search Engines make to how they rank sites.

Any comprehensive Web marketing plan should:

(1) Promote your web site based on the (optimised) content of your site and knowledge of the relevant marketplace;

(2) Utilise data of how the average search engine user actually looks for information on your site - including alternative terms, synonyms, common phrasing, etc;

(3) Include internal and external link building with relevant sites and relevant keywords;

(4) Regular reporting of search engine positioning, general Internet visibility and actual visitor statistics/analytics and recommendation for improvements.

Every serious Web site owner should be on a Web marketing plan that is definitely more than just a submission or reporting service. Set a monthly budget and take action.

We've seen many of our clients benefit from the ongoing relationship we have developed with them through our web marketing plans. Plenty of page 1 rankings on Google, Yahoo, MSN are not uncommon over time, as we monitor and tweak their sites for the Search Engines.

However, in almost all cases, those clients would have never achieved and then maintained those high rankings if they had not had someone in the know keeping track of how their site is ranking, and making changes where ever needed.

It's like advertising in the Yellow Pages really. If you don't pay to have your ad included, you don't get an entry in the book, and eventually the calls to your business start to drop off as people update to the newest edition.

Search Engine Optimisation / Marketing is the same. The Internet is NOT static - it's always changing and evolving, and in order for your site to get and maintain good rankings around the keywords that are important to you, you have to keep someone on the job on a regular basis who knows how to react to the changes happening.

The Return On Investment (ROI) for good SEO/SEM services is very high, compared to traditional advertising and marketing. According to Google's statistics, Search advertising is up to 20 times CHEAPER per lead, compared to (for example) Direct Mail. For any company spending money on advertising, this statistic should be of EXTREME interest! After all, what company doesn't want to reduce their cost of customer acquisition?

That's what SEO/SEM companies are supposed to be about! Well, at least at our company, we are - I can't speak for our competitors. Before you hire an SEO/SEM company, ask what their plan is for the ongoing optimisation of your site. If they don't have a plan, run, don't walk, to the nearest exit and hang onto your money.

Charles Ryder is the CEO of WCR Internet Marketing, a specialist Australian Search Engine Optimisation company. For a free site analysis, visit http://www.wcr-internet-marketing.com.au

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charles_Ryder

Exporting using Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-26T00:22:00.000-07:00

If we take a look at traditional export process for a new company and its products you may start by defining the niche market, and then finding the customers.

The usual method is contacting Commerce Departments on the embassies or consulates of diverse countries, find the most relevant companies that can be interested on importing, and get valid contact information.

Other used method is to travel to the desired countries and present your products to local importers or distributors and hopefully get a deal.

I cannot say those methods are inefficient, however they can be certainly risky, time consuming and very expensive.

Now let’s analyze the SEM choice for international commerce: Using the power of the internet, a professional SEM company can develop for you a web marketing strategy to recognize your niche market(s), find out what your competitors and possible buyers are doing in order to be updated of the current market behavior, and then elaborate a marketing plan to get your potential buyers to contact you when searching for the products you promote.

If your idea is to have an aggressive campaign, an SEM strategy can include contacting potential clients (online and offline), letting them receive information about your offered merchandise and your possible advantages in your field (reliability, price, technology, special delivery, guarantee, client support, etc.).

Besides these points, the most important reasons why to choose Search Engine Marketing for your export planning still are:

It is faster and more accurate to find active potential customers.

Possibility to create a direct bridge to retailers and final consumers instead of selling to intermediaries, which will raise your margins and lower the final costs: a win-win deal.

The cost of an SEM strategy can be much lower than traditional marketing and –if professionally managed- will generate a fast ROI and will increase your sales volume, eliminating unnecessary risks.

If you have questions of how SEM can work for your business please click here.

Mr. Daniel Katz is the Business Development Manager at Compucall Web Marketing Ltd - http://www.compucall-uk.co.uk - experts in International Web Marketing and Marketing Strategies.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Katz

'Spinning' News for Search Engine Marketing Impact

2007-07-26T00:21:00.000-07:00

What costs less than a penny an impression, drives qualified traffic to your web site, positions your company as an authority, helps boost search engine rankings, generates buzz, and may even result in traditional media coverage? Three words: optimized press releases.

An average optimized release will:

Be read by well over 100,000 people (journalists, industry analysts and prospective customers).
Be published on more than 850 other web sites.
Have an average cost per read of less than 1 cent (or a CPM of about $8 for you media folks).

Want to try it? Here are four basic steps to successfully optimize an existing press release.

Decide which search terms to target with your press release. Search terms are the words and phrases your target audience might type into a search engine in order to find your web site. There's a definite art to selecting search terms, but you can get a lot of good information from Wordtracker.
Use the search terms in the headline, subhead, and copy of the press release. Don't overdo it - it still needs to read well and present your news item accurately and succinctly. Still, it's usually fairly simple to swap out wording that no one is searching for (such as "enterprise systems") for more precise, product-oriented language that your target audience is searching for (such as "enterprise resource planning software"). Another example: Instead of writing about "our products," write about "our fiber-optic transceiver products."
Build links into the release that point to related pages on your web site. Search engines consider the number and quality of links pointing to a site when determining rankings. To further impact rankings, include your search terms in the text of the links themselves.
Distribute the release via PRWeb, an electronic distribution system built just for the Internet. Pony up for paid distribution - while PRWeb has an option to distribute your release at no charge, you won't get nearly as many benefits by using that option.

What happens next?

The release shows up nearly instantly in both Google News and Yahoo News. These news engines have over 27 million unique visitors a month in total. Often, it'll show up in regular search results too.
The release is fed across the Internet and picked up by other sites that publish syndicated content. Your release shows up on numerous other sites -- again, building awareness and site visitors.
It's emailed to appropriate segments of an opt-in email database of over 100,000 journalists. So, in addition to the online marketing benefits, you may get traditional media coverage out of this!
A web page is created for your release on PRWeb's site. If you've built links pointing to your site into the release, every time your release is posted somewhere on the web, it creates more links pointing to your site.

Consider extending your traditional PR efforts to the online world. Optimizing press releases is a cost-effective, measurable tactic for increasing your position in search engine rankings and building traffic to your site. We've been doing it for over a year and a half - let us know if we can help you reap the benefits of this powerful marketing medium.

Stacy Williams, a search engine marketing specialist, is founder and Managing Partner of Atlanta search engine placement company Prominent Placement, Inc. Williams has a combined 16 years of experience and education in marketing, having overseen web site development projects and traffic generation campaigns since 1995, and has been doing search engine marketing since 1998.

A member of the Technology Alliance of Georgia and the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association, Stacy Williams is a frequent lecturer on search engine marketing. She has written articles for Digitrends, SEO Today, Competitive Edge and iMarketing News. She also presents regularly at each of the U.S.-based Search Engine Strategies Conferences.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stacy_Williams

Search Engine Marketing for Miva Merchant 5

2007-07-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

Miva Merchant 5 is the latest version of Miva and offers a revised look and feel and several new backend features than previous versions but the path to successful Miva search engine optimization is almost still the same.

Here's what stays the same!

*Good, revelant content
*Meta tags that don't overuse keywords
*Descriptive product titles with keywords
*Rich product descriptions with relevant content using keywords effectively
*Text links using keywords when applicable
*Sitemaps - for use on site and Google
*Good, relevant links pointing to your site

These basic search engine optimization steps will give you the foundation to have success in the search engines.

Here's what changes.

*No SEO modules currently available
*No ability to control meta tags thru OpenUI code

Since Miva 5 is the first major version release after the company was taken over by FindWhat all of the modules that have been available to previous Miva versions are not available for Miva 5 yet. This includes the SEO oriented modules but read nothing into that, it is not uncommon when a revised software version comes out that not all external pieces which were available for previous versions are available or compatible with the latest version.

This being said, we have already launched several stores using the Miva 5 platform and by using the steps above (and of course our 8 years of SEO experience) we have already had numerous front page rankings in all of the major engines with these stores. Does that mean the basic Miva 5 store is search engine friendly? Not anymore so than previous versions, what it does mean is that engines now can spider dynamic sites much easier and if the optimization on those sites is done correctly than high rankings can be achieved.

Miva Merchant 5 is an exciting product so much so that we are banking on it as it will be the cart we focus on for all of our ecommerce clients. The Miva SEO modules will come and they will offer easier and more efficient ways to optimize your store but if you don't follow the basic steps listed earlier in this post... the module won't matter.

Mark Stone is a SEO Expert with more than 8 years of experience placing websites on the front page of major search engines. His company is http://www.theinfogroup.com. People interested in Miva search engine marketing or web design should visit, http://miva.theinfogroup.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_Stone

Comprehensive Keyword Research Services Improve Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-25T23:03:00.000-07:00

Many website owners get frustrated with search engine marketing due to poor results. The biggest search engine marketing mistake is made right from the start. That optimization mistake: implementation of search engine marketing optimization of the wrong keywords.

You have to crawl before you can walk. The crawling stage of search engine marketing is just that slow, boring and overwhelming. This stage of optimization provides very little short term results. In the long run though, it is the single most important step. If you target the wrong terms you will get traffic without conversions. If you target terms that have high competition you will get very little traffic due to high competition. Both are equally a waste of your search engine marketing resources.

So how do you get the right search terms? There are many keyword bidding tools and websites that show the top paying keyword. Some are free keyword services and others are paid comprehensive keyword research services that you can use.

So this is easy? I just search for a comprehensive keyword research tool and pick one. There are several problems with this approach to comprehensive keyword research.

It costs money to enlist these keyword services

There is a learning curve to all new keyword research tools

It takes practice to target your audience and think laterally to get the best business keywords for your search engine marketing campaign

How do you know who your competitors are?

It takes a week to produce top paying keywords that drive target traffic.

Why does it take a week? When the keyword research process is performed at its best the following steps are taken.

Identify your top business products and services

Identify your top Internet competitors keywords across the top ten search engines

Use your keywords to stem new keywords and phrases

In the 100 or so keywords and phrases into keyword tracking service to find another 500 hundred keywords

Use powers of research, reasoning and deduction to capture the top 200 keywords

Take a day off – yes, take a break and come back and look at the whole process from different angles to ensure that you are on track and that you have every possible niche term.

Use analytic software to compare the keyword effectiveness index (KEI)

Select best terms from the above keyword research process.

So what do I do about my search engine marketing keyword research? Enlist a professional that has experience in comprehensive keyword research, which identify your business keywords. http://www.search-optimization.com

Search-Optimization.com Internet Marketing 3303 Harbor Blvd. Suite H-6 Costa Mesa, CA 92626 http://www.search-optimization.com

Search-Optimization is an industrial strength search engine marketing optimization company providing thematic optimization using comprehensive keyword research, competition intelligence and 11 years experience. Jason Chandler is a search engine optimization specialist writing for http://www.search-Optimization.com, founded in 1994.

Integrating Search Engine Marketing with Email to Increase Conversions

2007-07-25T23:02:00.000-07:00

Did you know you could probably improve the return on your search engine marketing spend by as much as 50% by focusing your efforts on communicating more effectively with customers that arrive on your site via the major search engines.

Not only would this improve the effectiveness of your pay per click advertising but would also reduce your cost per acquisition fees and increase the profitability of each customer acquired through search engine marketing.

How? Read on.

Running a search engine marketing campaign without clear communication goals in mind is a foolish strategy to adopt in today’s highly competitive search marketplace. Without a clear online communication strategy in place profits and potential customer relationships are in danger of slipping through your sales funnel. Under pressure to continue moving and growing, you keep flooding your funnel with more traffic. But traffic, is about quality not quantity and the search engines just keep on drinking your marketing spend. They’re the ones that end up making a lot of cash from your frequent fill-ups. Did you know that Google charges you each time a user clicks on your PPC advert during the same search session? This often happens when users bounce back and forward from the search engine results page to the advertiser’s websites desperately trying to find the information and help they crave. So that single visitor could be costing you more than you think.

It takes a little time and money to fix the problem. You need to think about how you handle customers who find your products and services via a search engine. You also need to think about where they are in the purchase decision making process and if they are just researching products or are actually ready to buy. The complexity of the decision making process is often down to how many people are involved, is it a high cost / high risk purchase and so on. By taking a closer look at the key phrases you are bidding for in your search engine marketing campaign, you can identify how far down that decision making cycle visitors are.

To help move visitors through the different stages of the buying cycle, you could perhaps create a specific landing page for a keyword and publish some content that reads something like:

“Welcome to our company – We're glad you found us. Here's the product you've been searching for. We have a wide range of products to fit your unique needs. If you'd like to learn more about these products or are unsure what product might best suit your own specific needs, please do not hesitate to complete our short enquiry form and we will be happy to help you.”

Maybe they don’t want to sleep with you on their first date? You need to understand that when a visitor comes on to your site that they may not be ready to buy. Therefore, your goal is not to ‘sell’ to the visitor but to begin an online dialogue. No-one likes being ‘sold-to’, but prospects do like helpful staff that are interested in helping them make the best decision on what to buy and want not to buy. You need to build trust and prove that you want to genuinely help them fulfil their online goal and so one of your main objectives is to get more information on your targeted customer. What do you have to lose? If you really want to go to get the sale you need to demonstrate to your visitors all the value-added services and support they'll receive from you as customers.

Maybe they don’t want to sleep with you on their first date?

Once you have an email, you have the basis to build a relationship. You've convinced the searcher to interact and trust you with their email address. Now, you need to use the information you extracted from them during this first contact to thank them and probe them for more information that will help you recommend suitable products, service or solutions.

Understand the various stages of the purchase decision process.

Getting leads from search engines is just one part of the game, not the entire game. It provides an opportunity to fix the customer communication problem. Done properly, search engine marketing can deliver new customers to your doorstep, cost effectively and efficiently. Otherwise, you'll keep returning to the fill up the leaky sales funnel with more traffic. Like I said earlier, search engine marketing is not about increasing the quantity of visitors to your site it’s about improving the quality of communication you have with those targeted prospects so that you can turn them into repeat and profitable customers.

http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Damon_Lightley

An Integrated Approach To Search Engine Marketing

2007-07-25T23:01:00.001-07:00

With research suggesting that around 90% of all e-commerce purchases coming as a result of a search engine enquiry, the potential selling power that having a significant presence on the main search engines can confer is slowly beginning to dawn on those responsible for marketing and selling everything from Alphabet soup to Zebra floor mats.

Search Engine Marketers have in recent times set up their tents in one of two different camps.

One would have clients believe that the only value to be gained from search engine marketing is the long term value that organic search engine listings can achieve.

The camp on the opposite side of the river would have their clients sold on the belief that Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) from companies such as Google, Overture and Miva offered the swiftest returns on investment and the quickest routes into the lands of honey and gold.

The reality of the situation is that a truly successful Search Engine Marketing campaign lies somewhere in-between.

The advent of the fabled Google “Sandbox” now means that for the majority of new and redesigned websites an artificial time delay of at least six months is now being imposed on their sites making onto the pages returned for a relevant keyword search.

This is a consequence of Google’s attempts to rid its index of sites designed to manipulate the listings rather than to provide real and valuable content.

The consequence of this action is that whilst new sites can still (at the time of writing) quickly gain organic listings on MSN and Yahoo through the optimisation of their websites, those seeking to place their products or services in front of the massive Goggle audience need to invest time and money in establishing a brand presence on Google through the usage of PPC advertising.

Recent research has shown that PPC click adverts are only perceived to have been paid for by fewer than 40% of those using search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Additionally having PPC adverts that mention a brand name on page listings relating to a particular subject or product actually increases brand awareness in subsequent recall tests by over 25%, whether the advert was clicked upon or not.

No-one can argue that over time organic listings represent the greatest potential for Return On Investment (ROI).

However the fact that organic listings are increasingly becoming harder to achieve, particularly for new websites, means that integrated Search Engine Marketing solutions that take account of organic and PPC listings represent the true and only means of establishing a strong and profitable position on the main search engines.

Ivor Conway is the Managing Director of Neuchi, UK Search Engine Marketing and UK Search Engine Optimisation company that promotes the matching of UK client’s products to interested and ready to buy online customers.

Please vistit us at http://www.neuchi.co.uk to learn how we can help your UK based company increase sales and turnover.

Please feel free to reproduce this article but please publish in its entirety and with the resource box and all live links included.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ivor_Conway