Choosing the right keywords for maximum ROI Today, for a company or ad agency to be truly successful in search engine marketing (SEM), choosing the right keywords that people are actually typing into Overture or the other search engines can mean the difference between a very rewarding online ad campaign, or one that fails miserably.
However, it is fortunate that selecting the right keywords that will drive targeted and qualified sales leads to your website is a fairly simple exercise. Using Overture, Google’s AdWords or any other similar PPC program, marketers can easily delete keywords that don’t produce the desired results, add new ones or modify the ones that currently exist, by simply accessing their accounts at any of these search engines. Companies can even experiment with certain keywords if they so desire, in an attempt at producing the maximum ROI.
Nevertheless, the initial start-up phase still needs close observation and requires a careful monitoring of the first results. The wrong set of keywords can seriously hamper the overall success of any online ad campaign, not to mention the frustration and the waste of time and resources. Additionally, launch an ad campaign with the wrong keywords and your PPC costs can quickly drive up a bill to levels you never taught possible. If an initial campaign only attracts casual browsers or “lookers” and not serious buyers, you should carefully review all of the keywords you originally selected.
In search engine marketing, keywords fall into two very distinctive and main groups:
1. Generic keywords 2. Branded keywords
How to manage generic keywords As a rule, managing branded keywords is usually simpler than managing generic keywords, although this doesn’t mean it’s impossible, on the contrary. If your site visitors or prospective clients aren’t familiar with the brand names or trademarks of your company, then you will have to concentrate on generic (or organic) keywords for your website.
For companies or subsidiaries that wish to expand into new market segments, even they will need to concentrate in promoting keywords that will be directly connected with their business, but that may not be names of specific trademarks, service marks or traditional brand names.
The secret in managing generic keywords is to avoid keywords that are too broad. For example, if you are in the travel industry, the keyword ‘travel’ would much too broad. Is it air travel, by car, by boat, what? You would need to narrow it down further, in an effort to avoid what is called ‘junk traffic’. Junk traffic is determined by traffic that has no value to you, but that you will still need to pay for if you rely on pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-for-performance (PFP).
Generic keywords by topics
Most likely, your website is about one single topic or subject. Usually, in any corporate website, you have one major topic, along with a few subtopics, or secondary themes. Let’s take the example of a company offering travel packages to sun-filled beaches in the south. One effective way to group subtopics and make them keywords that you can advertise could be: Caribbean Travel, Pacific Travel, Florida Travel, Gulf of Mexico Travel, etc.
What’s important to remember here is, when writing up your keywords, think of what people would type in a search engine to find that nice sunny beach. A great tool to help you with this would be Wordtracker, or the free keyword suggestion tool at Overture.
How to manage branded keywords The best way to manage branded keywords is to start with your company name, its products, services, trademarks, service marks or brand names if you have any. Since your company is the only one using a specific trademark or brand name, a good idea is to only bid the minimum price asked by the search engine you are using. There is no sense in bidding more for it, since your brand or trademark should always be unique and exclusive to your company.
In fact, since no other company is competing for the same search terms you will be using, this just explains why well-known branded keywords deliver such high returns on investment (ROI). Still, you should make certain that your branded keywords are really being searched by people, again using Wordtracker or the free keyword suggestion tool at Overture.
Trademarks and brand names
Surprisingly, a large number of companies don’t bid on their own trademarks or brand names. In fact, I still hear a lot of executives at large Fortune 500 companies say their brand is well recognized and they don’t need to bid on them. This is a very big mistake, since they are loosing out on very targeted traffic, and what’s more, that traffic costs very little, since they should be paying the minimum acceptable bid for it.
If you don’t believe me on this, try typing some well-known trademarks or brand names in Google or Yahoo and notice the large amount of them that don’t even appear on the first results pages, in the generic (or organic) listings.
Domain names
Sadly, it may not always be possible to register a Web domain name (URL) that matches your company name, trademark, service mark or brand name. To protect your own brand, you should register all domain name extensions. For example, you should register the .com, .net, .org, .biz, etc. extensions and have them all point to your website, using a 301 re-direct command.
For example, I know for a fact that many large chemical companies usually register their domain names, as soon as a new chemical product or trademark is about to be marketed. Additionally, if they have two or three sub-products they are manufacturing, and all those sub-products will carry different brand names, they will also register all of those domain names too.
Conclusion Choosing the right keywords in search engine marketing isn’t difficult and can be done rather quickly once you understand the basics. What’s more, carefully selecting the right keywords that real people type in search engines will significantly increase your ROI.
Gain valuable market share at the expense of your competition, and boost your sales and increase your profits by implementing the right keyword strategy in your search engine marketing. If you follow the advice offered in this article, you should be well on your way of achieving these goals.
Reference: ‘Search Engine Advertising’ by Catherine Seda. 347 pages. New Riders Publishing. Indianapolis, IN. 46240.
Author: Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
What lies ahead for local search engine technology? No topic has received as much coverage recently as that of �local search� - the ability to find search results that are targeted to a users geographical preference. Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves are all making impressive advancements with local search, but there is another company that is vying for the local search crown.
InfoSpace is best known for its search engine brands like Dogpile.com and Webcralwer.com, but the company is building a reputation for itself as a provider of local search results, while at the same time building useful applications for the mobile user. As part of Andy Beal�s continuing look at �the future of search technology�, Andy had a chance to ask Arnaud Fischer, previously AltaVista product manager from 1999-2001 and currently leading search product planning for InfoSpace’s Search & Directory division, some questions about how local search will develop in the future.
Online yellow pages and white pages [Andy Beal] InfoSpace recently re-aligned itself to serve online yellow pages and white pages customers. Can you tell us what most excites you about this space?
[Arnaud Fischer] I am most excited about the “local search” opportunity. Inktomi, Google, and others already serve country-specific search results today and geo-targeting at a more granular level will unlock a tremendous amount of value for local advertisers, in addition to serving more relevant content to end-users. The traditional yellow pages market is roughly a $25 billion a year global industry. Many small businesses are awakening to the efficiency and predictability of online marketing, increasingly shifting marketing budgets to Web search and Internet yellow pages. Unlocking that opportunity is no easy task, though.
Internet yellow pages sites such as InfoSpace.com and Switchboard.com are working hard to deliver an end user experience that will bring more of the billions of annual print YP (yellow pages) look-ups online. With the penetration of broadband, always-on Internet connections growing and increasing adoption and use of ‘data-friendly’ mobile handsets, the print yellow pages appear to be on the verge of becoming obsolete.
Some of the challenges [AB] What are some of the challenges search companies face with local search? [AF] Search engines are developing ways to disambiguate and adequately address location-specific queries. Geo-targeting Web search content, both organic and paid, requires search engines to better understand users and queries, inferring local intent by extracting geo-signals and leveraging implicit and explicit user profiles. Taking local search marketing services to market is also very different than selling paid listings to online businesses. The vast majority of local businesses still don’t have a Web site, nor the time and expertise to invest in managing sophisticated auction-type listing campaigns.
Paid inclusion services [AB] There’s been a lot of discussion recently about paid inclusion services, where do you see advancements coming in this area? [AF] Search marketing should keep evolving very fast this year. Although pay-per-click platforms have expanded match type flexibility, campaign targeting is growing beyond keyword analyses to include geo-targeting and day-parting. Search engines are leveraging smarter linguistic technology, concept extraction and contextual categorization, to optimize targeting of paid content, improving on relevancy, conversion rates and increase advertisers’ ROI. While advertisers might be losing control over guaranteed placement over time, paid search has made budgeting for traffic-generation programs increasingly predictable. Effectiveness metrics are evolving from impression counts, and click-through conversion rates to more sophisticated return on investment (ROI) methodologies. Some engines already provide advertisers with tools to calculate conversion rates from impressions to orders and ROI metrics.
Overture and Google go one step further, suggesting forecasted traffic levels and cost estimates for specific keyword combinations, match types and bid amounts. In a yield-driven context, where content targeting gets more sophisticated and matching more scientific, Paid Inclusion and Paid Listing programs will eventually merge into more automated bid-for-traffic models. Ultimately, advertisers will target impressions by dictating an ROI level acceptable to them such as “8% over advertising spend”. To meet these requirements, search engine marketers will increasingly rely on automation tools to target the right content to the right users at the right location at the right time.
Beyond the next few months [AB] Let�s look beyond the next few months, what advancements do you see in the coming years? [AF] One of the most significant developments currently underway in web search is the integration of search capabilities within a broad range of other services. Increasingly, this trend in creating a new competitive arena in web Search that is forcing established providers to adopt new strategies and creating new market opportunities.
As the #1 web application, search is becoming more ubiquitous as technology and business models mature. We are seeing more ISPs adding search capability to their portals; we are seeing more newspapers and community-type portals integrating local search and Yellow Page offerings as well, in order to retain users on their properties, and leverage what has become a very profitable business model.
InfoSpace has long offered its web search and online directory capabilities on a private-label basis that allows our distribution partners such as Verizon, ABCNews, FoxNews, and Cablevision to deliver these services under their own brand. The increasing level of search activity occurring at popular destination sites like these has been a key component of InfoSpace’s growth over the past year. In January, we announced that distribution revenue accounted for over half of InfoSpace’s search-related revenue in the fourth quarter of 2003.
The next big thing [AB] We hear in the news that desktop search is going to be the next “big thing”, who do you see as being the key contributors to this area of search?
[AF] Both Microsoft Longhorn and IBM WebFountain will eventually make search a lot more transparent and integrated to end-users’ broader task-centric activities.
The Microsoft Longhorn operating system will have a significant impact on the overall information retrieval discipline and how users search. Microsoft is building centralized storage architecture around the next version of Windows that will make it much easier for end-users to retrieve locally stored information, no matter which application was originally used to author it. The subjective nature of users’ intent when formulating queries is complex. A better understanding of the task surrounding a search could make strides into serving more relevant results. The desktop and associated applications add a level of understanding of the user context that a browser cannot match. You could envision a world where users working on a document in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, get presented relevant related content leveraging text analytic technologies extracting concepts and themes of the document being worked on in real time. This is query-less search, relevant, in your face, all the time, without user interaction.
IBM has also been quietly working on the next generation of search technology focusing more on text analytic solutions, leveraging what some call the “Semantic Web”, including natural language processing, statistics, probabilities, machine learning, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence. IBM’s WebFountain technology goes beyond crawling and indexing the Web for the mere purpose of returning relevant links for a given queries. The technology actually tries to make sense of massive amounts of structured and un-structured content, extracting knowledge from the Web, Intranets, chat rooms, message boards, blogs, to isolate insightful and timely information that is not readily perceptible or available today. Applications could include identifying trends, monitoring brand perception, competitive activities, and monitoring other concept-specific “buzz”.
Commercial searches and informational searches [AB] Let’s look at commercial searches and informational searches; do you see the two becoming distinct categories?
[AF] No. A central theme behind classical information retrieval theories is that users are driven by an information need. More granular search log analyses over the past years have attempted to categorize queries as “transactional” (Commercial), “informational”, and “navigational”. The immediate intent behind “navigational” queries is to reach a particular site; “informational” queries aim at acquiring information assumed to be present on web pages; while “transactional” queries usually result in some activity such as an online purchase. Andrei Broder, while chief scientist officer at AltaVista in the late 90’s demonstrated that queries at the time were roughly split equally among each category.
We don’t live in a binary world where queries (or content) are either inherently commercial or purely informational. The commercial-informational dichotomy looks more like a spectrum to me, where understanding user intent and the psychology of purchasing cycle is critical. The definitions behind commercial and informational content are fuzzy and personal; content perceived as purely commercial by some might be informational to others and vice versa. Clearly, the query “1819 treaty manuscript” could be considered “informational” in nature, but leading to a book purchase at Amazon about the United States-Spain treaty of 1819, or even the schedule of a trip to Spain or Florida.
[AB] So what’s the answer?
[AF] In focus groups, users have told us unequivocally that they would much prefer a search engine display an array of content types that may be relevant to their query, rather than try to guess what their intent was. Users also appreciate having tools available to help them narrow their results. Based in part of this feedback, InfoSpace worked with Vivisimo last year to deploy a ‘Refine Your Results’ feature on our three owned and operated search properties — Dogpile, WebCrawler sand Metacrawler. The feature automatically organizes and groups results by category for every search, providing a comprehensive view of web search results and allowing users to more rapidly get to the information most relevant to them. For example, a search on “flowers” groups results into subcategories such as delivery, gardening, arts and crafts, and more.
Reduced privacy and search habit monitoring [AB] If search engine users gave up a little of their privacy and allowed their search habits to be monitored, would this allow the search engines to provide better, customized results?
[AF] There is no doubt that sharing personal data with search engines would result in better individual search experiences. The quality of search results is a function of two sets of variables: i) the user query and ii) the content indexed. Search engines are constantly crawling and indexing more web pages, more often, leveraging better entity extraction and concept recognition techniques, inferring document relationships in smarter ways. An enhanced understanding of user intents would certainly unlock more value from this semantic understanding of Web content.
Link analysis and other “off-the-page” ranking criteria have played an increasing role in relevancy algorithms over the past years. Monitoring navigation behavior at a user-level could conceivably be the basis to developing an understanding of users’ individual interests over time, in essence personalizing the equivalent of Google’s PageRank scores. If you consistently browse music-related content, search engines should become smart enough to understand that your query “Prince” most probably relates to the singer than to the royal family. Personalizing search relevancy algorithms presents some major scalability and performance challenges, though. It takes days, if not weeks to process link analyses and compute authority scores for individual Web sites after a crawl.
Privacy fears [AB] Do you think search engine users will balk due to privacy fears?
[AF] Privacy concerns are certainly legitimate to some extent. I actually see some parallel between users� reluctance to using their credit card online in the early e-commerce days and giving up personal information to search engines today. It�s a constant trade-off between privacy concerns and the added value extracted from that data.
In the meantime, IP-sniffing technology might take search engines a step closer to personalizing search results without requiring users to compromise on very personal information. IP-analytic software associate internet-connected devices to geographic areas, domains (.com, .edu, and .gov), ISPs, connection speed and browser types with some level of confidence. Analyzing click popularity at an aggregate level along IP-associated parameters could be leveraged to extrapolate personalized ranking for clusters of users exhibiting similar behaviors. This technique would not be unlike Amazon�s implementation of collaborative filtering technology, in essence also reaching similar goals than social networks such as Eurekster.
Search on cell phones? [AB] InfoSpace also offers wireless data applications. Do you think that search has a future on a cell phone?
[AF] Sending local content such as yellow page listings, directions, maps and business ratings to mobile devices just makes sense. I remember looking up on my cellular phone the nearest ice-cream parlor from the park a couple years ago with my kid. It worked! The experience was far from optimal, though, scrolling through about 10 to 15 screens I could barely read. Personalization features, geo-based services, faster networks, better handset resolution and color displays should significantly improve the experience over time. The navigation schema, whether search or browse modes, will be critical to make cellular phones a viable platform for both end-users and IYP advertisers. About 90% of mobile phones will be Web-enabled by 2006, making it a more attractive platform for content providers, developers, and information architects to invest time on.
The opportunity to deliver Web search and online directory information to mobile devices is something InfoSpace is well positioned to capitalize on. InfoSpace was a wireless data pioneer in the US and our mobile division today powers wireless data applications for every major US provider with the exception of Nextel. Going forward, we see a significant opportunity to increasingly combine our mobile and search and directory assets to accelerate the adoption of thee services on wireless devices.
[AB] Thanks Arnaud for taking the time to share with us your thoughts on the future of search!
Author Bio: Andy Beal is Vice President of Search Marketing for WebSourced, Inc and KeywordRanking.com, global leaders in professional search engine marketing. Highly respected as a source of search engine marketing advice, Andy has had articles published around the world and is a repeat speaker at Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Strategies conferences. Clients include Real.com, Alaska Air, Peopleclick, Monica Lewinsky and NBC. You can reach Andy at andy@keywordranking.com and view his daily SEO blog at www.searchenginelowdown.com.
Is Your Search Engine Optimized Content Working? In the past, most savvy website owners recognized the value of strong, compelling content; they appreciated the importance of copy that commands attention and persuades visitors with reason and with art to buy something or take a particular action.
But there’s a change happening. With the growing importance of search engine optimization, many e-businesses have shifted their content priorities. Satisfying the needs of human visitors has taken a back seat to keyword cramming and the scramble for higher search engine positioning.
And this has lead to some stilted and dysfunctional web content.
Search engine copywriting should help improve rankings, deliver traffic, AND convert it. Too many website owners employ search engine copywriting with the sole objective of driving traffic to the site. Period.
Then they cut that traffic loose to fend for itself. All those eager-to-buy prospects are dumped on the doorstep, facing a home page that offers them:
-No enticing headline. -No benefit-driven, you-oriented sales message. -No pitch explaining what makes this product or service superior. -No irresistible call to action.
These visitors are clearly not getting the information or the motivation they need to make a buying decision. What they get instead is keyword-stuffed text that screams out, “Hey Google, spider this!” As a result, the site may get traffic but minimal or no increase in sales.
When it comes to search engine copywriting, doing half a job is worse than not doing it at all because you’ve wasted money on traffic that isn’t generating revenues and the substandard copy is damaging your company’s credibility in the process.
If you want to ensure that your web content is optimized correctly and that you will actually be in a position to convert some sales, here is a checklist to run on your copy after the keywords have been written in:
1. Does your optimized content offer useful information that’s compelling, informative, and easy to understand?
2. Does it flow naturally or are the keyword phrases stuffed in beyond the point of sense and sensibility?
3. Does your content obey the first commandment of good copy: “Thou shalt put thy customer before thyself.” In other words, does it talk benefits (”This is how we can help you”) or just glitzy features (”Look at me, look at me!”)
4. Could a first-time visitor arrive at your home page and be clearly guided to the information he/she seeks without getting lost or confused? Content is vital to successful usability.
5. Does each web page include enticing headings/subheadings and clear, persuasive body copy, wrapped up with a strong call to action (a link to another page, an invitation to make contact, or a buy button)?
In short, your optimized web content should adhere to the standards of good marketing communications that were selling products long before we became fixated on search engines. Because professional search engine copywriting never forgets that humans - not spiders - make the buying decisions.
To find out if your search engine copy is working at both levels, contact me for a complimentary website content analysis.
Author Bio: Get a FREE website content analysis on your site with customized tips to make your content more compelling and search engine friendly. e-mail to heather@thewritecontent.com or visit http://www.thewritecontent.com/freereport.html
Value of a Keyword A ‘keyword’ or ‘keyword phrase’ is a word or combination of words that people type into search engines to find what they are looking for. The search engines search the Internet for webpages containing that particular keyword or keyword phrase. The pages are then ranked and scored using a mathematical formula and with the results displayed to the user as a list in order of most relevant to least relevant.
Properly utilized keywords can provide a great Return on Investment (ROI). Thus, it is very important to gauge the costs associated with marketing a keyword to its potential value to your business. Money spent on a keyword should be proportionate to its perceived value (either monetary or knowledge based) to your company. You do not need to spend a lot of money on a keyword phrase, but its value to you and your competitors is proportionate to its potential income. Some companies generate large amounts of revenue from specific keywords.
Determining the value of a keyword ahead of time is very difficult, and its value will change as your markets and competitors change. A quick guide would be to take the average bid of the top 5-listings on Overture or Google Adwords. These are a good starting point since both are very popular and a higher percentage of businesses make money by using them. There are also tools available that can you can use to get a more accurate gauge for the value of a keyword but most of these can only be utilized once you have some listings for your keywords.
The following formula can be used as a guide to calculating keyword value: ((estimated number searches per month) X (average cost per click on Overture) X (average click potential percentage)) = (keyword value for 1-month) Unfortunately, there are a number of flaws with this calculation as the first 3-variables are estimations/ judgments. Nonetheless, it can be used to compare one keyword against another to gain a grasp of its worth.
Profits and Visitors Increasing the number of visitors does not guarantee increased sales. Thus, getting high rankings based on generic keywords may not actually be beneficial to a business. Keywords need to be specific to your business so that the right customers are directed to your website. Generic keywords deliver a higher level of value to certain businesses and much less to others. For example, a search for “community college” would result in higher keyword value for colleges that have campuses all over the US or offers on-line courses than for a local college in say, Grand Rapids, Iowa or any other local college. The reason is simple; very few people living outside of the local college’s specific region will actually be looking to attend there.
In the above example, the keyword phrase “community college Grand Rapids” would hold a much greater value for the college because it is more focused and directed towards the people who are mostly likely to attend the college. This becomes apparent when you look at the actual conversion rates of visitors to the website. The rates will show that the greatest numbers of conversions were for the people who lived in and around the Grand Rapids area. As such, the college stands to reap greater profit from the targeted keyword than from the generic one. Hence, it is very important to look at the value a keyword holds for your business than just the number of people searching for it.
This is what the numbers look like if we apply the previously mentioned formula to the case of the above college. Say there were 13,956 searches for “grand rapid community colleges” on Overture with an average bid of $0.10 per-click. Its calculation would be (13,956 X $0.10 X 5% = $69.78 per-month). For “community colleges” there were 80,244 searches on Overture with an average bid of $0.85 per-click. Its calculation would be (80,244 X $0.85 X 5% = $3,410.37 per-month). Now, that value looks ridiculously high! Could it possibly be worth that much? That’s difficult to say, but it could be -to the right business.
When you consider that there are hundreds of colleges in the US, it is easy to understand that the conversion rate for the keyword phrase “community college” is going to be fairly low while its marketing cost is going to be much higher. On the other hand “grand rapid community college” is very targeted making its conversion rate much higher and its marketing cost much lower. Therefore, it would cost less to promote the targeted keyword, and at the same time get better conversion rates than using a generic keyword.
Keyword Relevancy Is The Key! Promoting the right keywords is essential to attaining a good ROI. Finding the right keywords to promote requires research, and the development of proper content to support them. Once again there are tools available to help do your research but there coming up with the good content is up to you. Or you could work with a search engine optimization (SEO) firm that can work with you to develop a SEO strategy for your business. Promoting specific and relevant keywords allows businesses to promote more keywords and make more profit and that�s why the value of a keyword is something that should not be taken lightly.
Author Name: Chris Genge Company: 1st on the List Promotion Inc
Author Bio: Chris Genge is the President of 1st on the List Promotion Inc, a professional website promotion firm. He writes on current and emerging search engine marketing theories. Chris has been involved in the SEO industry since its very early days, and has since 1997, focused on researching and implementing the most effective search engine optimization techniques.
A Network Of Web Sites Is Not Enough! The big thing these days is your ability to capture the market. So how do you do that?
Do you…
1) Use spam tactics? 2) Have a massive banner campaign? 3) Spends lots of money of PPC Advertising? 4) Build a huge web site? 5) Link to everyone in the world?
or do you…
6) Own a network of more than one web site? - Thinking that your network will help your search engine rankings since you can control your own link popularity!
#6 is starting to be the norm out there. Companies are just consuming a mass amount of domain names in order to increase their chances of being found online.
But does it really increase their chances? Let’s see…
Since recently, Google has been crawling through “DNS”information in order to sniff out who owns what. So for instance, if you own 20 web sites, google will find that out by the information you have on all the registered domains.
Given that you own these 20 web sites, doesn’t that give you the ability to create your own high page ranking, link popularity building campaign? Answer is yes, so what happens from that? Absolutely nothing. Nothing happens to increase your rankings I mean.
For instance, let’s say you are trying to build everything off of one mainly large web site of yours. Let’s also say that you intend to link to site #2 for this key phrase “Boosting Rankings”. You’ve done a lot of work to add that title and link pointing to site #2 on all of your pages within your one, main, larger site. Here’s what happens to your rankings for both of them.
It is known now that google has come up with this “Sandbox” effect. This is simply known as keeping an eye on certain network of web sites and the targeted key phrases they are after.
So your site #1 isn’t the target of this sandbox effect, it’s your smaller, networked web site that is. Instead of getting any type of rank for the phrase “Boosting Ranking”, this site is added to a pool of web sites that are doing the same thing. The catch is that this “pool” is nowhere to be found, unless you know how to look for it.
On the other hand, your main, large web site will now take over the ranking for “Boosting Ranking” and will probably do pretty good within a search!!!
So does owning a network really help you? NO, not unless you know how to better your “smaller”, network web sites so that they don’t get caught in this “Sandbox Effect”.
So how do you do that?
Simple, instead of relying on your network to boost your page ranking, outsource some of that strategy elsewhere. See, “Google” is only saying, if we don’t do this to your network, then it gives you the sole ability to control your search engine rankings for all your sites. We are merely stating that we know you have a network and worked really hard to build it but we also want you to promote other peoples sites as well.
It’s that simple. If you start today and keep building more links on other peoples web sites with your network, your entire network should see a big difference within 30 days of starting.
I hope this article helps you out!
Author Bio: Martin R. Lemieux Smartads - President Affordable Web Site Design & Web Site Marketing Web Site Awards & Webmasters Playground Food for your mind & Entrepreneur Traits Read over 200 articles on advertising!
Building A Mailing List In most every business building a loyal client base is important to the overall success of your business. Internet marketing is no exception. In order to build your client list you need to capture email addresses from prospects that either sign up to receive your newsletter or buy a product or service from your website.
One of the most important elements of building your mailing list is that you build a trust relationship with your prospect. According to The National Sales Executive Association 80% of sales are made after the 5th contact with a potential client or customer. So this should tell you that you need to have quality content in your newsletter so the prospect will stick around to receive your newsletter past the 5th attempt. Another good thing about building your mailing list is that you can notify your prospects about up coming events or special offers you may be working on or know would be of interest to the prospect.
Let�s examine some of the different ways in which you may be able to build your mailing list.
Pop Up Ads If you have surfed the web for anything you have undoubtedly found a site or two that use pop up ads to promote various ideas and opportunities. Most internet marketers use pop ups to capture prospects emails for there newsletters or promotions. Recently, a new type of pop up is being used, it�s called a pop over or hover ad that just appears on your site and will not be blocked by various pop up blockers that are installed in the google toolbar and the like.
These type of ads are very good for promoting your newsletter. The prospect signs up using there name and email address and are automatically add to your autoresponder.
Website Forms If for whatever reason you do not want to use a pop up ad you can create a subscription form on your website that will accomplish the same purpose. Write up an ad that promotes your newsletter and the benefit to your prospect and give them the opportunity to sign up that way. Using subscription forms and pop ups are great if you have a lot of targeted traffic to your website.
Lead Services Lead and subscription services offer you the opportunity to get a prospects name and email address. These are usually people looking to start a home business. You write an ad about your newsletter, advertise it with the subscription service and prospects sign up to receive it. There are plenty of companies that offer these types of services for various amounts of money. You buy a certain amount of prospects each month and they get delivered to your autoresponder where you have your newsletter. I would suggest trying as many of these services as possible. It is to hard to say which company offers the best leads, so using multiple companies will at the very least build your mailing list.
E-Zine Ads You may want to place ads in other peoples newsletters or e-zines. Depending on the number of subscribers prices range from $10.00 to over $100.00. Once again you write an ad about the benefits of your newsletter and submit it to an e-zine owner. You may be able to get your ad for free if you make a joint venture with an e-zine owner and swap ads.
These are just some of the ways you can use to build up you mailing list. However, none of these methods will work unless you offer a newsletter with unique content that a potential client will want to read.
Good luck!
Author Bio: Dirk Wagner is CEO and owner of http://team4success.biz and the free, easy to install #1 home business toolbar with automated updates.A website dedicated to helping the home-based business entrepreneur start and succeed with there very own home-based business.
Writing For The Internet Writing for the Internet, whether you call it e-copy, web copy, web text, or website content� is essentially a craft.
Ordinary Writing With A Job To Do Most websites contain text copy written primarily for the benefit of the visitor. Websites however, really have two very different audiences: people and search engine-indexing spiders. Both require a different style of writing and yet both need to be addressed by the writing. While this may be best left to the talents of a professional web content writer, for now I will explore some basic rules that technical writers use for crafting their writing to serve both.
If it means business, then your writing should attempt to grab the reader’s attention quickly and it must be engaging enough to keep them reading until you have successfully led them take some form of action.
Writing For The Two Audiences In reality, it is perhaps more important that your website copy satisfy the needs of the search engines. After all, in order to become visible to your second audience (the visitor) your website must first receive adequate ranking by your first audience (the search engines) and be listed near the top of the listing results� preferably within the first two pages.
Let’s first consider your website’s second audience, the visitor. Most website visitors come looking for something specific and they want it fast so your website better deliver.
Writers must clarify their goals and understand the purpose of the website. The site’s “unique selling proposition” or USP, must be in line with the visitor’s purpose for being there. Writers must know the type of person being targeted and then write in a conversational style that is simple and direct.
Concise Writing & Clear Headings Help Visitors We tend to read differently from computer screens than from other offline print mediums. Basically we don’t read� we skim read, ignoring details to better our reading speed. For this reason website text content must be more objective, more concise and easier to browse through. The message must be written so it can be easily scanned.
Every word on the page must fight for its rightful place and stay true to that old adage “less is more.” The opening statement must first solve the visitor’s problem. The body of the page should then list the benefits, not the features.
Writers ask how the product or company features translate into customer benefits. What are the benefits for the visitor is choosing this product or service? Navigating through web page content must also be intuitive for the visitor. What works best are proven layout formats and conventions that most visitors easily understand.
Closing statements must offer an effortless “call to action” using the easiest, most direct route for the visitor to take, to get what they came for. The call to action must be clear-cut with rewards that are irresistible and reaffirms for the visitor why this is something they need.
Satisfy Your Site’s First Audience�The Search Engines For most, this is a hidden problem when it comes to crafting their writing. What the search engines want is completely different from what visitors are looking for.
Search engine indexing spiders work primarily with text, visible HTML text that is. They simply cannot read flash, JavaScript, graphical text, etc. Your web page text copy must therefore be placed within the html coding so that it is more accessible to the search engine spiders, more “search engine friendly” if you will. But just as text copy must be properly placed within the html coding in order conform to the needs of the search engines, the writing itself, also needs to be “search engine friendly”.
The writing needs to be keyword rich with relevant content that supports the keyword phrases being targeted within the page. When a searcher types in a “keyword phrase” the search engine tries to match up web pages in the order that it thinks is the most relevant to the searcher’s request. Essentially, the search engine scans through its database looking for web pages that contain the keywords used by the searcher. Using an algorithm (a mathematical formula based on hundreds of pre-set criteria) it then ranks the web pages from those deemed most relevant to those deemed least relevant.
Web page copy must therefore be written to satisfy the “keyword criteria” needs of the search engines in order to be ranked at the top of the listing results. Web pages that consistently maintain high rankings are usually constructed with excellent keyword rich html text on static pages.
“Search Engine Friendly” Copy -Giving Search Engines What They Want Professional web content writers understand this and write keyword rich text content that satisfies the needs of the search engines while still being valid for the visitor.
Once they research and understand what phrases visitors are using to find what a site is offering, they choose their keyword phrases carefully. Each page is then written to be content rich around a theme that supports a main targeted keyword. Inevitably writers will use variations of a keyword phrase (or other less compelling keyword phrases that relate to a particular theme) and work them into the copy as well.
Search engines look at a variety of criteria as they relate to keyword phrases including keyword frequency, weight, prominence, proximity and placement within the text and within the html. While each search engine has its own criteria there are a few accepted norms for keyword placement within the text content and within the html coding. It is the writers’ responsibility to understand and utilize these norms.
Spam techniques like hidden layers or hidden text should be avoided to protect your site from being penalized or banned all together. While individual pages should contain unique content they still must work to support the targeted keyword phrases throughout the site.
Conclusion Use Writing That Makes Both People And Search Engines Happy Writing for the Internet is a craft that has its own style and set of rules and peculiarities� especially, when it is trying to address both people and search engines. As such, it is imperative that your content be well written/ crafted to satisfy these two distinctly different audiences.
Remember, before it can convert visitors into clients, your website must first satisfy the needs of its first audience, the search engines, and achieve top rankings with them so that it can become more visible to your second audience, the searcher� your customer.
Do Static IP Sites Rank Higher than Sites With Dynamic IPs? This is a hotly debated topic. Some SEOs claim that sites with a static IP address rank higher while other SEOs claim that shared hosting is just fine… that it would be stupid for search engines to penalize shared hosting since we are running out of IP addresses and so many sites are currently using name based hosting.
First, let’s define what we are talking about when we say “static IP” vs “name based” hosting. Here are some synonyms:
For “static hosting”, the following all mean the same thing: static IP, dedicated IP, http/1.0, non-shared hosting. For “dynamic hosting”, the following all mean the same thing: dynamic IP, name based hosting, http/1.1.
Let’s take a brief history of the Internet to put things more in focus. Once upon a time, every host on the Internet had a unique IP address. It is usually expressed as 4 numbers from 0-255 separated by dots. An example would be 207.44.161.131. There are billions of such IP addresses possible… however, there is a finite number.
An organization called ARIN hands out IP addresses in the western hemisphere while another organization handles Europe and another Asia. Those organizations noticed several years ago that we were going to eventually run out of those IP addresses because of the proliferation of web-sites. At the time, every website had it’s own dedicated IP address that was associated with it’s domain name.
The solution? A new protocol was developed called HTTP 1.1 (to replace HTTP 1.0). The new protocol allowed more than one domain/website to share the same IP address. In fact, hundreds of websites can now share the same IP address. The new type of hosting is called “name based”, “shared IP”, “http 1.1″, etc.
Some SEOs theorize that your choice of dedicated hosting vs. shared hosting might affect your rankings. Some others claim that is ridiculous because all hosting will eventually be shared in order to preserve IP addresses. Which are correct?
I decided to run it through our statistical analysis engine to get the facts. Here is the methodology I used to answer this question. I gathered the results of the queries naturally performed last month by myself and three associates using Yahoo and Google. I then pinged each site to get it’s IP address. I then tried to visit the site using the IP address. With shared hosting, this isn’t possible. You get some kind of generic page instead of the specific site you want. I tallied my results for each of the first eight rankings.
On the Y-axis, you will see the number of sites found that use a static IP (do not use shared/name based hosting). On the X-axis, we have rankings from 1 to 8. Here is the graph showing Yahoo and Google results:
First, it is interesting to note that the number of sites using shared vs. dedicated hosting is just about half and half. We expect that as time goes on, more and more sites will be using shared hosting.
The second thing to note is that there is no trend for either Yahoo or Google that would indicate any preference for either type of site. Google might show a slight preference for static IP. Yahoo might show a slight preference for shared hosting. The net effect is null. The correlations for both are very close to zero (on a scale of -100 to +100, Google’s correlation was a +35 and Yahoo’s was a -21). I generally consider anything from -35 to +35 to be statistically insignificant.
Do you use dedicated hosting in order to improve your rankings? Don’t bother. There isn’t any advantage in this factor. Often dedicated hosting is more expensive than static IP hosting… so save your money and invest it in other factors that do affect your ranking!
Notes:
1. Over 1,000 queries and over 10,000 sites were examined for this study.
2. There was no exercise to attempt to isolate different keywords. I merely took a random sampling of the queries performed by myself and three associates during the prior month.
Conclusion:
Sites using static hosting do not rank significantly higher or lower than sites using shared hosting on both Yahoo and Google.
This is merely a correlation study, so it cannot be determined from this study whether the leading search engines purposefully entertain this factor or not. The actual factors used may be far distant from the factor we studied, but the end result is that both of these search engines do, in fact, rank pages with a “window.open” command higher on average.
Author: Jon Ricerca
Using Google Thanks to a unique algorithm that produces most relevant results to any given query, Google has become, indisputably, the best search engine on the Internet. On the last count, Google has indexed over 4 billion pages and tackles around 200 million searches a day! A cluster of 100 thousand servers are used to store, crunch and spew out the query results with lightning speed that you are so accustomed to see.
This phenomenal growth has made Google from a garage startup to an Internet behemoth faster than any company has done before. The prodigies behind this unique search engine, Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the process already got enlisted themselves in billionaire club.
Google is no longer a mere search engine! It is increasingly broadening its offerings to include great new services and excellent tools. Among these services, most notables are News - a news aggregation and searching service, Blogger - an online journal-keeping solution, Froogle - a marketplace for comparison shopping, Groups - online discussion groups, Answers - a place to get hard-to-find information for a price, etc.
Google also recently unveiled two more programs. Orkut - a social networking service and Gmail - a free web mail service. Orkut is an online community, where a person can participate in it by invitation from a member only.
If you constantly frown over limited space of your hotmail or Yahoo accounts because they get filled up with junk mails and force you to delete old messages frequently, you will love Gmail with its 1 GB of storage capacity. There are several great features available in Gmail system too. One of them, dubbed as Conversations, allow you to view all exchange mails with somebody, once you select one of the mails. Sorting and searching emails also become much easier with Gmail. The only catch is Gmail displays relevant ads - based on the keywords found in your email - on the right side of the screen when you view an email, much like Google displays ads when you view search results.
Although, Google is constantly adding new and extremely useful features, most of us unfortunately do not use all the capacities of the search engine itself. The following tips will make your Internet browsing more effective if even you are an avid net user.
Choose most specific search words Google returns web pages that contain all the words in your query. If you would like to see the most relevant pages on the first page of your search result, be very specific with your choice of words. For example: if you would like to research on former NHL hockey player Makarov, you should start your search with Makarov not hockey player. Even better if you search for the words: hockey player Makarov. Because just the word Makarov will show web pages on “Makarov” a Russian-made handgun and numerous other people and products with the name Makarov. Refining your query in Google means adding more specific words to your initial search. In this example you will hit the right web pages if your search contains: NHL hockey player Makarov.
Sets - a new feature What if you are looking for a pair of Valentino designer jeans but can’t recall the name of the designer? Query on Italian designer jeans may bring you the right result; however, there is a better tool that Google is planning to implement soon, called “Sets”.
Fill up the names of some designers that you remember in the given form such as Levis, Wrangler, Versace and click either of the two buttons and voila! You will get a list of designers name and probably, Valentino will be there. But bear in mind that this feature is still at Beta stage.
Calculator The other day, I was sitting in a colleague’s office. She needed to calculate some basic stuffs and looking for her calculator on her desk. Much to her dismay, she could not find the calculator and started to fumble through her computer programs in her attempt to find Microsoft calculator. I noticed that she was online and the browser was open. I, politely, asked her whether she knew that Google could actually calculate most common mathematical expressions. It came out to be, she did not! She was just amazed after trying it herself. Google is even capable of unit conversion!
Give it a try!
Definition If you are looking for a definition of a particular word or a phrase, Google is the best place to get it. In Google search box, write “define: the word or phrase” without the quotation marks and click search button. If there is a definition available for your search term you will, most certainly, get it. It’s a very useful feature for students and people, those who write research papers.
Synonyms You may think that search engines are too dumb to show query results of the synonyms of your search term. It’s not so! At least, in the case of Google! If you use tilde “~” in front of a keyword in your search term, Google will bring results on the synonyms of that word as well.
Searching within a website Another great feature of Google search engine allows you to make your query within a specific website. First you write your search term in the Google search box and then write “site: the website or domain name”. For example: if you are looking for word “Microsoft” within the website www.micromedia.com you will write: Microsoft site: micromedia.com.
Check backward links to your website If you have a website, Google search engine also has a nice feature to show you which web pages are linking to yours. In the search box, write: Link: you website address.
Other important tips to remember There is no need to use “AND”. Google always relate all the words in a search term with Boolean “and”.
However, if you would like to make your query for two words - one or another - you can use “OR”. You have to write “or” in capital letters to give it Boolean value.
Google is not case sensitive. You can write your search terms either in capital or in small letters. You can even mix them up.
Google omits most of the very common words, such as the, in, etc. If you, indeed, need to add a specific word forcefully, use plus (+) sign in front of that particular word. Same way, you can exclude a word from your search expression by putting minus (-) sign in front it.
If you would like to make a search on an exact phrase or expression, put the words within quotation marks. That way, your search result will show only those pages where the exact expression was found. In order to search the phrase: For whom the bell tolls, write “For whom the bell tolls” in the search box.
I’ll also suggest you to download the Google Toolbar. Apart from the search box and its ability to block pop-ups, Google Toolbar also shows the pagerank of the website you are visiting now. Pagerank is a system of evaluating web pages - developed by Google founders and used as the core of Google’s search engine algorithm. The Toolbar also includes feature with the ability to fill up online forms from stored information automatically. You can also keep your daily journal or blog right from the toolbar.
Summary Much to net users delight, Google, in accordance with its ambitious mission statement to organize world’s information and make it universally useful and accessible, so far doing a great job by providing us the best search engine and extremely handy features and services. We can only hope that the flow of innovative ideas from Google will not slow down in future, when it becomes a public company.
Author Bio: Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions to start and run online business. You can contact him at nowshade@rusbiz.com, http://ezine.rusbiz.com.
Background Search Engines use a number of criteria to decide what a given web page is all about. These criteria, which can be different from Search Engine to Search Engine, and which may even change over time, all aim at deciding how “relevant” a page is to a given user’s search. The Search Engine wants to return the results most relevant to a user’s search.
While the particulars may change over time, there are some criteria which remain constant. One of these is where the keywords are located on the page. Typically words that are located closer to the beginning of a page are considered more important than words that occur further down the page. This stands to reason: think of a newspaper article, where the headline and the first paragraph usually have more “meat” than the rest of the story.
Another measure of relevance is “keyword density”. This is roughly the ratio of keywords on a page to the total number of words on a page. Having a higher ratio of keywords to total words will make a page more relevant for a search on those keywords.
When a Search Engine sends its robot out to look at your page, you want to make sure that it finds important information near the top of the web page, and that the page has a high keyword density. Sometimes there are complications, even when you have a lot of keyword-rich text early in the visible portion of your page. Two of these complications, extensive JavaScript code and extensive Cascading Style Sheet code, can be easily remedied.
JavaScript problem Large amounts of JavaScript code can get in the way. Typically the largest amount of JavaScript code in a web page is found in the HEAD section. This is usually where variables and functions are defined, and so forth. Unfortunately, having a large amount of JavaScript code in a page can be detrimental to a page’s ranking in the Search Engines.
Since Search Engines tend to pay more attention to text at the beginning of a web page than they do to text further from the beginning, it stands to reason that if you have several dozen lines of JavaScript code at the top of the page, your real content is going to be further from the beginning of the page. Further down the page means less important to the Search Engine.
Keyword density is also important. Here again, if you have several hundred words of JavaScript code in a page, the keyword density�the ratio of your keywords to all the words in the whole page, both text and code�is going to be much lower. That means that some Search Engines will decide that your page is less relevant.
JavaScript solution So how do you maintain JavaScript functionality, but make your page as Search Engine-friendly as possible? You put the JavaScript code into a separate file, and link it back to the web page.
The original page, “mypage.html”, may look something like this.
function helloWorld(){ alert(”Hello, World!”); return; }
…body of page…
Example 1–mypage.html with JavaScript code
We replace the JavaScript code with an instruction for the browser to go and grab the code from a separate file. The new page will look like this.
Example 2–mypage.html with JavaScript code offloaded
Note the addition of the “src” attribute to the SCRIPT tag. The value assigned to that attribute is the name of the external file that contains the JavaScript code. Typically, these external files will be given the filename extension “.js” to indicate that they contain JavaScript code. Note also that there are both tags here, even though there is nothing between those tags.
A new page is then created that holds the code that was formerly held in the SCRIPT tags. We will call it “codepage.js”, and it looks like this.
Example 3–codepage.js includes only JavaScript code
This new file doesn’t need any kind of HTML markup. It contains only the code that was originally held between the SCRIPT tags.
Style Sheet problem In addition to JavaScript code, Style Sheet code can cause complications for Search Engines when it is put into a web page. For the same reasons as JavaScript–moving the important content further down the page, and diluting the keyword density–it is important to move Style Sheet code off of the page as well.
Style Sheet solution The thought behind removing Style Sheet information from a page is very similar to that of offloading JavaScript; the syntax to do so is different.
body{ background:white; color:red; }
Example 4–mypage.html with style sheet code
We want to move this code into a separate file, so we remove it from the original page, and add a link to point to the separate file that now holds the Style Sheet code.
Example 5–mypage.html with Style Sheet code offloaded
Note the addition of the LINK tag. This contains three types of information that the browser will need to reconstruct the page when a visitor looks at it. The “rel=’stylesheet’” attribute/value pair indicates that we are looking at a Style Sheet file here. The “href=’style.css’” attribute/value pair points to the external file that contains the Style Sheet information. Typically these external files will be given the filename extension “.css” to indicate that they contain Cascading Style Sheet code. You will replace the filename “style.css” with the name of the actual file into which you place your stylesheet code. Finally, we have to specify the MIME type of the file, in the “type=’text/css’” attribute/value pair.
A new page is then created that holds the code that was formerly held in the STYLE tags. We will call it “style.css”, and it looks like this.
Example 6–style.css includes only Style Sheet code
This new file doesn’t need any kind of HTML markup. It contains only the code that was originally held between the STYLE tags.
Conclusion By following these two procedures, you have now made your web page more friendly to the Search Engines. This means that the next time your page is spidered by the Search Engine robots, the important content on your page will be closer to the top of the page, and you will have a better keyword density. This will result in your page appearing higher in the Search Engine listings, and will probably bring more traffic to your website.
Author Bio: Dale Goetsch is the Technical Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses and non-profits. He has over twelve years experience in software development. Along with programming in Perl, JavaScript, ASP and VB, he is a technical writer and editor, with an emphasis on making technical subjects accessible to non-technical readers.
