So, you are the marketing manager of your firm, and you've finally decided to pull the trigger and hire the search engine optimization company that you've been talking to for months. The budget has been cleared, the SEO firm is ready to start, and it should be just a matter of time before you start seeing a huge uptick in business. Right?
Not so fast.
An experienced search engine optimization company will tell you that an ill-planned campaign can be a non-starter from day one. This usually happens when there is no clear understanding of what will be required of the client to make the project run smoothly.
What follows is a list of just a few of the things that your search engine optimization company will need from you in order for the company to get its job done as effectively and quickly as possible. It's a good idea to consider these things before you sign the contract - because a stalled campaign will cost you money, even if it is just lost opportunity cost.
Access to and Control of Your Website
You may be ready to do whatever it takes to take the steps necessary for a successful SEO campaign. Your IT team, on the other hand, may have ultimate control of the website. This only makes sense - an internal IT team that controls the website knows the ins and outs and doesn't want anyone jeopardizing the functionality of the site. However, an SEO campaign will usually require extensive changes to the site - and you don't want to hit a brick wall when you bring recommended changes to the IT staff or ask them to give your search engine optimization company access to the testbed. Make sure that you have an understanding with them before you sign on with a firm, lest you suffer delays and internal strife.
Additionally, it is important that you can get access to either the log files of your website or to the current reporting platform. Before a search engine optimization company begins work on your site, you want to be sure that you have a baseline of current search referred traffic. Without this, you'll have nothing to brag about later - and no way to hold your firm accountable if results do not turn out as planned.
For more on achieving buy-in from different departments within your organization before embarking on an SEO campaign, please see this article.
Control of Your Website Copy
If internal politics are such that you have to consult with every department in your organization in order to get website copy changed, it's imperative that you make sure you have this process streamlined before you bring in your search engine optimization company.
There are many reasons why several departments may be involved in the content of your website. For example, mortgage brokers, medical offices, and investment firms (to name but a few) will almost certainly need to run copy changes through the legal department before they go live on your website. If your company sells complicated software, for example, the copy may need to be run by the developers to be verified for accuracy.
No matter how your internal politics work, make sure you are on the same page with all the people who will be involved in the copy approval process before you start the project.
Awareness of Current Code Limitations
Your prospective search engine optimization company should be able to look at how your website is constructed and let you know if there are limitations that may impede your ability to implement recommendations that can help your search engine optimization efforts.
For example, there are many CMS (Content Management Systems) that will not allow changes to be made that are beneficial to search engines. While many of the new systems are "SEO friendly," many of the older ones are not. Updating your CMS to one that allows changes to be made for maximum SEO benefit may incur additional costs. If your search engine optimization company has been around for a while, they should be able to steer you in the right direction and, indeed, help you and your IT team to switch to a more SEO friendly platform.
Change like this can sometimes be difficult - another reason why you must be committed to SEO and achieve the buy-in from your IT team before you embark on a campaign.
Time
The largest commodity that most marketing managers do not have is time. Frequently, there are innumerable campaigns running at once, and outsourcing SEO to a search engine optimization company may make you feel that it is done and off your plate. Alas, this is rarely the case. A good search engine optimization company will take the requisite time to learn as much about your business as it possibly can, but the fact remains that nobody knows your business as well as you do.
This means that you will have to be involved in the SEO process. If you can't dedicate an hour a week to offering feedback, approving changes, and making sure that the work being done is consistent with your overall message, there will be large delays in the project.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/67934
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Top 10 SEO tips for small businesses
Search Engine Optimisation is a science that takes many years to learn and master, additionally the technology involved is continually developing and changing. Therefore, it isn’t something that everyone can do however, there are certainly a few things you can do to help get your website ranked higher in Search Engines.
With online presence becoming increasingly competitive it is vitally important to get your website highly ranked. The top ten tips below from Adam Price, MD of SEO Sitebuilder.com outline the key factors you should examine closely to ensure an effective online presence.
1. Content is King!
It is in the search engines best interests to highly rank websites that people will actually like and gain benefit from. Therefore you need to ensure that your website provides valid information for the visitors. Generally a 5 page website would not be classed as an information resource and the search engines will be looking for more, so make sure you provide enough content to make it worth while for people to visit.
2. Keep on topic!
If you are selling garden furniture on your website keep on this theme – the easiest way to remember it is – ‘1 website – 1 theme, 1 page – 1 topic’ Don’t try to promote all your different businesses on one website. This will dilute the power of your keyphrases and content.
3. Don’t try to fool them!
The search engines are becoming extremely intelligent and are fully aware of all the rogue techniques that can be used to try and fool them. You need to avoid using hidden text as if the search engines spot any trickery you will be marked down and sometimes even blacklisted.
4. Choose an SEO partner wisely!
I’m afraid to say but there are many ‘cowboys’ in this industry that will try to convince you that they know what they are doing when really they don’t have a clue. The best way check SEO companies is to ask to see results… what have they done for other companies? Can they prove what they say they can do? Here’s a tip, make sure they tell you what domain you should find BEFORE they show you any results!
5. Search Engine friendly design
Stay away from using ‘Flash’ navigation, in fact avoid creating your entire site in flash. This is because flash makes its impossible for the spiders that the search engines send out to find out what your site is about. Many web development companies are still using tables to layout a website. This is an old technique now and is not search engine friendly.
You should have your website developed using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Try and avoid Javascript Navigation. Although these can be used to produce attractive fly out menus with lovely rollovers and colours which look very nice on your website, the trouble is that the spiders can’t understand the content within Javascript. As this is where all your page links are, you need to avoid Javascript in order to be found.
6. Back Links
Getting other people to link to your website is fantastic but bear in mind, they have to be relevant. The Search Engines will be able to recognise if the links are irrelevant and can take a view that you maybe using some form of link farm service which is frowned upon.
7. Duplicate Content
Make sure that you do not have the same content on any of your pages within your website or even the same as another website. This is frowned upon by the search engines and can even result in your website being moved to what’s call the supplemental listings, which essentially is a secondary database.
8. Site Maps
Site Maps are a fantastic way for spiders to be able to collect as much information about your website as possible. Provide a Google site map as this will be directly related to Google’s own specification.
9. Alt Tags & Title Tags
These are a fantastic way to get more valid information about your website in to the search engines. Alt Tags are the little tool tips of text that appear when you hover your mouse pointer over an image. The Title Tag will be the little tool tips of text that appear when you hover your mouse pointer over any text links on the page.
10. Bullet Points!
Use bullet points to emphasise selected pieces of text. However don’t use them without providing supporting information otherwise this could be seen as key word stuffing.
You can use the SEO tips above to try and improve your rankings but you must bear in mind the way your website has been developed. Just imagine you are building a house, if you don’t get the foundations right at the beginning it doesn’t matter what you put in to it, it could still be unsafe and not built correctly.
Source:http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/promotion/7_6/top-ten-seo-tips.shtml
With online presence becoming increasingly competitive it is vitally important to get your website highly ranked. The top ten tips below from Adam Price, MD of SEO Sitebuilder.com outline the key factors you should examine closely to ensure an effective online presence.
1. Content is King!
It is in the search engines best interests to highly rank websites that people will actually like and gain benefit from. Therefore you need to ensure that your website provides valid information for the visitors. Generally a 5 page website would not be classed as an information resource and the search engines will be looking for more, so make sure you provide enough content to make it worth while for people to visit.
2. Keep on topic!
If you are selling garden furniture on your website keep on this theme – the easiest way to remember it is – ‘1 website – 1 theme, 1 page – 1 topic’ Don’t try to promote all your different businesses on one website. This will dilute the power of your keyphrases and content.
3. Don’t try to fool them!
The search engines are becoming extremely intelligent and are fully aware of all the rogue techniques that can be used to try and fool them. You need to avoid using hidden text as if the search engines spot any trickery you will be marked down and sometimes even blacklisted.
4. Choose an SEO partner wisely!
I’m afraid to say but there are many ‘cowboys’ in this industry that will try to convince you that they know what they are doing when really they don’t have a clue. The best way check SEO companies is to ask to see results… what have they done for other companies? Can they prove what they say they can do? Here’s a tip, make sure they tell you what domain you should find BEFORE they show you any results!
5. Search Engine friendly design
Stay away from using ‘Flash’ navigation, in fact avoid creating your entire site in flash. This is because flash makes its impossible for the spiders that the search engines send out to find out what your site is about. Many web development companies are still using tables to layout a website. This is an old technique now and is not search engine friendly.
You should have your website developed using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Try and avoid Javascript Navigation. Although these can be used to produce attractive fly out menus with lovely rollovers and colours which look very nice on your website, the trouble is that the spiders can’t understand the content within Javascript. As this is where all your page links are, you need to avoid Javascript in order to be found.
6. Back Links
Getting other people to link to your website is fantastic but bear in mind, they have to be relevant. The Search Engines will be able to recognise if the links are irrelevant and can take a view that you maybe using some form of link farm service which is frowned upon.
7. Duplicate Content
Make sure that you do not have the same content on any of your pages within your website or even the same as another website. This is frowned upon by the search engines and can even result in your website being moved to what’s call the supplemental listings, which essentially is a secondary database.
8. Site Maps
Site Maps are a fantastic way for spiders to be able to collect as much information about your website as possible. Provide a Google site map as this will be directly related to Google’s own specification.
9. Alt Tags & Title Tags
These are a fantastic way to get more valid information about your website in to the search engines. Alt Tags are the little tool tips of text that appear when you hover your mouse pointer over an image. The Title Tag will be the little tool tips of text that appear when you hover your mouse pointer over any text links on the page.
10. Bullet Points!
Use bullet points to emphasise selected pieces of text. However don’t use them without providing supporting information otherwise this could be seen as key word stuffing.
You can use the SEO tips above to try and improve your rankings but you must bear in mind the way your website has been developed. Just imagine you are building a house, if you don’t get the foundations right at the beginning it doesn’t matter what you put in to it, it could still be unsafe and not built correctly.
Source:http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/promotion/7_6/top-ten-seo-tips.shtml
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Search engine competition to get aggressive
Martin Byrne has a simple Internet test for Canadian banks: The search engine guru suggests typing "savings accounts, Canada" into a search engine and see what comes up.
If you're expecting to see Canada's major financial institutions appear on the first page, you'll be disappointed.
TD Canada Trust is the only one of the majors that appears in the top 10. Aggressive cyberbank ING Direct is at the top of the search listings -- winner of that particular search-engine optimization contest. And HSBCdirect.ca occupies the top paid listing, giving it winning points for paid placement.
Winning the online search game is a growing competition, and one that is expected to result in more than $1 billion being spent on search-engine marketing (SEM) in Canada by 2010.
And it is a fast-moving competition. What tops the list one minute might be deposed by a contender the next.
It has spawned a whole new category of marketing, with British Columbia enjoying high status in the new and growing generation of SEM specialists.
Byrne, the national director of Yahoo Search Marketing Canada, was in Vancouver recently as part of a Yahoo team hosting and taking part in events focusing on this lucrative and growing segment. It's a field in which Canadian businesses are lagging behind their U.S. counterparts.
"Compared to all the other major developed economies [Yahoo is] in, Canada has been the slowest to adopt search marketing," said Byrne.
SEM promotes websites by pushing them up to the top of the search engine results, through a variety of means that can include search engine optimization (SEO) -- which is getting search engines to choose your site as the most relevant and freshest for any particular search request -- to paid placement.
There are a number of popular search engines, led of course by Google, which, according to Hitwise.com, accounted for 66.44 per cent of all U.S. searches for the four weeks ending Feb. 23. Google was followed by Yahoo! Search at 20.59 per cent, MSN Search at 6.95 per cent, and Ask.com at 4.16 per cent.
In 2007, $410 million was spent in Canada on search-engine marketing, and that number is expected to climb to more than $1 billion by 2010. U.S. companies spend a much higher proportion of their online budgets on search marketing. North American-wide advertisers spent $9.4 billion US in 2006, representing a 750-per-cent increase over 2002.
It's an important pipeline to potential buyers and customers. According to Yahoo research, 43 per cent of consumers rate the Internet as the best source for price comparisons, and 37 per cent turn to it most often in their consumer research. The Internet ties with word-of-mouth as being seen as the most reliable source of information for 24 per cent of users.
Among Canadians online:
- 78 per cent use search engines to research purchases;
- 27 per cent of those Web surfers end up making online purchases;
- 45 per cent of those searching online for product information end up buying offline;
- in 2007, Canadian consumers spent $10.5 billion in online purchases, and that number is projected to climb to nearly double for 2008.
The message for businesses, says Byrne, is that regardless of whether they cater to customers offline or on, search engines play an important role in promoting their products or services.
"We help them understand the role search engines play in their business, whether they are actively managing it or not," he said. "The reality is there are 85 million search queries a day in Canada, and we take people through the amount of influence search engines have on people's consumer decisions, on their buying decisions.
"What we are finding is that search engines have more influence in terms of offline consumer decision-making than they do in terms of online purchasing decisions."
Byrne said British Columbia's entrepreneurial spirit is pushing the province to the forefront of the sector, with businesses here developing expertise that has gained international attention.
source:http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=3fc37cab-4dae-4544-b18d-91128b1b5a88&p=2
If you're expecting to see Canada's major financial institutions appear on the first page, you'll be disappointed.
TD Canada Trust is the only one of the majors that appears in the top 10. Aggressive cyberbank ING Direct is at the top of the search listings -- winner of that particular search-engine optimization contest. And HSBCdirect.ca occupies the top paid listing, giving it winning points for paid placement.
Winning the online search game is a growing competition, and one that is expected to result in more than $1 billion being spent on search-engine marketing (SEM) in Canada by 2010.
And it is a fast-moving competition. What tops the list one minute might be deposed by a contender the next.
It has spawned a whole new category of marketing, with British Columbia enjoying high status in the new and growing generation of SEM specialists.
Byrne, the national director of Yahoo Search Marketing Canada, was in Vancouver recently as part of a Yahoo team hosting and taking part in events focusing on this lucrative and growing segment. It's a field in which Canadian businesses are lagging behind their U.S. counterparts.
"Compared to all the other major developed economies [Yahoo is] in, Canada has been the slowest to adopt search marketing," said Byrne.
SEM promotes websites by pushing them up to the top of the search engine results, through a variety of means that can include search engine optimization (SEO) -- which is getting search engines to choose your site as the most relevant and freshest for any particular search request -- to paid placement.
There are a number of popular search engines, led of course by Google, which, according to Hitwise.com, accounted for 66.44 per cent of all U.S. searches for the four weeks ending Feb. 23. Google was followed by Yahoo! Search at 20.59 per cent, MSN Search at 6.95 per cent, and Ask.com at 4.16 per cent.
In 2007, $410 million was spent in Canada on search-engine marketing, and that number is expected to climb to more than $1 billion by 2010. U.S. companies spend a much higher proportion of their online budgets on search marketing. North American-wide advertisers spent $9.4 billion US in 2006, representing a 750-per-cent increase over 2002.
It's an important pipeline to potential buyers and customers. According to Yahoo research, 43 per cent of consumers rate the Internet as the best source for price comparisons, and 37 per cent turn to it most often in their consumer research. The Internet ties with word-of-mouth as being seen as the most reliable source of information for 24 per cent of users.
Among Canadians online:
- 78 per cent use search engines to research purchases;
- 27 per cent of those Web surfers end up making online purchases;
- 45 per cent of those searching online for product information end up buying offline;
- in 2007, Canadian consumers spent $10.5 billion in online purchases, and that number is projected to climb to nearly double for 2008.
The message for businesses, says Byrne, is that regardless of whether they cater to customers offline or on, search engines play an important role in promoting their products or services.
"We help them understand the role search engines play in their business, whether they are actively managing it or not," he said. "The reality is there are 85 million search queries a day in Canada, and we take people through the amount of influence search engines have on people's consumer decisions, on their buying decisions.
"What we are finding is that search engines have more influence in terms of offline consumer decision-making than they do in terms of online purchasing decisions."
Byrne said British Columbia's entrepreneurial spirit is pushing the province to the forefront of the sector, with businesses here developing expertise that has gained international attention.
source:http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=3fc37cab-4dae-4544-b18d-91128b1b5a88&p=2
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Link Building is a continuous process
In Search Engine Optimization, off page factors have become related to rankings and its importance is increasing day by day. Link popularity is now the back bone for any solid website which can now make or break websites in the search engines. On the basis of this the link building process carries special importance in web promotion tactics of NDDW.
Link popularity is determined by the number and quality of links pointing to your website. Still one of the crucial aspects of SEO has been link popularity because search engines do not want artificially created or useless links. So it is not that easy to build link popularity in genuine manner according to the present scenario. Link farms and huge link exchange programs have now the thing of the past. Those who will try such strategies will easily find themselves booted out of search engines. Infact search engines likes links from authoritative sites or links from the site that share the same theme and focus as your website. NDDW performs the link building operations in a genuine and authorized way keeping in view the search engine algorithms and guidelines.
The benefits nowadays from getting an authoritative site to link to you are getting additional visibility apart from the link popularity. Web masters are generally contacted for link building and this brings reciprocal links. But much better methods of generating one way links from high traffic websites have also come into existence. These are submission of websites into internet directories, write interesting articles and distributing all over internet, but it becomes beneficial only when they have link to your website.
At NDDW all these different methods of creating link popularity are implemented to smooth enhance the operations of link process for a website. So here the link building may be slow but it is a smooth and ongoing process.
source:http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=70357&Itemid=82
Link popularity is determined by the number and quality of links pointing to your website. Still one of the crucial aspects of SEO has been link popularity because search engines do not want artificially created or useless links. So it is not that easy to build link popularity in genuine manner according to the present scenario. Link farms and huge link exchange programs have now the thing of the past. Those who will try such strategies will easily find themselves booted out of search engines. Infact search engines likes links from authoritative sites or links from the site that share the same theme and focus as your website. NDDW performs the link building operations in a genuine and authorized way keeping in view the search engine algorithms and guidelines.
The benefits nowadays from getting an authoritative site to link to you are getting additional visibility apart from the link popularity. Web masters are generally contacted for link building and this brings reciprocal links. But much better methods of generating one way links from high traffic websites have also come into existence. These are submission of websites into internet directories, write interesting articles and distributing all over internet, but it becomes beneficial only when they have link to your website.
At NDDW all these different methods of creating link popularity are implemented to smooth enhance the operations of link process for a website. So here the link building may be slow but it is a smooth and ongoing process.
source:http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=70357&Itemid=82
Study Rates PPC Search Providers
AXcess News has completed a study of pay-per-click advertising agencies which was conducted to find out just how well they perform.
The reporting period ran a span of eight weeks in which a host of PPC search providers were rated for Support; Reporting; Accuracy in deliverable clicks; and Quality of visitors.
Tech beat reporter Dave Porter said, "We found alarming differences across those per-per-click (PPC) advertising agencies."
In a tech feature story released Sunday evening, titled, "When Pay-Per-Click Goes Per-Clunk" Porter noted that "In all fairness, there were many differences between the PPC providers reporting capabilities and so we took that into consideration in rating them."
During the course of the Study, Google Analytics' Urchin software was used in combination with tracking codes to monitor each PPC search provider for accuracy of deliverable clicks.
In Dave's story, each PPC search provider was rated using a simple grading system of "A" for excellent to "F" for failure. The report itself is being made available free of charge to anyone who requests a copy. A link can be found in that news article.
The study was not funded by any third-party and no marketing scheme to promote advertising is involved. AXcess News is a broad news publisher online and one of the largest independent pure web news publishers in North America with a network stretching across 92 major market cities in the United States, 16 in Canada through affiliate Source Press and an additional 16 in the United Kingdom through European affiliate EU News Network Ltd. whose combined headlines reach in excess of three million readers per day.
source:http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76738&Itemid=9
The reporting period ran a span of eight weeks in which a host of PPC search providers were rated for Support; Reporting; Accuracy in deliverable clicks; and Quality of visitors.
Tech beat reporter Dave Porter said, "We found alarming differences across those per-per-click (PPC) advertising agencies."
In a tech feature story released Sunday evening, titled, "When Pay-Per-Click Goes Per-Clunk" Porter noted that "In all fairness, there were many differences between the PPC providers reporting capabilities and so we took that into consideration in rating them."
During the course of the Study, Google Analytics' Urchin software was used in combination with tracking codes to monitor each PPC search provider for accuracy of deliverable clicks.
In Dave's story, each PPC search provider was rated using a simple grading system of "A" for excellent to "F" for failure. The report itself is being made available free of charge to anyone who requests a copy. A link can be found in that news article.
The study was not funded by any third-party and no marketing scheme to promote advertising is involved. AXcess News is a broad news publisher online and one of the largest independent pure web news publishers in North America with a network stretching across 92 major market cities in the United States, 16 in Canada through affiliate Source Press and an additional 16 in the United Kingdom through European affiliate EU News Network Ltd. whose combined headlines reach in excess of three million readers per day.
source:http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76738&Itemid=9
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Relating social media to other online strategies
Online success depends on something very important – it requires a multi-tactic approach. I like to consider online strategies as a solution made up of three important web marketing pillars that each work together to achieve strategic objectives, namely a corporate or brand website, ROI-driven web marketing and influence-focused social media.
Before I explain, let's identify some typical strategic objectives:
* Generate traffic and and links
* Improve search engine rankings for targeted key phrases
* Build awareness amongst your target market
* Increase your subscriber base or generate a lead
* Build trust amongst your customers
* Sell a product
* Help users move through the sales cycle
* Build influence in the market place
* Support your crisis management communications strategy
* Learn new things about customers
* Identify relevant online networks
Different strategies address different objectives
As we can tell, most of these objectives are relevant to most businesses; however, it's important to understand that different online strategies address different objectives. As an example, social media may be great to build influence or learn new things about customers but would need the support of search engine optimization (SEO) to sell a product or generate a lead. It's not to say that social media cold not address these objectives; having the two working in a combined fashion just makes it all the more successful.
So back to the three important web marketing pillars…
The foundation to any online strategy should be a corporate website. It's what some would call the starting point for customers who are interested in your company – for instance, where they get their news about your company and your product and service offerings. Pay a lot of attention to this because, if anything else, this is the most important online real estate you will own. It's what pulls everything together and what supports all your other strategies.
The second important online pillar is what I call “traditional digital media”. Examples of this includes affiliate marketing, response-driven advertising, pay per click, search engine optimisation and WebPR, to name some. When used properly, these strategies offer a very targeted, ROI-driven manner of reaching out to consumers and drawling them closer to a predetermined goal.
The third – yes, third – pillar is social media. I put this one last because well-executed social media needs the support of some of the above in order to be more effective than its isolated application. Unlike the other two pillars, the social media arm of the online strategy is about leveraging relationships and networks for the purposes of engaging in open dialogue with and amongst target markets, to create influence within the market and to discover new business-relevant information and trends.
Source:http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/16/21944.html
Before I explain, let's identify some typical strategic objectives:
* Generate traffic and and links
* Improve search engine rankings for targeted key phrases
* Build awareness amongst your target market
* Increase your subscriber base or generate a lead
* Build trust amongst your customers
* Sell a product
* Help users move through the sales cycle
* Build influence in the market place
* Support your crisis management communications strategy
* Learn new things about customers
* Identify relevant online networks
Different strategies address different objectives
As we can tell, most of these objectives are relevant to most businesses; however, it's important to understand that different online strategies address different objectives. As an example, social media may be great to build influence or learn new things about customers but would need the support of search engine optimization (SEO) to sell a product or generate a lead. It's not to say that social media cold not address these objectives; having the two working in a combined fashion just makes it all the more successful.
So back to the three important web marketing pillars…
The foundation to any online strategy should be a corporate website. It's what some would call the starting point for customers who are interested in your company – for instance, where they get their news about your company and your product and service offerings. Pay a lot of attention to this because, if anything else, this is the most important online real estate you will own. It's what pulls everything together and what supports all your other strategies.
The second important online pillar is what I call “traditional digital media”. Examples of this includes affiliate marketing, response-driven advertising, pay per click, search engine optimisation and WebPR, to name some. When used properly, these strategies offer a very targeted, ROI-driven manner of reaching out to consumers and drawling them closer to a predetermined goal.
The third – yes, third – pillar is social media. I put this one last because well-executed social media needs the support of some of the above in order to be more effective than its isolated application. Unlike the other two pillars, the social media arm of the online strategy is about leveraging relationships and networks for the purposes of engaging in open dialogue with and amongst target markets, to create influence within the market and to discover new business-relevant information and trends.
Source:http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/16/21944.html
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Running Successful PPC Campaigns: Attracting The Right Click
Creating and refining successful PPC campaigns requires the ability to think and act like the average web surfer. It requires taking time to understand your ideal customer as well as the wrong visitor (the guy who just cost you a $2.00 click). It's worth the effort to figure out how to attract the former and dissuade the latter.
Outlined here are 7 tips to attract the right kind of clicks to your pay-per-click campaign, clicks that make you happy to spend those marketing dollars.
1. Study the website as if you were a visitor
* Click through each page
* Click on each link
* Look at pages in several different browsers
* View the source code for keyword ideas
2. Think through how searchers will search for your products (ID cards, photo id cards, nametags, ID badges) and separate out these intuitive keywords into their own ad groups
* ID card systems
* ID badge systems
3. Understand your policies
* Does "Same Day Ship" relate to lanyards as well as nameplates?
* How does the low price guarantee work?
4. Check Google Images for search terms that generate traffic, but that don't make sense such as "Cobra Lanyards" & "Dress Lanyards" or even the ubiquitous "Honda Lanyards"
* Understanding the search term (and whether you sell it) allows you to take appropriate action
5. Walk through all conversions to the point of the Thank You/confirmation page
* Is there "friction"? (anything that causes the user to become frustrated, fatigued or confused about the buying process)
* Are there broken pages?
* Is there too much on the landing page that might distract a potential buyer and make him/her bounce off the page?
6. Study your competition
* Understand what they sell
* Understand your image(s) of difference
* Write ad copy that echoes how the competition is advertising as well as ad copy that is uniquely yours
* Run testing to see which ad copy converts the best
7. Screen potential clickers with the use of qualifying adjectives
* "Premium"
* "Quality"
* "100 minimum"
This process assumes the presence of search marketing analytics. Utilizing good search marketing analytics in an intelligent fashion can give you control over the money spent on pay per click ads. If you don't have visibility into your campaigns then get in and strap yourself down, it could be a bumpy road!
source:http://www.straightupsearch.com/archives/2008/02/running_success.html
Outlined here are 7 tips to attract the right kind of clicks to your pay-per-click campaign, clicks that make you happy to spend those marketing dollars.
1. Study the website as if you were a visitor
* Click through each page
* Click on each link
* Look at pages in several different browsers
* View the source code for keyword ideas
2. Think through how searchers will search for your products (ID cards, photo id cards, nametags, ID badges) and separate out these intuitive keywords into their own ad groups
* ID card systems
* ID badge systems
3. Understand your policies
* Does "Same Day Ship" relate to lanyards as well as nameplates?
* How does the low price guarantee work?
4. Check Google Images for search terms that generate traffic, but that don't make sense such as "Cobra Lanyards" & "Dress Lanyards" or even the ubiquitous "Honda Lanyards"
* Understanding the search term (and whether you sell it) allows you to take appropriate action
5. Walk through all conversions to the point of the Thank You/confirmation page
* Is there "friction"? (anything that causes the user to become frustrated, fatigued or confused about the buying process)
* Are there broken pages?
* Is there too much on the landing page that might distract a potential buyer and make him/her bounce off the page?
6. Study your competition
* Understand what they sell
* Understand your image(s) of difference
* Write ad copy that echoes how the competition is advertising as well as ad copy that is uniquely yours
* Run testing to see which ad copy converts the best
7. Screen potential clickers with the use of qualifying adjectives
* "Premium"
* "Quality"
* "100 minimum"
This process assumes the presence of search marketing analytics. Utilizing good search marketing analytics in an intelligent fashion can give you control over the money spent on pay per click ads. If you don't have visibility into your campaigns then get in and strap yourself down, it could be a bumpy road!
source:http://www.straightupsearch.com/archives/2008/02/running_success.html
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