A recent debate started me thinking about how some marketing strategies can be right for one Web site, but wrong for another depending on the site’s purpose and the underlying reasoning behind the action.
If an action doesn’t directly and logically plug into site goals, then there are likely more profitable ways to spend that time and effort.
Publishing third-party articles on a Web site is one of those marketing strategies that can be right for one site, yet wrong for another.
Publishing Guest Articles as a Strategy
Publishing guest articles as one of your Web site marketing strategies can help broaden the amount and quality of content on a site, which in turn can lead to a more solid, stronger reputation. James Edwards of Umbrella-Consultancy, http://www.umbrella-consultancy.co.uk , explains:
"IMO having quality articles on your site will show that you are...someone who embraces the industry and respects the work of others. Most research scientists post links to other respected scientists’ work. I think it can only be good to have quality material by other people in your field posted on your site."
Helping Web Site Visitors
Another situation where adding others’ articles to your site can make strategic sense is when a lot of visitors arrive looking for a solution other than the one you provide on your site. Rather than have them wander off, no closer to an answer to their problem, you can build goodwill and credibility by having articles on the Web site that give them more information.
For example, several types of people arrive at my site through the search engines:
- Some are people researching
marketing consulting services.
- Some are students looking to write a paper or finish an assigned project for school.
- Some are looking for marketing software.
- Others are looking to buy printed material (e-books, templates, workbooks, etc.) in order to proceed, step-by-step, on their own.
The only ones that are going to be interested in what I have to sell are those in the last group. Instead of letting the majority of visitors go without a fight, I have articles on the site from handpicked individuals or companies.
Those articles are chosen according to how good the quality is, how well the subject matter fits, and whether I think the information will help site visitors.
Information Sites
If a site (or section of a site) is informational in nature, guest articles can be a viable Web site marketing strategy, for several reasons:
- Repeat, purchase-related visits. A good information library can help potential customers through the decision-making process. If they find the information on your site especially helpful, they will be predisposed to coming back later, when they are ready to purchase.
- Increased Web site revenue. Publishing others’ work can generate more revenue for your own site. For example, when I publish a third-party article, elsewhere on the page I include one or more of the following: AdSense; an advertisement for my own products; a newsletter sign-up box; or a relevant affiliate link. That way, every path off the page satisfies one of my own goals (direct ad revenue, new newsletter subscriber, or product sales lead).
- Increased targeted traffic. Each new page of quality content has the potential to bring in a happy chunk of incremental traffic from the search engines.
- Future collaborations or other projects. An indirect benefit from publishing others’ articles is contact and future collaboration with authors. For example, after one author received several new sign-ups to her newsletter through an article published on my site, she contacted me about collaborating on an audio product.
Poor Fit With Marketing Strategies
For some business models, including guest articles in a list of Web site marketing strategies does not make sense. For example, it can be counterproductive to include guest articles on Web sites where the primary goal is to sell.
Service Web Sites
If the goal is to generate direct sales and leads for your own services, it doesn’t make sense to dilute the message and call to action with diversions. Karon Thackston explains:
"The purpose of my site is to get those in need of copywriting services and SEO copywriting services to contact me in order to do business. People who come to my Marketing Words site, http://www.marketingwords.com , are looking for information about copywriting. They are also looking to hire a copywriter."
Therefore, you will find only material written by Karon on her site.
Product Sales Sites
Some sites have a single goal: to sell product. Every page on the site is devoted to product descriptions or copy designed to move a visitor toward a purchase. In these cases, where the predominant call to action is "buy the product," articles could hurt sales by diverting visitor attention away from the products.
Visit your favorite online retail sites, and you are likely to find product descriptions, reviews, photos and other product-driven content - but little or no guest articles. Their absence on many e-commerce sites is an illustration of the poor fit of such articles as a marketing strategy for those sites.
Understanding how different techniques support, or sabotage, Web site marketing strategies can be critical to a site’s success. Align your strategies with overall goals, and your business is more likely to flourish.
About the Author
Bobette Kyle draws upon 10+ years of Marketing/Executive experience, Marketing MBA, and online marketing research in her writing. Bobette is proprietor of the Web Site Marketing Plan Network, http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com , and Moderator for the Web Marketing topic at highrankings.com forums.
Copyright 2004 Bobette Kyle. All rights reserved.
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
Before one can fully understand the importance and necessity of implementing a
search engine optimization program into their marketing mix, it is important to look first at the phenomenal statistics regarding Internet use. For example:
There are 7 new people on the Internet every second.
Every 4th person online is buying something right now.
One billion dollars in e-commerce transactions will be conducted this month.
Over one trillion dollars in e-commerce business will be generated this year.
1 out of 8 dollars spent by consumers is spent on online transactions. (Source: ACCUTIPS.com, December 2003)
Furthermore, according to glreach.com, there were 649 million Internet users online worldwide in March 2003a 14 percent increase in just one year! That comes out to be about 88 million new users in that year alone.
There can be no question that the Internet is continuing to grow at an amazing pace. While the fact that so many consumers are online is important, it is even more crucial to understand what these consumers are doing while online. The two most outstanding reasons people use the Internet is to communicate (e-mail) and to research (using search engines).
Again, here are a few statistics regarding how people spend their time online (for more statistics and a list of sources, visit http://www.10xmarketing.com/information.asp):
88% of all Internet users use search engines
37% of online shoppers used Google to search for online retailers. Search was used by 25 percent of consumers searching the Web for holiday purchases
For car buying decisions,
search engine advertising proved itself a stronger influencer (26 percent) than TV ads (17 percent)
Virtually all affluent adult shoppers (HHI $100K+) use the Web to make or research their purchases. For automobile, computer and travel purchases, Internet use is extraordinarily high (over 90 percent of those surveyed)
When consumers go to the Internet, they use search engines because they are able to find the products they want, reviews, descriptions, consumer ratings, and the best price possible. Consumers are less concerned with where they buy their products as much as they are concerned with how much product they can get for their dollar.
Thus, each day millions of people use search engines to look for items they want to buy on the Internet. Those businesses that appear on the first page of these searches are getting 50% to 70% of the business from these customers. There is little doubt that potential customers are currently using search engines to search for the products and services your company sells. The only real question is, “What are you doing to help them find you, instead of your competitors?”
There are two ways to have your web site to appear on the first page of any search. The first is to engage in a pay-per-click campaign. The second is to appear on the first page due to “free” or natural search results. Getting high, natural rankings in major search engines is one of the most efficient and cost effective ways to market and sell your products on the Internet.
Search engines use complex, mathematical algorithms to determine which web sites are ranked high and which are not. If your web site matches the criteria, you’re ranked high. If it doesn’t, then you’re not. It’s that simple.
Search engine optimization, then, is designing your website and all of your eCommerce actions so that when consumers search for keywords that are central to your company, your website will appear at the top of the search results.
For example, if your company sells running shoes (a keyword that receives 127,575 searches per month), it would be very beneficial to be one of the top websites on the search engine. If you received only a small percentage of new visitors each month from that top ranking, it would still result in a significant source of revenue.
It might help to think of it this way: At least 10 million Internet searches are performed every month within each major business category. If only 1% of those searches found your website, you would have over 100,000 new visitors to your site each month. If only 1% of those visitors purchased your products or services, you would be making more than 1,000 new sales per month. (The worldwide average is 2.5%, making these conservative estimates.)
The scope of this article is not to look at the methods behind
search engine optimization. Instead, it is to look at the importance the Internet is playing in business development today and in the future. The traditional marketing schemes of the past still have their place, but advertising dollars must be allocated to Internet marketing.
As Bruce Carlisle, CEO of SFInteractive said, “If you aren’t putting money into search engines you are letting business walk out the door.”
This article was written by Mike Barton, of 10x Marketing.
10x Marketing provides companies with
Internet marketing solutions that will increase consumer visits on a regular basis, thus increasing potential sales and revenue. Contact 10x Marketing today for more information about your companies Internet potential.
(link to: http://www.10xmarketing.com/res/internet-marketing-technique.asp)
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
1. Publish an ezine. Your ezine will give you a very effective way to get more repeat traffic, build up your credibility, and increase your sales.
Make your ezine into a source of useful, original information by writing your own articles or by providing your subscribers with your own tips and advice.
This will help you to build up your subscribers' confidence in you, increase your sales, and increase the power of your recommendations when endorsing the products of affiliate programs you've joined to your subscribers.
2. Create ebooks.
Your ebooks will help you get more repeat traffic to your site and can also be used as a bonus for subscribing to your ezine.
Your ebooks could be a collection of your articles, resources, interviews with experts in your field, or you could write up a tutorial or guide that focuses on the needs of your target market.
Offer your ebook on your site and submit it to ebook directories.
Also try participating in ebook swaps where you agree to offer another webmaster's ebook on your site in exchange for her offering your ebook on her site.
3. Offer an affiliate program to your visitors and customers.
Make your affiliate program more appetizing by paying your affiliates a high commission, and by offering them plenty of resources they can use to start referring sales to you.
For example, you could provide them with sample ads, recommendations, and banner/button ads.
You could also provide them with your articles that they can post with their affiliate URLs in your resource box as well as ebooks that they can rebrand with their affiliate URLs and give away to their visitors.
4. Track and test your promotional activities.
Tracking your promotional techniques will increase your profits by ensuring that you know exactly which methods work best in getting you more new business.
Tracking your promotions will also help you to identify which techniques are ineffectual in getting you more sales, saving you time and money.
5. Develop a unique selling proposition (USP).
Your USP should be a single benefit that only you offer your customers or that your competition has failed to stress or point out to their prospects.
Your USP could involve your price, service, your money back guarantee or your USP could focus on your visitor's self worth.
Your USP could also focus on how easy your product is to use, understand, or that it saves your customer's time.
You can also create a unique selling proposition for your ezine to put your ezine ahead of it's competition.
6. Use autoresponders to promote your business.
Autoresponders are a great tool that you can use to offer your visitors email courses or multipart reports that deliver to your visitors excerpts of your informational product.
Autoresponders with a broadcast feature can also be used to create your own mailing lists such as your own ezine or a list that announces when your site has been updated.
7. Set up reciprocal links with other webmasters.
Create a page for your reciprocal links and link to it from your main page.
Offer useful sites on this page that compliment yours along with descriptions of these websites.
Place the link to the other webmaster's site on this page along with your description of their site before contacting them about exchanging links.
Always, offer them the chance to change their listing's description after reviewing it.
In addition, to setting up your reciprocal links page, you can also exchange links by swapping articles with other webmasters.
This will not only help you to attain more traffic to your site by getting your articles published on other websites, but will also help you to provide your visitors with useful content which will help you to get more repeat traffic.
Article by writer, Ken Hill. Get More Targeted Traffic To Your Site - advanced promotion and tracking system - learn more now at: http://www.netpromarketer.com/emi.htm For more articles by Ken Hill visit: http://www.netpromarketer.com
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
Before building a site there are many things that you need to take in mind. For example, how are you going to design your site, what is it going to cost you, how long will it take you to build, etc. All of these things mentioned a both are important aspects to consider when designing a site, but there is no point in doing all of this if you can’t even get visitors to your site afterwards.
So you may ask yourself, what are some of the best ways of getting visitors to my site? Well there are many ways of getting visitors to your site. The following shows you some of the best ways of doing this:
Adding your sites link to your signature
These can include email signatures, forum signatures, etc.
Writing good articles
This is probably one of the best ways to get some good quality traffic to your site. If you can write a good article, then other people are more likely to want to re-publish it on their own sites, newsletters, ezines, etc.
Some useful places for submitting articles are:
http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.php - you can also re-publish these articles for your own site, newsletters, ezines, etc.
http://www.goarticles.com/
http://www.zongoo.com/
http://www.articlecity.com/
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is a big factor to consider when building and advertising any site. This is because up to 85% of visitors use search engines to find something that they are interested in before they actually look elsewhere.
To do good
SEO you will have to consider many things. Some of these include the use of metatags within your site, a good use of keywords within your sites body, and exchanging links with other sites that is on the same subject as yours.
Exchanging links with other sites to build your PR
If you want your site to rank higher within the major search engines then exchanging links with other sites that are on the same subject as yours is a good way to go. This is because exchanging links with other sites will help to build your PR (page rank).
When exchanging links with other sites, a good approach would be to try and exchange links with sites that already has a good PR. But when exchanging links with other sites, you must also consider that you will also be getting traffic from these sites as well, which will be an added bonus.
Pay Per Click
Search Engine Advertising This is a cost-effective and good way of receiving highly targeted traffic to your site. This is because you only pay for the visitors that you actually receive. You choose how much you want to pay per visitor by bidding against other advertisers.
If you were thinking of trying out
PPC Search Engine advertising, then http://www.simplysearch4it.com/webma/ppcse/advdir.php would most probably come in useful to you as it lists a large amount of Pay Per Click Search Engines.
If you have not used PPC Search Engines to advertise your site before, then I would personally recommend that you try out the larger PPC Search Engines. This is because you are more likely to receive a higher conversion rate than what you probably would with the smaller PPC Search Engines.
About the Author:
Jonathon White has been doing advertising/ marketing on the Web for over three years. He is the Webmaster of three sites, which are: http://www.affiliateseeking.com - a categorized affiliate programs directory. http://www.simplysearch4it.com - a general web portal where people can play FREE online games, add free articles, search the Web, and much more. http://www.1hostseeking.com - a web hosting directory.
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
How to get repeat visitors to your site by Jonathon White When you have a website online it is important for you to try and get new visitors to your site, but it’s also important to take care of the visitors that you actually already have. This is because you will want your existing visitors to keep returning to your site again and again.
There are many ways that you can do this. Some of these include the following:
Updating your Website content continuously
This is an important factor to consider if you want your visitors to keep returning to your site. This is because if you keep on updating your sites content, then every time your visitors come back to your site they will see something new every time, which should then interest them even further. If you don’t update your content on a regular basis, then your visitors will end up getting bored of your site and will then go elsewhere.
Making your site more sticky
Giving your site more stickiness will make it more addictive to your sites visitors, which will in return make them want to come back to your site.
This can be done by many different approaches. For example, you can add games to your site like http://www.simplysearch4it.com/games/gamdir.html
You can even give free things away on your site. For example, you can give away free coupons, free scripts, free web hosting, etc. You can even offer your visitors free re-printable articles so that they can add them to their own site like http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.php.
Checking your site for broken links
This is very important when having a site. If your site does not function properly, then your visitors will not even bother with it. One of the most annoying things when visiting a site is when it has continuous broken links.
If you find it hard to manually check your site for broken links, then a good piece of free software to use would be the REL Link Checker Lite, which can be downloaded from http://www.relsoftware.com/.
Getting other people’s opinions
When having a site, other than your own thoughts, it is also a good idea to get other people’s opinions. For example, the colours of your site, what parts people like on your site the most, what parts people dislike the most, etc. Getting opinions from your visitors like this will help you to find out what most people dislikes about your site, which means you can then improve these parts, making it better for your visitors in return.
About the Author:
Jonathon White has been doing advertising/ marketing on the Web for over three years. He is the Webmaster of three sites, which are: http://www.affiliateseeking.com - a categorized affiliate programs directory. http://www.simplysearch4it.com - a general web portal where people can play FREE online games, add free articles, search the Web, and much more. http://www.1hostseeking.com - a web hosting directory
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
PPC Search Engines are search engines that allow advertisers to list their site within their search results on a pay per click basis. Advertisers bid against other advertisers for the same keywords or phrases. The highest bidder will then have their site ranked #1 in the PPC Search Engine results for a certain keyword followed by the second highest bidder for the same keyword followed by the third highest bidder for the same keyword, etc.
When a visitor then does a search in the PPC Search Engine and clicks on an advertisers bided link, the advertisers account will then get deducted for that click. This only happens once per unique visitor. So if that same visitor clicked on the same advertisers bided link twice, then the advertisers account will only get deducted for the first click.
Why is it easier to earn from PPC Search Engines than other affiliate programs?
PPC Search Engine affiliate programs are a good and easy way to earn some quick cash online. It is a lot easier to earn from PPC Search Engines than most other affiliate programs because you earn from your visitors click-thru’s to an advertisers site and not per action or sale.
Where can I find PPC Search Engines that offer affiliate programs?
There are only a few good resources on the Internet that lists a large amount of PPC Search Engines. Most of these are either outdated where they have a lot of PPC Search Engines that don’t exist anymore or only mainly gives information about a PPC Search Engines advertising offers.
If you were looking to join some PPC Search Engines that offer affiliate programs so that you can earn some quick and easy cash, then a useful resource to use would be http://www.affiliateseeking.com/ppcaff.php.
This is because it lists over 375 PPC Search Engines where you can easily compare what each PPC Search Engines affiliate program has to offer and you can even organize the PPC Search Engines results by Date Added, Minimum Payout, Earnings, etc.
I have joined a PPC Search Engine. How do I go about advertising it so that I can earn from it?
Once you have joined a PPC Search Engine, you can then easily get promotional links/ material from the affiliate section of the PPC Search Engine account where you can then use them to advertise the PPC Search Engine that you have joined.
Most PPC Search Engines allow you to advertise them by using search boxes, an xml feed, text links, referral links, banners, a portal page, and more.
About the Author:
Jonathon White has been doing advertising/ marketing on the Web for over three years. He is the Webmaster of three sites, which are: http://www.affiliateseeking.com - a categorized affiliate programs directory. http://www.simplysearch4it.com - a general web portal where people can play FREE online games, add free articles, search the Web, and much more. http://www.1hostseeking.com - a web hosting directory.
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
Google Adwords is a great tool! Careful use can lead to legions of highly targeted visitors breaching the moat around your site, and demanding to pillage your products! On the other hand...
Adwords is also a great place to drain your advertising dollars if you're not careful. Like any other automated system, it requires constant feeding and attention to keep you from wondering just why you spent hundreds of dollars and received a paltry return on your investment. Here's 7 great ways I've found to do just that, (and yes I've been guilty of several of these to one degree or another.)
1. - Not getting enough keywords, and I don't mean just numbers. Good ones. A lot of people run a search on their favorite keyword tool and pick the top ten or twenty words or phrases getting the most traffic, thinking somehow that THEY will beat all the others using these keywords. There is a reason why these keywords are so popular: everybody and their grandmother are bidding on them! A much better approach is to come up with at least a couple hundred, better a couple thousand words that you have a shot at getting a high ranking for. After all, if you have 1800 keywords and can get a top 8 (first page) position for most of them, you'll see a lot more clicks than you will chasing the top dollar words. If you get a hundred of the lower tier words giving you a couple of visitors a day, well, you do the math. Not only that, but often the less expensive words are altogether more specific, delivering far more targeted visitors.
2. - Not creating adgroups. You should use this function! It can help you focus your advertising much more effectively. By arranging your keywords in tightly focused groups of 10- 30 phrases, and writng a keyword-specific headline for each of them, you have a much greater ability to see what's working and what's not. Also gives you a chance to test different headlines and text copy.
3. - No negative keywords. This you gotta do. And it's so easy. Simply add -free (or whatever else you don't want associated with your searches) and you won't end up paying for a lot of clicks for people who weren't interested in the first place.
4. - Using only broad keyword searches for their keywords. When you're paying for this stuff, you want to be as specific as you can, particularly if you're playing in a very competitive market. Why hope that a broad search will return someone interested in what you're selling? Better to get as focused as you can on the words they may be searching for. Google helps you with this by giving you more information on the impressions and click-throughs than you can handle, but be pro-active, and prune the dead wood after 100 or so impressions. If they haven't produced by then, the odds of them improving by leaps and bounds are not great.
5. - Not testing and rotating your ads. Even a small change in a headline or ad text can make a HUGE difference! Particularly headlines. Your ad text won't be read if the headline is boring or uninviting. Learn to write killer headlines, and do not be afraid to test and rotate your ads. Also don't be shy about deleting ad groups if they're not clicking through enough. Remember, you've got a list of several hundred words; either these aren't right or the headline/text need tweaking. Test, test, test!
6. - Not using the content targeted feature wisely. This is a tricky one. Google, in it's infinite wisdom, seeks out alternate avenues to show your ads, thus delivering substantially more clicks to your campaign. Trouble is, though, you have no control over this, and it IS your money. If you are attempting to run a tightly focused campaign on limited funds, this one is a potential budget buster. It can easily rack up a lot of clicks, but are they of worth to you? In my experience, the CTR is ALWAYS a lot lower. I guess it could make sense for large campaigns with a very popular product, but for the most part, you'll want to be very careful. Which leads me to my last, and most important dollar-drainer of all.
7. - Not having a GREAT sales page. This one is the hardest to fix, but without doubt the most important. All the clicks in the world won't mean a thing if the sales page you're sending your hard-earned visitors to doesn't get the job done. If it's your product, there's hope! You can address these issues, and after testing and more testing, can correct and come up with a page thst sings! If you're an affiliate, you might consider a separate landing page, where you might offer a sincere testimonial in an attempt to presell the product more effectively. (That is not a bad strategy even with a good sales page, as personal recomendations go a long way!)
There you have it. 7 Great ways to lose infinitely more than your shirt!
Webmasters feel free to publish this article in its entirety in your ezine or site, so long as none of text or links are changed. Get the latest and best in internet marketing tools and reviews at http://www.internetmarketinghere.com Contact the author at: keith@internetmarketinghere.com
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
A guide to finding and using keyword phrases in your marketing campaign.
What are web site keywords and how do I go about finding keywords that will work for me?
You may have the dandiest web site with eye popping text and graphics, but if you have missing keywords then you are going to be out of business quick.
Web sites revolve around traffic. No traffic = no sales. It’s a simple equation but one that many web site owners are unable to resolve. The good news is that it’s reasonably easy to select your web site keywords and deploy them, and I’m going to show you how.
Web site keywords are the words that people will use to search for your product or service. These are the words that people actually type into a search engine to find your site – so you can see how important they are.
So how do you go about selecting your keywords?
Selecting and finding keywords and phrases most likely to drive targeted traffic is THE single most important exercise that you can undertake when planning your web site deployment. Omitting this step will result in a marketing failure. Choosing good keywords is the basis on which all of your future traffic will flow.
You may have your own ideas about the specific keywords that people will use to find your site, however I can tell you from experience that if you are the business owner or proprietor then you are probably well wide of the mark.
Don’t believe me! Write down the top five keywords or keyword phrases that you think people will use to find your site now! Go and grab a paper and pen and scribble them down. Then compare them to what you are going to end up with at the end of this article.
Firstly ask your customers how they would search for your product!
This is important because these are the real human beings that will search for your product, service or information. Draw up a list of ten of the most popular keywords and keyword phrases that your customers tell you they would use to discover your web site and then put them into a spreadsheet.
2. Expand Your Keywords into a List of Key Phrases
Starting with the obvious keyword build your spreadsheet like this:
search search engine search engine optimization search engine optimization Birmingham search engine optimization Birmingham UK
3. Go to word tracker.
Sign up for the free trial and enter your one word keyword. In this case “search”. When you press the search button you are returned a list of related terms. The first term is the same as the keyword followed by a list of related terms – search, search engine, etc. Choose your main term “search” and in the right hand pane you will see the associated terms for your keyword.
4. Organise your workload
You can now see that you are beginning to build up a sizeable list of keywords, keyword phrases and search terms. Compare the results of your word tracker research with the results from your customer polling.
The Word tracker results are fact. These are the terms that are actually used in Real searches. Hopefully these should closely match. But they are probably different to the terms that you initially wrote down yourself!
Five keywords is a good workload to start with. If you are a beginner and you attempt more you will likely end up confusing yourself. Five keywords and keyword phrases is a good start.
Take the first keyword and then make a keyword phrase so that it looks like this:
search search engine search engine optimization search engine optimization Birmingham search engine optimization Birmingham UK
5. Prioritise your terms
There is a huge amount of competition for your primary keyword “search” but much less for the fifth ranked. Your word tracker results will tell you how popular each term is and how many searches are carried out for each keyword phrase. It’s unreasonable to expect to get top search position for “motorcycle” as the competition is just too intense. However it’s perfectly possible for the last term and if you are serious about search engine traffic then you should be able to achieve good results for all of your other keyword phrases.
List your terms in REVERSE order and go to work. The reason I suggest doing them in reverse is that you should get good results from the less searched for terms and this will give you the encouragement to be more adventurous when you repeat the process for another keyword set.
Another keyword set!
Ah yes, I omitted to tell you that building traffic is a tedious and time consuming pastime, but hey! Someone’s got to do it!
6. Putting your keyword phrases to work
OK, so now you have your keyword phrases you can put them into action. Allocate each keyword phrase to a specific page and build the content around them.
What do I mean by this?
There are “hotspots” on your pages that search engines look for when they are indexing your pages.
These hotspots are the page title, the page description and the page heading. By incorporating your keyword phrase into these hotspots you are telling the search engine what your page is all about. Sprinkle in some eye-popping copy with your keyword phrase repeated once or twice and you are well on your way to receiving copious amounts of search engine traffic.
7. Repeat the dose
As I mentioned above, you need to build on your basic five keyword phrases and build up a stack of “keyword sets” Once you get to five or more keyword sets then you should be well on your way to a successful web site By allocating each keyword phrase to a page you will know that you need five pages for each keyword set. So five keyword sets will give you twenty five pages of search engine content. That’s a good target for a small web site
Summary
Finding keywords is a process that you simply can not afford to leave out of your marketing mix. It’s important that you target the correct keywords and build your content around them to induce good search engine traffic.
If you miss this vital step then all of your marketing efforts will crumble around you.
Start with five keywords and keyword phrases to make a keyword set. Use word tracker to sanitise your own research findings. Allocate each keyword phrase to a page and fill the hotspots. Sprinkle liberally with good, quality content and repeat your keyword phrases within the main body text.
Now go and service that traffic!
This article may be reprinted free in it's entirety providing you include this byline:
Tony Cooper is the Internet Marketing Manager at http://www.keywordmarketing.com Building web sites that achieve tangible and accountable results.
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
What we are seeing at the moment is a landshift change in promotion techniques. Only a year or so ago it was thought enough for a
search engine optimization company to optimise the pages (on page optimisation) and submit the website.
However now that the competition is becoming ever fiercer off page optimisation is becoming a necessary requirement of any respectable website promotion campaign.
Let’s examine these two terms and see what we mean my “on page optimisation” and “off page optimisation”.
On page optimisation is the process of tuning the page for a search engine or more usually trying to make it rank highly on a selection of search engines. It’s no wonder that many
search engine optimization engineers focus on google exclusively as it certainly produces the most traffic of all engines, but will that always be the case? Things can change quickly in internet land.
Page optimisation strategies generally consist of using your keyword or keyword phrases in all of the pages known “hotspots”. The page title, meta keyword, meta description, alt tags, first heading and the body text. Subsequent “tweaks” can include bolding the keyword phrase, using the keyword phrase in a hyperlink and more.
To a point there is only so much that you can do to search engineer a page before it starts to look spammy, repeating the keyword phrase over and over. Of course some “optimisers” still do this but it’s quickly becoming a frowned upon practice as it detracts sharply from a website wanting to produce a professional image, not to mention your chances of being banned from the search engine altogether.
This is where “off page optimisation” takes over.
Both Google and Yahoo use a system of “ranking” websites dependent on several factors - one of which is how relevant the content appears to be to the keyphrase searched for (on page optimisation).
The second important criteria that your pages are judged on is how “popular” those pages are in comparison with your competition. Broken down into it’s basest form it means that the more quality votes (links) that your page has then the more popular it must be and so is promoted higher up the search engine results.
In google parlance this feature is known as “pagerank” and pagerank is a vitally important part of your website promotion campaign. If you don’t have any then you are standing naked in front of everybody and that’s not a nice feeling!
Google pagerank is based on a scale of 1-10 where 10 has the most influence. The algorithm is configured on a sliding scale so that you only ever gain pagerank as a percentage of the full amount. As those with the highest pagerank are constantly adding more “votes” for their pages it makes sense that those at the bottom end of the scale are going to have to work ever harder to play “catch up” and that is where the extra cost is being factored in to website promotion campaigns.
However it becomes more complicated.
Not all links are equal.
Blindly rushing off and trying to get as many links as possible is not going to help you much. In fact it’s one of the reasons why people are spending so much time and effort in their link exchange campaigns and finding they are getting nowhere.
Savvy
online marketers have established that links from pages with a low pagerank are not as valuable as links from those with a higher pagerank. But also in paradox to this it is possible to get more value from linking to a page with lower pagerank than the higher one!
Confused! No wonder “off page optimisation” is becoming such a sought after area of expertise.
The paradox occurs because built into the pagerank algorithm is a method of transferring the amount of pagerank “boost” a page gets by dividing up the total pagerank of a page by the number of links present. So a high pagerank page with 100 links on it is not going to give as much “voting power” as a low pagerank page with only one or two links on it.
Trying to make sense of this is at the heart of any “off page optimisation” campaign. Sifting through links, setting up reciprocal link campaigns (the site you link to links back to you) getting links from directories and so on is a time consuming task, even when using some of the more advanced tools that take a lot of the manual drudgery out of the job.
Link exchanges are springing up all over the place offering to bring together people willing to exchange links and the humble text link is becoming one of the most valuable pieces of internet property. Costs for placing text links on higher ranked sites are escalating and it’s becoming ever more important to network closely with other sites offering useful services to your visitors.
Throwing up a links page and asking all and sundry to link to it is not going to work – all that’s going to do is give you an administrative headache and make your visitors wonder if they are making the right choice. Choosing quality link partners is a time consuming and therefore expensive business.
What this all means is that the cost of website promotion is constantly going up. And those companies with well networked sites and strategically placed links are in a much better position to help their customers than those who rely solely on pay per click campaigns and other expensive forms of advertising.
A website promotion campaign is still the best value for money form of advertising that there is in my opinion, it’s just that the costs are rising and will continue to rise. But the rewards for those that get it right are greater in comparison.
To sum up,
search engine optimization is becoming a more and more labour intensive exercise. There are more pages to be made search engine friendly and to gain top spots each page has to be tuned for a particular search engine. Gone are the days of “one size fits all”.
In addition there is a large amount of work involved in linking strategies and building the “popularity” of a website so that it has a chance of making it into the top 10 results.
It’s this combination of work required that is forcing up the costs of a
search engine optimization campaign.
Tony Cooper is internet marketing manager for:
http://www.keywordmarketing.com
Building results driven websites.
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
Search engine marketing is undoubtedly the best source of targetted traffic on the Internet currently. As most people use the search engines (up to 80% of surfers use a search engine to find info or products), the battle for search position only heats up from day-to-day.
There are arguably only two major marketing strategies being employed by companies/webmasters in the market to date: PPC and SEO.
Two schools of thought have emerged, an inevitable process in the continuing evolution of the Internet. SEO has been there since the beginning of the Internet, while PPC is the "new kid on the block".
PPC or "Pay Per Click" refers to text-based marketing, where companies/webmasters get charged by the click whenever a surfer clicks on their paid ads. Search rankings are usually based on bidding prices. These are usually designated on the engines as "sponsored listings".
SEO refers to "
Search Engine Optimization". This is search ranking based on many factors like link popularity, page rank, etc. The listings for these appear on the main search results of an engine, also called "natural or organic search listings".
The main engines offer these as free submissions (though many smaller engines are finding ways to "charge" website submissions nowadays).
So, who's better? Let's do some weighing of pros and cons, and let's see the overall result.
1) PPC Advantages
a) PPC traffic, ranking and results tend to be more stable, more predictable than SEO.
b) PPC is the more popular advertising medium on the Internet. Because it's popular, you can more easily convince your employer/boss to spend some ad budget on this, as the risks of trying out other less popular marketing methods are higher.
Since PPC is more popular than SEO, your boss will probably play it safe and go PPC first, before SEO.
c) Ability to rank high on the search engines, without having to do tedious work involved in SEO like finding link partners, posting links, etc. As long as you have the budget, good to high ranking is yours.
Also, PPC listings get posted much faster, usually a few days (after editor review).
PPC Disadvantages:
a) Unfortunately, popular also means "competitive". You'll find that costs are usually rising nowadays per click. As more companies compete, the "law of supply and demand" naturally will increase bids over time, similar to an auction in a way.
2) SEO Advantages
a) The primary advantage of SEO is that it can be done entirely free, without any cash outlay. Who doesn't like free traffic?
SEO Disadvantages:
a) SEO has less stable, more unpredictable traffic and ranking. This is because search engines tend to vary their ranking algorithms on "natural search listings"
SEO specialists would have to "guess" and adapt to ever-changing strategies and tactics to either maintain their positions or improve their rank. One month could mean you're out of the top ten with no warning.
b) SEO is slower in terms of ranking your site on a lot of chosen keywords. You would have to make numerous link requests, multiple pages, press release, etc. Also, it takes a lot more time for search engines to index new sites' domain names (it can take months).
So, who wins? It depends on the situation of the webmaster/company.
If they have some cash to spend, PPC is their first choice (usually because results are faster). For those on lower budgets, SEO would be their first choice.
The acme of skill is on the advertiser who knows how to use both methods to his/her advantage, a combination is the best.
Say, use PPC on keywords within your budget range, and use SEO to target more expensive keywords on the natural search engine results.
Or use PPC accounts to scout which keywords are competitive and which are not, using their "keyword search tool". Just be creative and innovative, and both methods can be combined to your advantage.
About the author:
Alexander Teru is the owner of http://www.homebizowners.com. He has been a successful E-commerce Entrepreneur since earlier days.
His site focuses on reviewing/recommending only home business opportunities that have good standing with the FTC and BBB.
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
