Archive for the ‘Search Engine Marketing’ Category
Thursday, September 4th, 2008 |
by Gary Pearson
If you look around you can see direct marketing for any and all companies around. They could be in your area or across the globe. Direct marketing could be for products or services and if you look through your mail you are sure to find more than one.
The great thing about direct marketing is that you can specifically focus on the potential customers that are most likely to be interested in your product. Instead of a hit and miss approach you can personalize your campaign to get better results.
You can optimize to get results and then you will know how much or little your approach has worked. Another thing is your direct marketing can be flexible and relay many topics of products or services. You can accumulate all your data from responses to use for future marketing endeavors.
There are of course disadvantages to direct marketing, such as the high cost. Also if your marketing campaign is poorly executed it may turn off customers instead of bringing them in. You need to make sure that your message is well thought out and conveys a positive image of your product or service.
Any direct marketing you decide to undertake must be well thought out and properly executed to ensure maximum impact on your future customers. It is better to spend more now to have a great first campaign then to have to spend even more later to clean up the mess left behind from a cheap, poorly done direct marketing campaign.
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Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 |
by Terry Stanfield
Search engine marketing and search engine optimization are great ways to drive traffic to your website. In fact, they are almost required in today’s marketplace to get any reliable traffic to your site. But how do you know if your search engine marketing and search engine optimization efforts are working? You need to use web analytics to find our for sure. Web analytics are analytic measurements of the amount of traffic that your website gets, where people go when they are on your website, how long they spend browsing your website, what search words they used to find your website, and other measurements like that.
Web analytics are crucial to search engine marketing and search engine optimization because in order to create effective search engine marketing you need to know what search terms people are using to find your site. Also if you want to use SEO more effectively you need to know how people are navigating your site. Knowing what pages people are taking the time to read and what pages they are skipping can be an invaluable tool for helping you figure out what content you should add and what content isn’t really driving that much traffic to your site. Analytics can also tell you what your target market is by showing you what customers are interested in your products or your website.
There are a lot of different ways that you can get analytics for your website. Some website hosts offer an analytics package that you can sign up for when you sign up for web hosting. Some web designers can build in a package of analytics tools when they are building your website. There are also companies that specialize in web analytics that can give you very detailed reports packages showing all different kinds of web analytics. If you are using SEO on your website you should consider hiring a company to provide you with detailed information about how well your search engine marketing and search engine optimization efforts are working.
Search engine marketing can be very effective but you’re wasting your time and money if you are targeting the wrong market or if your search engine optimization isn’t using the right keywords and key phrases. The only way to know for sure if your search engine marketing is working is to see the actual figures from experienced web analyzers who can tell you what is working and what isn’t.
A qualified web analytics company can also give you reports that will plot out Web trends and projections so that you will know what search engine marketing techniques and terms will be popular in the near future. In any business staying ahead of the pack is essential to getting ahead and getting detailed web analytics can help you re-evaluate your search engine marketing plan if you need to in order to reach your target market more effectively.
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Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 |
by William Stanislaws
Now that you have a website the next step is to get it found on the search engines. If you talk with a search engine marketing consultant, he or she will have certain recommendations about what you need to do to ensure your website shows up near the top of search engine results. Search engine marketing ensures that your website will have the ability to be near the top of search engine results. People who are searching for your particular topic will then be able to click through to your website, giving you prospective customers if you operate a business website.
If you talk with search engine marketing services companies to ensure you receive great traffic, much of the attention and questioning will revolve around how many incoming links you have, your content, and how your site is optimized around your main keywords. These factors help determine your ranking in search engines and whether you will show up in the top ten rankings or not. This article will explain six important factors in a brief period of time you should look for when doing search engine optimization marketing.
The first important factor a search engine marketing services company will look into is a competitive analysis. This will help determine which companies are in the top ten rankings for certain keywords and why they are currently there.
Another factor which will be examined is keyword research and what keywords are used and what kind of results happen with these. If you do not have the right keywords used, you will not have as strong of an audience visiting your website as you could have hoped for.
A search engine marketing consultant will then look at your page optimization. Your pages need to be optimized for the various keywords so that your pages will show up in search engine results for different keywords depending upon the content of a particular page.
Search engine marketing services companies will then examine your site usability. It is important to have your website show up in search engines but you must also make sure that it is easy for your audience to get around your website and find what they are looking for.
Off page optimization is important and includes such activities such as link building. Search engines place great emphasis on this because you have to show the value of your website to other website owners who see enough value to link to your website.
One other factor you will want to look into is paid search engine marketing. This would include Adwords and you may want to think about this because you can put your website in front of your audience immediately.
Can you not see the importance of these tips if you were a search engine marketing consultant? There are certain steps that must be done to develop a highly successful website and this website covers many of those steps. Be sure to use these to maximize your website’s chances for success.
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Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 |
by Terry Stanfield
If you were to talk with a search engine marketing consultant, they would have certain tips to give you. There are many websites these days which do have a website which is optimized for search engine marketing. This is important because if you do not have a website which is optimized and shows up in search engine results, you cannot get traffic to your website without having to buy it and this gets expensive.
If you are concerned about how your website shows up in websites, you may inquire about search engine marketing services. These services will usually focus their attention upon three main areas: incoming links, your content, and your keywords. These are factors which are important for the search engines and will result in your website being placed higher in results if you focus on these factors. This article will talk more about this.
The first of the six factors a search engine marketing services company will examine is competitive analysis. This is done to see how your website stacks up against the competition along with which companies are in the top ten results and why they are there.
The second factor to look into is keyword research to see which keywords are actually used by your prospective audience and how competitive these keywords are. Without proper keywords, your website is not visible to your niche audience searching for what you have to offer.
A search engine marketing consultant will use page optimization to see which keywords are emphasized on various pages. This will ensure that your set of keywords is used properly throughout your website so that you show up for all keywords you are targeting.
Search engine marketing services companies place great emphasis on site usability. Without a site that is easy to get around, your audience will become disenchanted and exit your site quickly which is not good for your business.
Off page optimization such as link building is the next area which will be focused on by search engine marketing services companies. Link building is important because this is a factor in search engine rankings.
You can also think about using paid search engine marketing such as Adwords. This is an option some search engine marketing consultants will recommend because you can get your website in front of your audience faster than organic search engine marketing optimization efforts.
Can you not see the importance of these tips if you were a search engine marketing consultant? There are certain steps that must be done to develop a highly successful website and this website covers many of those steps. Be sure to use these to maximize your website’s chances for success.
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Saturday, July 5th, 2008 |
by Josh Prizer
Vigilance, micromanaging and attention to detail can help you avoid some common and costly mistakes of PPC advertising. What are those mistakes? Here are the terrible 10 that are typical to most pay per click campaigns.
Too Few Ad Groups For Your Keywords
It’s important to target your ad to be as relevant as possible. Don’t group all your keywords into one or two ad groups. Break them out. Keep them tight. This gives you more control over ad variables so that you can be as relevant as possible.
Ignoring Negative Keywords
Pay per click advertising has placed more importance than ever on click through rates and quality scores. It is vital to fine tune your impressions by getting rid of the non-relevant phrases that are lowering those CTRs. If you are selling an item such as “software for widgets” then be certain you also have those negative keywords like “-free” if you don’t have a free trial version. One way to find irrelevant keywords that are costing you is to check your log files of your site.
Not Enough Testing
An often neglected, but very important result-booster is the split testing of your ads. Even minor variations can increase your effectiveness. Obviously, you can rework such items like your unique value statement or your different calls to action, but there are many variables of each ad that can be optimized. Your display url, the ad title, each line of copy — all of that may be effectively tested. This can be time consuming, which is why a quality pay per click management company can be a great investment, especially if they offer daily split testing. Effort here pays off.
Not Precisely Tracking Results
Of course, testing your ads and fine tuning your keyword lists only works well if you are tracking results. The search engines will tell you what your click-through rates are … but you need bottom-line results. You need to know your return on investment or what your cost per action is. It’s not enough to know that you spend $5,000 and get back $10,000. You might be able to spend only $3,000 and get that same $10,000.
Not Tracking Down to the Keyword-Level
Setting up good analytics yourself or hiring a professional pay per click management company can do the job. Not only do you get more bang for your buck by getting rid of poor performers, but getting tracking to the keyword-level makes all of your testing and work even more precise. You need to know your earnings per click. If one keyword has a 56 cent Earnings Per Click (EPC) and another had a $1.22 EPC, this is important knowledge. Adjusting your bids to an appropriate level can keep you from over spending…or allow you to throttle up your overall traffic for even more success. Don’t let poor keywords leak your accounts.
Keywords That Are Too Generic
Negative keywords may not be enough to keep you from trouble on too generic a keyword. While these generic keywords are often more highly searched and can even be among your best…they can also be riddled with bad traffic. Users who perform a search on a generic keyword may often be at a very early stage in the purchase process. Are you able to turn an effective profit on them? Once again, this is yet another reason why you need keyword-level traffic. It’s especially vital on a generic keyword.
Not Going After Long-Tail Keywords
This follows the above item on generic keywords. Building a list and individual ads for the long-tail keywords can be a major time-sucker. It can also be profitable if the task is performed correctly. Those earnings per click will likely vary widely from a generic keyword like “mp3 player,” “sony mp3 player” and “sony 2GB S610 walkman video mp3 player.” One consumer is doing research, the other knows what they want and is most likely looking to purchase.
Not Pulling Apart Content and Search Campaigns
An easy way to get scorched on poor performing traffic or even click fraud is to not separate your search network ads from your content network ads. Chances are that if you don’t know what the difference is, then they are likely not separated in your account — and bad keywords are leaking your funds daily. You are better off to build different campaigns for your keywords on the content and search networks.
Failing to Geo-Target if You’re Local
Each of the major pay per click engines offer a way to tightly set up your campaigns. If you are working from a local pool of potential clients in your area, you need to take advantage of some of the area-specific targeting that the PPC engines offer. Fine tuning your campaigns to get the right people in your region to respond can be well worth the effort to your bottom line.
Not Continually Monitoring Your Campaigns
Not everyone has time to run split testing on a daily basis or frequently checking your EPCs (even though you should…because it’s costing you). That said, there are still a high amount of advertisers who seem to ignore their accounts for days … or even weeks … or (don’t tell me you’re doing this!) months. The big PPC search engines are increasingly cracking down on poor performing keywords, smacking advertisers with that “Inactive for Search” status for individual keywords. When this happens, you lose traffic, you lose profits. If you are investing heavily in PPC, you can’t just turn your back on your account for days at a time.
Healthy, efficient and vibrant PPC campaigns require work. The Terrible 10 of PPC Advertising that we listed above form a strong foundation for you consider when revamping or starting up your PPC advertising. Whether you hire out to a pay per click management company or can actively manage your PPC accounts at this level of detail…precision, effort and attention to detail can greatly impact your results.
About the Author:
Josh Prizer is a Senior Account Executive and
PPC advertising expert for Zero Company Performance Marketing, a
pay per click management company. Go to his site now to learn more about how to optimize your PPC ad campaigns and results.
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Thursday, June 19th, 2008 |
by Terry Stanfield
A search engine marketing consultant will help you develop a website which can show up very highly in search engine results. There are certain techniques which you must do if you want to ensure your website shows up. You want your website to be high in the search engine rankings so that people searching for your particular topic will be able to find your website.
If you are concerned about how your website shows up in websites, you may inquire about search engine marketing services. These services will usually focus their attention upon three main areas: incoming links, your content, and your keywords. These are factors which are important for the search engines and will result in your website being placed higher in results if you focus on these factors. This article will talk more about this.
The first important factor a search engine marketing services company will look into is a competitive analysis. This will help determine which companies are in the top ten rankings for certain keywords and why they are currently there.
The second factor to look into is keyword research to see which keywords are actually used by your prospective audience and how competitive these keywords are. Without proper keywords, your website is not visible to your niche audience searching for what you have to offer.
A search engine marketing consultant will also examine page optimization of your website. This is important because your website will have a set of different keywords and certain keywords are used for certain pages.
Search engine marketing services companies will then examine your site usability. It is important to have your website show up in search engines but you must also make sure that it is easy for your audience to get around your website and find what they are looking for.
Off page optimization is important and includes such activities such as link building. Search engines place great emphasis on this because you have to show the value of your website to other website owners who see enough value to link to your website.
One other factor you will want to look into is paid search engine marketing. This would include Adwords and you may want to think about this because you can put your website in front of your audience immediately.
Can you not see the importance of these tips if you were a search engine marketing consultant? There are certain steps that must be done to develop a highly successful website and this website covers many of those steps. Be sure to use these to maximize your website’s chances for success.
Posted in Search Engine Marketing | No Comments »
Sunday, June 8th, 2008 |
by Terry Stanfield
Keyword research is a discipline embraced and used in SEO management by experts to allow them to determine which search terms people are searching on in the search engines. At its simplest level, this research is about studying the phrases that work for your audience and it is a real art. It is one of the most effective ways to identify niche markets that others have failed to recognize. Keyword research is very important so that the content of the pages are more attractive as much for the users as for the robots. Keyword research is not an exact science and shouldn’t be discussed like it is.
I like to focus on finding long tailed keyword phrases that have a significant number of monthly searches for that exact term with 5,000 to 300,000 competing websites. Long tailed keywords, are multi-word keyword phrases. Most folks searching with a one or two keyword are just “browsing”. Most people who use long tail keywords know what they want. Remember, you want to focus each page on 2-3 keyword phrase.
There are many free keyword research tools online. Most SEO software tools include these tools as well. Google, Yahoo and other search engines have free tools also. You want a tool that will give you the number of daily or monthly searches and competing web pages. There are even sites like “spyFu.com” that will let you see which terms your competitors are using.
How many keywords you have in an article is known as keyword density. Your keyword density should be anywhere from 3% to 7%. For example, if you were to write a 100 word article you would need to write the keyword in 7 times to achieve a 7% keyword density. For a 500-word article you would need to use your keyword 15 times to get a 5% density. I use a tool called “Content Composer” that does a fantastic job of keeping me on track.
Keyword research can be defined as choosing the words, which describe your product or service as, seen from the viewpoint of your target market is the most important step in the SEO Management process.
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