tecnorati

Essential Elements Of Pay-Per-Click Advertising

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective
form of marketing for your business, you must do some
computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site
is worth. You can compute this value by dividing the profit
you make on your website over a given period of time by the
total number of visitors for that same time period. For
example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were
2,5000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50
cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which
your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show
a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you
are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click.

Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost
considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way
around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be
paying too much for each individual hit.

The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything
you can about search engine keyword research. The good news
is there isn't a limit to the amount of keywords you can
add to your bid because additional keywords do not add
additional cost. This translates into a lot less hassle for
you because there is no need to optimize your site to index
a particular set of keywords.

Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than
others are, but they will not cost you anything except time
to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid. Of the
popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one called
Overture provides an online tool that will give you the
data on how often particular keywords are entered into
their search engine. They also offer suggestions for
keywords after you enter a description of your site.

In pay-per-click, this written description is crucial. You
must understand that the object of your description is not
to generally attract visitors, but to be as specific as
possible so that only those visitors who are likely to buy
your service or product go to your site. You must use
expert marketing copy to guarantee that your description is
both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal
candidates to your site. This description is your most
powerful tool to insure that your bid is profitable.

Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is
that you constantly monitor your bid. It is very important
that you bear in mind that the results of the top search
engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are
Overture and Adwords Select, usually appear on other
popular search engines. Because of this, the competition
for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find
that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click
to yield a profit.

(Website Traffic) A Secret Your Competitors Do Not Know - Funny bloopers R us

Paid URL Inclusion

Advertising your services or products on the Internet is
both extremely effective and extremely competitive. There
are several ways to go about attracting traffic to your
website; Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose
from, along with developing an SEO, or search engine
optimization campaign. Both pay-per-click and SEO are
targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of
search engine results as possible. One of the differences
is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign
versus months for a good SEO campaign.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that
most search engines, including some of the largest ones,
now offer. It requires a bid for a "per-click" basis, which
translates to your company paying the bid amount every time
the search engine directs a visitor to your site. There is
the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your
website traffic, your site often appears in the results of
other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and
disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor
your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very
effective. One of the greatest advantages is that you never
have to tweak your web pages to change your position in
search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO
campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click
campaign is pay a fee.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click
process. You just bid and you're up and running. It doesn't
demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more
you know about search engines and keywords, the easier -
and more effective - the process will be.

The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding
war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on
search engine results. This means that you will have to
raise your bid to regain your position - which can
obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are
bidding on a popular keyword.

Search Engine Keywords Selection

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential
customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to
reach their destination - your website - you need to
provide them with specific and effective signs that will
direct them right to your site. You do this by creating
carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of the
Internet. Find the exactly right words or phrases, and
presto! hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front
door. But if your keywords are too general or too
over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it
all the way to your site - or of seeing any real profits
from the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing
strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no
matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the
right people may never get the chance to find out about it.
So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather
and evaluate keywords and phrases.

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

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

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the
words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you
probably never would have considered from deep inside the
trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from
outside resources should you add your own keyword to the
list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for
the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a
small number of words and phrases that will direct the
highest number of quality visitors to your website. By
"quality visitors" I mean those consumers who are most
likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around
your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating
the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements:
popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an
objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the
more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a
search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity
of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating
based on real search engine activity. Software such as
WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and
phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a
given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to
be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this
concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the
search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are
down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will
probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn't enough to declare a keyword a good choice.
You must move on to the next criteria, which is
specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater
the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase
your goods or services will find you.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have
obtained popularity rankings for the keyword "automobile
companies." However, you company specializes in bodywork
only. The keyword "automobile body shops" would rank lower
on the popularity scale than "automobile companies," but it
would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of
getting a slew of people interested in everything from
buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get
only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled
fenders being directed to your site. In other words,
consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will
immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the
specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you
will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this
requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer
rather than the seller to figure out what motivation
prompts a person looking for a service or product to type
in a particular word or phrase. Let's look at another
example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as
an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between
"Seattle job listings" and "Seattle IT recruiters" which do
you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were
looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would
you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second
keyword targets people who have decided on their career,
have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you
as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school
who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or
her life in between beer parties. You want to find people
who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires
subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most
specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most
motivated traffic to you site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done.
You must continually evaluate performance across a variety
of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends
change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log
traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how
many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you
judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual
search engines. There is now software available that
analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic.
This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you
the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a
good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find
keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually
buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your
product. This is the most important factor in evaluating
the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the
sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective
or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better
profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for
search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work -
and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into
your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your
business' rewards.



1000s Of Hits From Google, Yahoo, MSN And Others At $0 Cost To You !

Increasing Link Popularity

===================================================
Increasing Link Popularity
===================================================

Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are
the first tool that potential customers use to find the
products and services they need. This is why link
popularity is so imperative. If the customers do not find
your website, you have no possibilities of making any
sales.

You're probably wondering what the blazes is popular about
a link! Well, in a word - plenty! Link popularity refers to
the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines,
and it determines the ranking your page gets when keywords
are entered into a search engine. So, you're probably
wondering, how do I make my link popular?

Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking
to sites that have links to their pages from related,
quality sites. It's a simple formula, but a very important
one. Google created the system, and now virtually all the
most popular search engines employ it to rank your web
pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will
be to achieve link popularity, but without achieving this
step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly
on any search engine. But don't be discouraged; there are
tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using the
most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is
that just linking up with a large number of other websites
will not achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have
quite the opposite effect. This is particularly true when
pertaining to websites that are nothing more than "link
farms" - pages containing line after line of indiscriminate
links. Search engines may aggressively discriminate against
your website if you are associated with a link farm, so
steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site
you are linking to. Never link to a page you have
reservations about your visitors seeing. The last thing you
want your website to appear as is indiscriminate and cheap.
Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link
popularity, if not completely destroy it.

So let's get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link
popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on
all the popular search engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the
door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as
Open Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is
business-related, you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and
despite the fact that it will cost you around $300 a year,
it will be money well spent. If your site is
non-commercial, the listing will be free, but it will take
time and follow-up to actually get it listed. Open
Directory is gives you a free listing whether you are
business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make
a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site
listed.

You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of
appropriate category, and this just takes some common
sense. For example, if your company ships Alpaca wool from
an Alpaca farm located in the middle of Nowhere, Tiny
State, do NOT submit your listing to "Retailers from
Nowhere, Tiny State." BIG MISTAKE! All you have to do is
look a little deeper - and submit your listing to the "Fine
Alpaca Wool" category. You will not only associate yourself
with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a
national category.

The next step after you have attained directory listings is
to locate other quality sites that will increase your link
popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related
to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase,
but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to
avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful
to your site's visitors. Let's look at the Alpaca Wool site
example. Linking up to a site that sells knitting supplies
would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of the
knitting supply site wanting to link up to your site are
also greater. By linking to a related site that will be
relevant to your website's traffic, you are increasing both
of your site's business prospects - and both of your sites'
link popularity.

Not all sites want to link to other sites, so you will have
to do some research when you are looking for possible
linking partners. Google is an excellent starting place for
your search. Make sure you enter keywords that you think
quality customers will also enter to find your own site.
Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked,
non-competing websites that have a links or resources page.
Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the
quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use.
Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and
determine if your own site would fit in with the crowd.

When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must
set out to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link
on your own links page to their site. This is an essential
first step; it shows good faith, and ups your chances
significantly of their reciprocity. After you have added
their link, you must contact the webmaster of their site.
Since this is almost always done by email, you want to make
sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk
mail. This requires that you tell them right off the bat
that you have added a link to their page on your site. A
hook like this almost always insures the reader will read
on.

Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much
you appreciate their website. Make sure you emphasize that
you have actually visited their site, and that their site
is not just a random pick. Give them the address of your
links page, and ask them to check out the link for
themselves. It's a good idea to mention that they will not
only benefit from the increased traffic your website will
direct their way, but you will also increase their link
popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so
essential, but do this in a sentence or two so you don't
sound like a professor! Finally, tell them you would
greatly appreciate if they would reciprocally add a link on
their own links page to your website.

Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as
you can find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and
non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant
sites, be sure to check these website frequently to see if
they have added a link to your page. Give it about a month,
and if no link appears, try another charming email. Then
give it another month, and if your site is still absent
from their links page, it's time to remove their link from
your own links page. The only time you want to pursue a
link further than this is if you believe a site is crucial
to your link popularity and your business needs. Just
remember to keep all your communications complimentary and
cordial.

Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search
engines frequently to see if your link popularity has
improved. This is not achievable in the blink of an eye. It
will take some time and a good deal of work. There is no
way around the labor-intensive quality of improving your
link popularity, which is why search engines regard it with
such importance.

By the way - make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined
site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you.
Be prepared to keep plugging away at this process, as long
as it takes, until you achieve link popularity stardom!

Evaulating Web Site Performance

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet
marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site
depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your
website goals. If you don't know what you want your site to
accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish
anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and
monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online
announcement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action,
whether it is visitors filling out a form so a
representative can contact them, or purchasing a product,
there are steps you can take to insure that your website is
functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators
of how well your site is working for you is finding out the
number of visitors in a given period of time. A good
baseline measurement is a month in which you haven't been
doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through
your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually,
you want those visitors to actually do something there. It
is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to
your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the
site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the
efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of
visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them
that actually performed the action your site is set up for.
For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only
25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion
rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of
visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors
who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a
form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is
between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion
rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form
will actually become your customer. However, whether your
site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the
visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will
measure the success or failure of your website whenever you
make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional
marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site
is extremely low. There are several effective methods to
improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly
launching a search engine optimization campaign. This
campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search
engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster
and easier. You can either research the steps you need to
take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a
search engine optimization company to do the work for you.
In either case, after your have improved your search engine
positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular
monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high
positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor
to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up
for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill
out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the
visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If
it's too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw
in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your
buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or
ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your
website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to
make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be
specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a
cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right
copy can make the difference between profit and loss in
your online campaign.

Analyzing Website Traffic

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable
tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can
make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to
interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web
traffic information that you then have to interpret and
make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from
your host company can be overwhelming if you don't
understand how to apply it to your particular business and
website. Let's start by examining the most basic data - the
average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and
monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your
website's activity. It would appear on the surface that the
more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume
your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate
perception. You must also look at the behavior of your
visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge
the effectiveness of your site.

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly
known as "hits" and what is really effective, quality
traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of
information requests received by the server. If you think
about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number
of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown
the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage
has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits,
when in reality we are talking about a single visitor
checking out a single page on your site. As you can see,
hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website, the more
accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the
traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis
will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller
the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors
can distort the analysis.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out
how well or how poorly your site is working for your
visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long
on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time
spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an
underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out
what that problem is.

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type
of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are
confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit
rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are
spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and
after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as
a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine
effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you
have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are
exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could,
for example, consider improving the link to this page by
making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could
improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors
can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are
spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less
important, you might consider moving some of your sales
copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital
information about the effectiveness of individual pages,
and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential
information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final
order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your
visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your
site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking
for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit
pages. This is normal unless you notice a exit trend on a
particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In
the case that a significant percentage of visitors are
exiting your website on a page not designed for that
purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to
discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential
weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or
graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping
visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the
wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it's time
to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular
keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your
site. The more targeted the visitor - meaning that they
find what they are looking for on your site, and even
better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase - the
more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being
directed - or should I say misdirected - to your site by a
particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands
adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors
to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close
analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find
your site will give you a vital understanding of your
visitor's needs and motivations.

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website
by typing in your company name, break open the champagne!
It means you have achieved a significant level of brand
recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.