Advantages of SEO compared to PPC

On February 24, 2010, In SEO, By Adrian Ang

Considering the current rise of pay per click (PPC) advertising services such as Yahoo Search Marketing, Google and Microsoft adCenter, professional search engine optimization (SEO) companies are having to deal more and more with the concern of why their clients need to invest funds on traditional SEO when they could simply spend money on PPC and see instant results in the search engines.

Traditional Search Engine Optimization

First I will define what traditional SEO is. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of visitors to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. In straightforward terms, SEO is the basic activity of making certain a webpage can be located in search engines for specific words and phrases

Pay Per Click

Now I will define what PPC is using Google Adwords as an example. PPC or pay per click is a service in which an advertiser selects specific keywords or phrases and then creates a listing that will show up when someone searches for that phrase. The advertiser selects an amount they are willing to pay for each click on their listing which results in a visit to their site – thus the term “pay per click”. At Google Adwords, you can bid anywhere from $.10 up to $50.00 for each click.

If other advertisers have selected the same keyword or phrase as yours, you then are competing against them for the highest position. Whoever is willing to spend the most shows up first and the others following in order. What PPC has allowed one to do then is to instantly “pay” their way to the top whereas traditional SEO takes a lot of time and effort.

The overriding question then is how beneficial is PPC and should it replace standard search engine optimization techniques?

Pros and Cons of Pay Per Click

First of all you must realize that PPC will never help improve your positioning in the typical search results. PPC listings most always appear in a “Sponsored or Featured” area which is usually at the top or side of the regular search results. While it really is nice to “show up first”, however recent studies by Comscore shows that clicks on paid search results has gone down over time, and is now ~22%. That means 3 out of 4 individuals will trust the results in the natural listing in contrast to the results in the PPC listing, and will click on the organic results – which are attributed to SEO.

Pay per click will not optimize your web page so that it reflects who you are and what you offer. If your web site is poorly optimized before you begin to advertise it with PPC, it will still be poorly optimized afterwards. In addition, the cost per click (CPC) is dependent on the ‘quality score’ of the web page. If it’s not effectively optimized for the search engines utilizing SEO, you will constantly be paying much more for your PPC ads in contrast to your competitors who have integrated SEO with their PPC advertising campaigns.

On the other hand, a well executed SEO plan will enhance your position inside organic search results. You will have a finely tuned website that reflects who you are and what you provide. One specific client in the dry cleaning business was averaging 8% of their new client acquisitions from their website. They utilized a conventional SEO campaign targeting 7 keyword phrases and are now seeing 83% of new client acquisitions come directly from their web page. They have been maintaining this campaign for a period of 6 months now at a cost of only $100 per month, in contrast to the $1000 per month they were previously spending on PPC advertising.

Another downfall to PPC is that when you stop paying for PPC advertising, your listings disappears and so does the traffic they bring. With the recent move by many PPC search engines to raise their minimum bid requirements, the prices for keywords are only going to increase over time as more advertisers join the market, bid higher prices for each keyword and fight for the important #1 position in the paid search listing results. With PPC advertising, it’s a bidding war that favours advertisers with bigger budgets.

In most cases, once you have excellent positioning in the regular search results via SEO, you will continually receive free traffic. It may require some minor adjustments from time to time but all in all brings in constant free site visitors so long as people are searching for your products or services. You will not be held hostage to having to continually throw money at search engines to maintain your listings.

SEO has to be the foundation of your online marketing strategy simply because in the long run, the rewards of SEO will far outweigh anything else you do.

To learn how to get your website ranked on the 1st page of the Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing), visit AdVantage SEO to find the best advice on Search Engine Optimization for you.

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Using AdWords Advertising

On January 31, 2010, In SEO, By Justin Harrison

An AdWords advertising campaign is built around short but carefully worded advertisements. Although limited in size these advertisements can be very successful in attracting the attention of users who will then click on the advert and be taken to your website.

Two methods exist and they depend on where you are going to place your advertisement. During the set up process of the AdWords campaign you will be given a couple of options and you can decide to place your ad on the search or content network (Adsense) or you can place it on both networks.

Search network advertisements are assigned many keywords that would match the text of the advertisement and that is an excellent method for getting searches to locate your product or service.

Alternatively, using the content network, your advertisement will be placed alongside an article with content relating to your advertisement. In this case it is read by users who may not necessarily be interested in actually purchasing any product or service, and, put another way, are browsers rather than searchers.

Because of this, contextual advertisements normally do not have the same impact as search advertisements. If your desire is to target both markets you want to create two separate marketing campaigns as this will allow you to expand your target area and inevitably increase traffic to your site.

Even though an ad put on a content network may not have as good of results as a search based ad, there are some positives about using contextual ads. The cost is lower per click and you usually have more control over where the ad is placed.

If you have an active search advert on AdWords and want to try out the content network, you may wish targeting content advertising separately. Although it may be possible for you to reproduce your search network advertising copy verbatim, the content network has a more passive audience and this approach may not be appropriate. Reworking of the copy with this in mind may prove to be a more effective campaign.

In the final analysis a well run search network campaign is usually the most effective way to generate business but with a little ingenuity and well written copy there is no reason why this could not be supported by a parallel campaign on the content network.

Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.

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Advantages of Article Marketing

On January 26, 2010, In SEO, By Justin Harrison

Prior to the rise of the internet as a major player in marketing, article marketing was considered to be useful for promotion in print media. The need for well-written articles has increased greatly with new online venues such as websites, ezines, and e-mail newsletters. Today, article marketing is even more powerful, due to these new means of communication.

Article marketing involves a writer providing well-crafted content for distribution to various e-publishers and websites and, in return, receiving a brief blurb about his or her business and contact information. A link to the business owner’s website is generally included in these so-called “bios.”

Offering your own content for publishing is essentially the same as obtaining free advertising spots on web sites across the globe. Being able to target the correct market, and keep costs to an absolute minimum creates an excellent and efficient method of business communication.

Article marketing specifically focuses on a willing audience, rather than other methods, such as using e-mail campaigns for lead generation. This results in a much higher response rate. Readers have volunteered to receive the information, so they are naturally more open to its contents, and more likely to seek out the author’s website to read more

Established publishers who accept the articles already have a captive audience of likely customers. People who read the articles are concerned most of all with content, suggesting that they could be in a position to buy items or services relating to the content. Buying a comparable list of those high-quality leads would be very expensive. But writing an article only requires a minimal investment of time.

To gain more on your conversion rate, as a business owner you can provide links to specific information from the author’s biography. Instead of just sending readers to the home page, the writer can provide the website of a specific article that expands upon the given topic. This will cause readers to look up, and trust, additional facts.

A further improvement to conversion rates can be made by providing an email address that readers can contact to subscribe to the author’s newsletter or website. It is best to make this action as simple as possible to increase the chances of readers opting in. Then an auto-responder can send automated messages to those who’ve signed up that point out certain features of the author’s website they might be interested in.

By giving publishers in related fields access to certain content, a business can expect an increase in website traffic at minimal cost, qualified lead production, and a significant improvement in brand awareness and sales.

Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.

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Google Adwords Advertising Tips

On January 18, 2010, In SEO, By Justin Harrison

It is incorrect believe that the top search terms are good choices for keywords. This seems logical but it doesn’t take into account other competition. Picking keywords that match the advertiser’s business usually have more of an impact.

The use of special modifiers narrows the field a bit so that you will attract a higher quality audience. For example, use the term “flower gardening” instead of just “gardening” and you will eliminate the crowd that is more interested in vegetable gardening. “Perennial flower gardening” would be even more specific.

A low conversion ratio, or readers who click but don’t end up buying, doesn’t help an advertiser in any way despite the high number of clicks. It will only cost the business more money in fees that are not negated by higher sales. By placing very specific keywords to hone in on a niche advertisers are able to get higher quality clicks. This will lead to a significantly better conversion ratio and a much higher ROI.

Creating keywords requires examining your web site and picking out the words and phrases that describe it. You should also look at other web sites in the same target market. Try to figure out why those sites are good or not and look at how they word their advertisements and content. If they are reaching the target market you should attempt to leverage their terms and phrases where possible.

It can also be helpful if you learn to think as a customer would. Google offers the recommendation to list all the things a customer might type into a search engine while looking for a certain product or service. Consider the possibility that there may be several different spellings for those words. As an example, foods which are low fat could also be called “light” or “lite”. Either spelling should be a keyword so that every potential customer is reached.

It is vital that you keep track of a campaign’s effectiveness. Google’s conversion tracking tool and Google Analytics can help you do this. They can be used to evaluate each new campaign and any revised versions you may use. If you are disappointed with the clicks an ad draws you can make changes as necessary. Then you can evaluate the results of the changes and fine tune things further if you need to.

Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.

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Social Media Optimization For Beginners

On January 16, 2010, In SEO, By Adriana Noton

Social media, more specifically social networking, has fast became a must when dealing with online content. Unlike SEO or PPC strategies, social media is a much more personalized marketing strategy. User generated content is probably the most important since it is the opinions of the general public. Social media optimization can help you make the most of this.

You need to optimize your keywords while also trying to use fresh and new content rather than old information that is floating around out there online. Use your keywords as much as you can without making it seem overly repetitive to the reader.

On the web, sites like Myspace, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are extremely popular as well as easy ways to make a profit if you know what to do. There is no charge to use these sites even though they are the cutting edge of media today. When using SMO, SEO, and PPC you can utilize all of them to increase your visibility online and establish yourself as an expert in your field.

Blogging is a really good way to keep up to date content posted on a routine basis. With blogging you can always take a new view point or post new information that has just been introduced in your niche. This also lets you get a lot more personal with your audience than a regular website will.

Micro blogging is another great way to get peoples attention. This allows you to get on a very personal and interactive level with other people via Twitter. This will also boost your search engine presence and point traffic in your decision.

Any time you are online you should be watching out for new sites where you can establish a presence. This is not to say you must be highly active at each of these sites, but by creating even a profile you claim your authority in your niche at that site. This will give you even more search engine visibility than you had before.

Anything you are doing online should be made so that people can share it with others fairly easily. Chicklets are best to use for this, since they allow for social bookmarking right from the blog or website. You can add them to your content to bookmark all of your new posts.

One of the most important things about SMO is participating in discussions. All of your efforts won’t yield many results if you are completely silent online. Try commenting on some blogs, asking questions, giving answers and just chatting with others.

If you lack any online reputation management services, now is a good time to purchase one. If you don’t want to spend any money, at least make use of the free options you have like Google Alerts, Yahoo Alerts and other notifications that you can get on sites like Twitter and Facebook. This will keep you up to date at all times about any information that is being posted related to your keywords.

The Internet is already changing the way how our life works. It may be wise to start looking into utilizing it to increase your prescence on the Internet. We can help your company utilize SEO and PPC to help increase your business.

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What You Might Need To Know About Internet Marketing

On January 16, 2010, In SEO, By Adriana Noton

Internet Marketing has become the largest and most successful approach for businesses, the media and the public to be aware of their products and services.

Using the internet can greatly increase the traffic through your business because it has a world wide reaching power that is matched by no other type of advertising. This means of getting a customer base is useful because you can now have customers from all over the world with just a click of a mouse.

The results of advertising on the internet can almost be immediate. It is very possible to produce just one product and become a business through the use of this world wide medium. Internet marketing strategies include SEO and PPC.

Evaluating a customer’s needs and wants, will help to get the marketing skills needed to create a relationship with that potential client. This can be done by searching the web for information on consumer ratings when it comes to services and products offered. Whether it be local or abroad, there are not too many services or products that are out of our reach because of the internet.

Paid advertising can highlight a website that offers products or services. There are also other options to choose from on the internet which include free advertising on certain sites or blogging. This will get more attention to the services or products being offered which will not cost the business owner.

There are many ways to advertise your company or service on the internet. Many programs have been developed to help the small business owner stand a chance against the bigger more popular sites. The main thing to remember is to try to get your product or service seen before your competition. Keywords and phrases can help maximize the traffic that goes through your web site. To find out more, do a little research on line. Your chances of surviving in a big internet business world are increased if you use the services available and not try to do it yourself.

As one may know, there are an endless amount of possibilities when you advertise on the internet. Many eyes of future consumers will see the product or service you are trying to sell. Many of them will buy the product and it is up to you to make them comfortable enough to come back. It does not cost much to advertise on the internet and the results can be astounding.

When utilized properly, Internet marketing can be an extremely powerful way to market. Put your company on the front page through SEO Toronto and PPC today! Ensure that your customers can find you and your information.

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The Economy Scramble And SEO

On December 1, 2009, In SEO, By Gregg Phillips

As the customer spends fewer there will be a short augmentation in the Cost Per Click bid as Pay Par Click advertisers try to get an improvement in business. Brief, because without spending by consumers, the advertisers will fall like flies. It is a usual response in business. New advertisers will begin bidding, but at a inferior cost and substitute the front runners that fall down.

Search Optimizers that offer Organic Search Results will be getting a lot of supplementary business. As more and more businesses get the point that it is better to be seen all day every day rather than only when you pay to be seen. Look for good SEO to be in demand and short supply.

Organic Search Results are not Pay Per Click, but they aren’t exactly free either. Providing great ranking and visibility takes diligent work in development, implementation, design, strategy and commitment. When an algorithm with over two hundred individual equations, each maintained and adjusted separately for value and importance by separate teams, no five step process or magic program code is going to fool the search results. SEO is an investment however it has a far better option than Pay Per Click.

The Business of Business Banking has been drying up. As the loans are getting complex to get a business will have to be promoted in less customary manner. No more spending cash at large customary media campaigns and Pay Per Click advertising. The outlay will just confirm out of reach when business is focusing tough on the Return On Investment (ROI).

Good news for SEO. Since trackable progress can be shown when a starting point is established, a plan of attack formed and elements of the plan are implemented. One thing will determine if an individual business will be able to benefit from what SEO can do. How fast what the SEO determines needs to be done is put in action.

If you’re a small business reading this, this is where you can really win in the coming year. The one thing that really stands in the way of big business is that it moves incredibly slowly. Painfully slowly. Small business has fewer people that are busy trying to justify their own importance to the business.

If you work for a big business, it really becomes simple, streamline the process of change or go the way of the dinosaur. The more departments you have to go through to implement change in your industry, the more likely you will be closing your doors this year.

One of the developments in search that have begun to see some focused benefit this past year have been “Local Search.”

If you are traditional business with a physical location that you promote online then this is for you. Say a dentist or lawyer wants to be found in his geographical area, this kind of search will be helpful for you if you optimize your site for it. If you have fixed locations in several cities and only one website, it won’t be much help. If you sell to the world it will be one more thing you have to overcome to be seen globally.

When times get tough, there are opportunities through change.

Organic Search Results are not Pay Per Click, but they aren’t exactly free either. This and other unique content ” articles are available with free reprint rights.

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Improve Your Rankings Quickly With the Help of SEO Tools

On November 21, 2009, In SEO, By Michael Fleischner

Being in the first position on Google or any major search engine can radically transform your business. As a result, many companies are spending large sums of money on SEO consultants to improve rankings. The good news is that even the do it yourself webmaster can achieve top rankings using popular tools and resources that are now available at a very low cost.

Learn about your website. It’s always been surprising to me that you don’t know as much about your own website as you think you do. Not only do you need to know how your website is built, but its also beneficial to inspect the foundation. From my perspective the underlying code is key. Check your site against W3C standards to ensure it meets basic coding standards.

Focus on on-page optimization. All of the link development in the world isn’t going to help if your site doesn’t make the most of on-page optimization factors. These factors include everything from using the proper tags to placing your keyword throughout the text. I strongly recommend including your keywords within the first twenty-five and last twenty-five words on your page.

Search engines like Google favor sites that load quickly. The reason why this is so critical is because page load times are an essential factor in user experience. Consider two sites that offer valuable information. The first loads in about 3 second and the other in 12. Which one provides a better user experience? You guessed it, the one that loads quickly. Consider page load times when working to optimize your site. There are plenty of tools that can help you calculate load times quickly.

Don’t wait for search engine spiders. There is a log of question as to the value of this particular tip so I wouldn’t make it your the basis of your SEO strategy. However, submitting your website URL to different search engines can prove beneficial. This is especially true after a site redesign or change to your site. It’s always been my preference to wait for search engines to find my site. However, I have submitted new sites to Google and MSN just to let them know I’m out there.

Work on creating in bound links to your website. You want sites to connect to yours in the form of inbound links. This is essential because it shows the major search engines that your website provides a good deal of value to consumers. This linking also carries the benefit of providing page rank value and assigning information that is attributable to where your site is listed on search engines.

Succeeding with Search Engine Optimization requires the use of proper tools. Whether you’re looking for a basic tool that can tell you how quickly your site loads or a more complex tool with all the bells and whistles, you must first begin with the end in mind. Determine the most important aspects of SEO where you are going to spend your time and energy. Then, find the right tools to meet your needs.

Before you spend all of your time trying to learn about search engine optimization and generating SEO campaigns, research search engine optimization tools that can help you to succeed online. Using software to do much of the heavy lifting can enhance your results and quickly allow you to achieve what would otherwise take months or perhaps years.

Are you in search of the secrets to SEO? Check out SEO Training from the experts. Get a head start with your search engine optimization with this FREE SEO Elite Software Review from leading webmasters.

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Affiliate Programs Explained

On November 5, 2009, In SEO, By Justin Harrison

You’ve probably heard of affiliate marketing before, although maybe not by that name. It’s also known as a partner, sponsor, or associate marketing. If you’ve never made use of affiliate marketing, but you have a business to run… well, now’s the time to get cracking. You’re missing out on a new breed of marketing that is changing the landscape of business forever.

Affiliate marketing provides incentives to outside entities or affiliates to market your products. It sets up a spiderweb style marketing network where the individual strands of promotion eventually all reach into the center where you, the merchant, sits. With the advent of the net, affiliate marketing has become more effective and easy than ever before. It now requires almost no effort to make use of affiliate marketing or become an affiliate yourself. Even the prospective customers barely have to do anything to be a useful and profitable part of the affiliate marketing system.

With the help of the internet, affiliates can get information on the traffic they influence almost instantly, and get paid in similar lightning speed. With digital means of money transfers, like Paypal, sending money becomes less of a hassle for the merchant as well. In fact, the whole process can be automated, and often is.

With less time and effort required to put in for profit on all sides, there’s almost no reason to not use affiliate marketing if you have a company or product that needs customers. For affiliate, it’s easy money with practically no drawbacks involved. For the merchant, it’s cheap advertising at a trivial expense. Both sides profit, along with the customers who appreciate tasteful affiliate marketing over the more intrusive and obnoxious forms of marketing.

Just as the reputation of affiliate marketing has gone up, similarly the attitude of people has enhanced with respect to affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is no more regarded as an inferior method of marketing by the merchants or as a secondary source of income by an affiliate marketer. Both merchants and affiliates regard affiliate marketing as a main source of profits and revenues.

So the question now is what type of affiliate marketing will work best for you? Are all affiliate marketing programs the same? Are the benefits the same? Or are there affiliate marketing programs that work better than the others?

To whet your appetite, here’s a quick glimpse at some of the more popular kinds of affiliate marketing. Pay-Per-Click marketing allows you to pay affiliates for each click a visitor makes to travel from the affiliate to the merchant site. Other means of determining payment, such as when a visitor listens to an ad (called Per-Per-Play) or actually buys your product (known as Pay-Per-Performance), are also available. Choose what works best for you and you can be making money hand over fist in no time flat. Remember, every moment you spend not making the most of your company’s potential visibility is a moment where you just lost a customer. With how easy the net makes it nowadays, you have no excuses.

Justin Harrison is an internationally recognised Internet Marketing Consultant and entrepreneur who has built up multiple 7 figure online business and consults to some of leading online brands including Amazon, BBC, AIG and many others.

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How To Use Google Ad Words

On October 11, 2009, In SEO, By Toby Jensen
by Toby Jensen

The number one search engine in the world has launched a campaign called Google Ad Words that is made to develop a pay per click advertising strategy and everyone is allowed to participate. Essentially, corporations would advertise with Google, and what Google would do is that they would allow these advertisements to be added to someones website that has signed up and decided to join the platform.

Every page visit to an advertiser’s website linked from your website will credit you with money for the referral. This would be a tremendous way of earning money online even though complications might occur at times. The key to make more money is to base your website around a business that provides high rates through Google Ad Words.

For instance, if you were able to enhance your website to attract more traffic and your website is based on a company that provides 10 cents for every page visit. It would be certain that you would gain big numbers from these referrals.

This can work as well if you are on the business side and planning to achieve good traffic to your website by using this system. All you have to do to be able to find people to advertise your business for you is to sign up with Google Ad Words.

This would be more convenient than providing your own articles since someone will already do it for you. Besides, you do not even have to pay for those advertisements that you did not benefit from.

You will only pay a fee for the traffic that was provided to your site. Security would not be a problem as well from filtering unique traffic for each person that would visit your site. You can also be certain that all the traffic you gain in your Good Ad Word is really looking towards what you are selling since they have exerted effort to visit your ad.

One mistake that many beginners make is that they reach a lot of traffic to their website, but they are unable to convert this traffic into sales. In these situations, the person will still have to pay Google Ad Words for the service, even though they did not make any money from this traffic.

About the Author:
Worth Overdoing is a Google Ad Words Australia company that can enhance your website’s potential through the proper use of this system. You will not have to worry about choosing an Internet Marketing Australia company.There are many companies out there that can help you with Google Ad Words, but none that are as efficient as Worth Overdoing.

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