Posts Tagged ‘website traffic’

In these tough economic times you might be tempted to do some things yourself. If you were thinking about doing SEO (Search Engine Optimization), here are a few fundamental things about doing SEO:

• Add your site to legitimate website directories (e.g. dir.yahoo.com, dmoz.org) on the Internet. There are lots of spam directories which will not provide you with any value. Search engines love links to your site and there are a lot of legitimate directories that will allow you to add your site to them. The rule of thumb to determine if a directory is legitimate or not is to check if there’s a rigorous editorial process involved. If there is then that directory is legitimate, otherwise if almost anyone can get in will be useless to you.
• Provide unique content on your site that people will find valuable (advice, tips related to your business, products or services).
• Do not use “tricks” you don’t understand. Lots of links from reputable sites (avoid shady sites) and great content will help you considerably.
• Give it time. After you added great content and lots of links from legitimate sites, it may take a few months for you to see results.
• The truth is adding all those links (especially if you have to follow editorial guidelines), making changes to the website, keeping up with proper techniques that change almost every several months takes a lot of time. If you’re not getting results you want after a few months or if you don’t have the time or knowhow to do it all, it may be time to hire a professional.

Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), seo, site promotion, website promotion, website traffic

It’s the New Year and a lot of people make New Year’s resolutions. Some time ago Google released a very valuable market research tool that allows you to see the search trends that show what people are searching for, when and where. The graph at the top shows the search trend for one of the common New Year’s resolutions (weight loss). The horizontal axis of the main graph represents time (starting from some time in 2004), and the vertical is how often a term is searched for relative to the total number of searches. It’s funny how it spikes as every New Year shown comes around and then slowly dies off until next year.

So how can this be valuable to you? Here are a few examples:

1. You can see when your customers are more interested in your products/services and plan to market yourself more aggressively during that time. A lot of them are obvious. In the example I showed it is evident that a lot of people want to lose weight around the New Year’s. A lot of people search for “summer camps” before the end of the school year. Others are not so obvious and it may be very valuable for you to check out when your customers are interested in your products and services.
2. If you’re starting a new business you can check if demand for your product or service is going up or down. For example interest in software development has been on a steady decline since 2004.
3. You can check which geographical market is most interested in your product or service.
4. You can compare different markets. For example did you know that dogs are more popular than cats or any other house pets?
5. If you’re in retail you can check when holiday shopping really starts.

These are just some of the uses, but the possibilities are mind blowing.

Technorati Tags: double my sales, E-Commerce, Internet Marketing, ppc, promoting your business, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), search engines, selling products online, seo, site promotion, website promotion, website traffic

One of the most popular questions that I get from people that are interested in doing SEO or PPC today is: “Which search engine is the most popular one?” This is a very logical question.  Ten years ago, most business owners knew that if they wanted more customers all they had to do was call the local Yellow Pages representative or a newspaper, choose which ad size they wanted and that was it!

Now that people have dumped their newspapers and phone books in the garbage and simply go to search engines to find what they are looking for, business owners definitely need to know which search engines are the most popular ones so that they can ensure that their business is front and center when their potential customer does the search.  Of course, internet marketing companies are always willing to help as well!

So what kind of changes happened in 2008? Here is the information you have been waiting for. Well, we can definitely call it the year of Google, again. Although it wasn’t news to anyone that Google was the most popular search engine, by the end of 2008 Google broken through the 80% market share ceiling! In fact it is estimated that close to 82% of searches worldwide are now done through Google.

While market share of most other search engines remained mostly unchanged the recent gains of Google seem to have come at the cost of Yahoo!, which has been in a steep decline of late and now stands at around 10% in second place after Google.

Now what does this mean to your business? Well it’s certainly good news and bad news. We’re again in the market were you can only deal with one or two organizations like it used to be before with yellow pages and one or two newspapers. Because Google and Yahoo have close to 92% of the market why bother with the other 8%? The problem of course is that Google has a monopoly on the search market and it’s only increasing. This means that if you were thinking of starting a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or PPC campaign it is better to start it sooner rather than later as more and more of your competitors are focusing their sights on Google and SEO and PPC will only get more expensive. In fact PPC costs have been steadily rising at a pace of close to 30% each year over the past 10 years due to consolidation of search engines market and shift of advertising spending to online channels.

Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, ppc, promoting your business, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), search engines, seo, site promotion, website promotion, website traffic

   Not many people are aware of this but these days PPC and SEO go hand in hand. Ever since Google introduced the concept of quality score and landing page quality scores, search engine ranking of your site and landing pages will affect the amount of money you pay for each click. Google puts it this way:

“Advertisers who may be providing a poor experience on their site will notice that their traffic will decrease and their minimum cost per click will increase.”

   How can you ensure that your website doesn’t have a low quality score? Here are some tips:

• Work on SEO for your site, if your site ranks well you will have a higher quality score
• Provide relevant, unique and substantial content on the product or service.
• Add an ‘about us’ page
• Add a short privacy policy
• Add details on returns / refunds if you’re selling something on your website
• Add a contacts page
• If your site displays advertising, distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content or think about removing completely.
• Don’t link to shady sites.

Here’s what Google has to say about this https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=9356.

Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, ppc, promoting your business, Search Engine Friendly, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), search engines, seo, site promotion, website promotion, website traffic

A lot of people waste money on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) because they don’t know how to do it right. They try PPC campaigns, spend money and time on them and realize that it all went to waste. The key to an effective Pay-Per-Click program is getting the RIGHT TRAFFIC to your website at the RIGHT PRICE. Since you pay every time someone clicks on your ad to get to your website you want to attract only visitors who are interested in your product or service. You want to be sure that, when they arrive at your site, they can find what they’re looking for — and most importantly quickly. Here are several beginner PPC tips to get you on the right track:

Choose The Best Keywords (Search Terms) And Target Geographically.

Broad keywords like “carpets” will generate many clicks with little or no benefit. Use specific keywords that accurately describe your product or service. If you only do carpet installations you want to specify that it’s “carpet installations”. If you offer a product or service in a particular geographic area you only want to display your ads to people who are in that location. Most PPC advertising networks allow you to do that. Don’t forget to consider many possible variations of your keywords like: “cheap carpet installation”, “professional carpet installation”, etc. To help you come up with lots of keywords, try the Google Keyword Tool.

Write Accurate And Relevant Ad Copy

The most effective ads communicate a clear message to a specific target audience. Your ad should emphasize the unique benefits of your product or service. Use simple, direct language: avoid gimmicks and jargon.

It’s a good idea to include the search term in your title and/or description. Users will be able to immediately see its relevance to their search. For example if you’re targeting keywords “Professional carpet installation” you want to display an ad that talks about your experience or professionalism. You never want to show your “cheap carpet installations” ad to someone who’s looking for a professional installation. These highly targeted ads will have a much higher click-through rate (a measure of the portion of people that actually clicks on your ad) which will lead to lower advertising costs for you.

In Google, ad titles are limited to 25 characters. The two description lines and display URL are limited to 35 characters each – so you have to be concise.

Control Your Cost

Most Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines let you set your own limits for the cost of each click, as well as a monthly maximum. Start with a small list of targeted keywords and a few different ads. Then build on those that work best. Of course you can’t control what your competitors are willing to bid, so choosing the right keywords for your specific audience is essential.

Just because you can bid high enough for a top position doesn’t mean you should. Don’t get into a bidding war – pay only what makes sense to you financially. If they’re too competitive, do some research and modify them so you don’t pay more than necessary. A #1 spot may be less cost-effective than lower positions due to “compulsive clickers” who start at the top of the links and click their way down. Some PPC engines share the top 3 listings with their partners so you’ll gain more exposure by bidding high enough for 3rd position or better.

Experiment And Monitor Your Results

Try different messages and keywords to see what works best. One advantage of PPC programs is that they track the click-through rate for each ad so you can identify and remove ads that don’t work.

You can also use unique tracking URLs for each ad to identify how many of your customers clicked through to your site from your ad. Then you can calculate which ads and keywords converted the most clicks to sales or leads.

Conclusion

Pay-Per-Click marketing is an effective method of driving traffic to your site, but that’s really just the first step. Once visitors arrive, you need persuasive copy, clear navigation and good design to lead them to take the action you want.

Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, ppc, promoting your business, site promotion, website promotion, website traffic