5 Incredible Sources For Website Traffic
You cannot manage a website without traffic. It is the lifeblood of any online business. So how do you drive traffic to your website? How do you ensure that your website is profitable when you are building your business?
Here are 5 incredible sources for website traffic no matter what kind of business you are running online:
- Search Engines – Search engines are still the No. 1 driver of traffic to most websites online today. That’s why we always recommend that you dedicate a portion of your online marketing budget to search engine optimization.
- Pay Per Click Advertising – PPC ads are immediate. You can start a campaign today and see business results today. Yes, you pay for the clicks. But if you do it right, it will be profitable. And the results are instant.
- Newsletter - An e-mail newsletter is one of the most profitable investments you can make. After more than 20 years, it’s still one of the most effective online marketing tools. You can take e-mail subscriptions right from your website and deliver your newsletter electronically more cost efficiently than any other kind of online marketing.
- Videos – Online video marketing is just as effective as TV advertising and much more cost effective.
- Social Media Marketing - The best thing about social media is it allows you to build relationships off site, then you can drive that traffic to your website for the close.
Use these five online marketing strategies together for incredible traffic generation results.
How To Use PPC To Increase E-mail Subscriptions
The key to a successful PPC campaign is in your landing page. That’s true whether you are talking about driving traffic to increase your e-mail subscriptions or to sell your downloads. Pay-per-click advertising is only successful if you can get traffic to your landing page and then convert that traffic with a good call to action.
The components to a successful PPC campaign are:
- Your PPC ad headline
- Your PPC ad text
- Your landing page
All three of these components have to add up and when they do you’ll see your conversions increase.
Let’s start with your ad’s headline. It’s got to be an attention grabber. Optimize it with the correct keyword so that it appears on the correct search results page, then make sure it gets the attention of your prospect.
The ad text itself is what will get your prospect to click through to your landing.
But it’s the landing page itself that will close the sale, or get the subscription. It doesn’t have to be long. Sell the benefits, not the features. In other words, include your opt-in box in a prominent location on the page and tell your reader concisely why they should opt in to your newsletter or e-mail list.
When it comes to PPC advertising, sell the benefits and you’ll see your conversions increase.
When To Stop Your PPC Campaign
Is there ever a time when you should stop your PPC campaign? Absolutely. But when is that time?
Obviously, you don’t want to stop something that is working. So if you have a PPC campaign that is bringing you an ROI, then that’s not a campaign you want to stop. But you do want to stop those campaigns that are not working.
How long should you let your pay per click campaigns go before you decide to stop them? You don’t want them to go on too long.
It depends on how much money you have invested, but if you aren’t experiencing enough click throughs or the click throughs you are getting aren’t converting, then that’s when you want to put your PPC ads on pause and redirect your advertising efforts.
CTR is an important metric. How many click throughs is enough? It’s different for every campaign, but if your click throughs don’t match your expectations, then it’s time to find out why. You can pause your campaign long enough to tweak your ads and see if that increases your CTR.
Conversion rate is another problem. If your PPC ads aren’t converting, it’s likely your landing pages. Have you tested them? If not, then you should pause your PPC campaign and engage in a little multivariate testing of your landing pages. Find out what works, then restart your pay per click campaigns when you have the kinks worked out.
How PPC Is Evolving
PPC, like all other things (on the Web and off) has evolved. And it continues to evolve. Google has largely been responsible for that evolution, but Facebook has played its part too. And it’s likely to evolve even more, but who knows who will be most influential in how that happens in the future?
One way that PPC has evolved is in the tools that advertisers use to track their campaigns. Both Google and Bing, and Facebook now, have tools that allow you to track your own PPC campaigns. But you might benefit more by using a third-party tool that you pay for. Especially if you run a lot of PPC campaigns on more than one platform.
PPC has evolved in other ways too. For instance, pay per click has morphed into pay per action. Advertisers can pay for user activity in a number of ways. Here are some of the more popular pay-per-advertising models:
- Pay per lead
- Pay per impression
- Pay per view (for videos)
- Pay per call (for mobile and phone actions)
You can expect some of these to expand as technology improves. Currently, pay per impression is generally expressed in terms of 1,000 impressions. But what will it be ten years from now?
Pay per click advertising has become one of the most effective branding and marketing channels online. Don’t expect it to stay the same. It will change. And mostly for the better.
Using PPC To Brand Your Company
Advertising has always been about multiple points of action. On one hand, advertisers expect to earn a return on investment. But they also want to brand themselves in the marketplace. Sometimes you can do one or the other but not both.
The first step to using PPC advertising as a branding tool is to set your goals. Determine what your point of ROI is for each click price point. Can you achieve branding effects by limiting your ad spend to a maximum so that you can also realize an ROI? If not, then you have a choice to make.
Is branding more important or is that ROI more important?
The key to using PPC as a branding tool is to plant your company name or product brand in the top of your prospect’s mind. You want them to think of your company when they think of the benefits of using your service. To do that, you’ve got to establish your brand as a top brand through psychological condition. That may require throwing out your advertising budget and just focusing on being No. 1.
Large corporations have been making these decisions for years. Online, with PPC particularly, it’s a decision that even small companies can make.
High Dollar PPC Ads
Does it matter how much you spend on advertising? Does it matter how much you spend on pay per click advertising? I’d say it only matters if you are not achieving an ROI on your investment. Or, rather, it doesn’t matter if you are achieving a positive ROI.
It seems that Google is making hand over fist on the top 20 PPC ad keywords.
No wonder. Look at the top 5:
- Insurance
- Loans
- Mortgage
- Attorney
- Credit
If you are in the banking, mortgage, credit, or legal business, then you have to pay top dollar for your PPC ads or risk big chances that you won’t get much traffic from your advertising. But the bottom line for any advertiser is, How much ROI do you realize based on your ad spend?
If you are a small insurance company, for instance, and you target your PPC advertising toward a specific niche within the industry or a geographic location, then you can cut your ad spend down based on a narrower market definition. You are also more likely to realize an ROI.
The key is to target your advertising to the specific niche you want to do business with. Narrow your market down as far as you can before you advertise. Long tail keywords are much more profitable for smaller budgets than general keyword phrases.
Why Online Marketing Is Necessary
If you’re used to doing a lot of offline marketing, or traditional marketing, then you’ve likely noticed that it has become quite expensive in the last few years. Oil prices have driven up the cost of paper and everything else. The economy taking a downturn has caused many businesses to stop advertising altogether, or diminish their marketing budgets.
But there is hope. Online marketing is less expensive and, if done right, is much more effective. That’s why so many businesses have transferred their marketing and advertising budgets to online.
Here are 5 online marketing methods that are outpacing their offline counterparts:
- Pay Per Click – Pay per click advertising is the online equivalent to some forms of print advertising. The difference is you pay only when a desired result takes place. It can be less expensive and deliver a higher ROI.
- Social Networking – Offline, you go to business functions. You often have to buy dinner, pay for transportation costs, business cards, and other incidentals. Online, you just show up. And talk to people. Make friends and contacts. Sell them stuff. The time commitment is higher, but it’s a lot easier on the budget.
- Video Marketing – Liken it to TV advertising. Do you really want to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on 30-second spots that disappear with the money? Instead, pay for one video and it stays live online forever.
- Website Design – Call them online billboards. Just like outdoor advertising, you have a limited space – your prospect’s browser window. Unlike outdoor billboards, that space can be expanded. And you can build many websites for less than the cost of a handful of billboards.
- Search Engine Optimization – Sorry, but there is no offline equivalent to search engine optimization. Yet it’s still the most effective online marketing money can buy.
Try just one or incorporate them all into your marketing plans, but online marketing is where it’s at.
Are You Learning Too Much Too Fast?
When businesses go online to learn how to participate in Internet marketing campaigns that work, there is usually a lot to think about, a lot of new information to take in for those business owners and managers. The problem is how to process it all.
What I always suggest is to take it a little bite at a time. You can’t learn everything in one day. You can’t become a master of every art in your lifetime. Don’t even try.
The key is to start with the basics. Study a little bit about web design before you do anything else. What are the best practices for web design for businesses of your size and in your industry? Study the competition to see what they are doing that you like and that you don’t like. Then analyze what is effective.
Remember, you are only studying the basics at first. At some point, you have to rely on the advice of experts because you are nowhere near that status yourself.
After you have learned the basics of web design, move on to another topic such as search engine optimization or pay per click advertising. Again, take the time to learn the basics before moving on to something else.
It takes time to truly learn how to successfully manage an Internet marketing camnpaign. It’s not going to happen overnight. With the proper guide, your business can achieve a little success and move on to greater success – one step at a time.
The Three Internet Marketing Channels
Internet marketers generally talk about Internet marketing channels as if there are hundreds, or at least dozens. In reality, there are three primary channels with multiple legs holding them up. Learn those three primary online marketing channels and you can more easily manage your entire Internet marketing strategy more effectively.
Here are the three primary Internet marketing channels:
- Search engine marketing
- Social media marketing
- Paid advertising
All Internet marketing falls into one of these categories, and some may easily slip into more than one category.
For instance, pay per click advertising fits into the paid advertising category, but it can also be considered search engine marketing.
Under the search engine marketing umbrella, you’ll find these marketing subchannels: Onsite SEO, link building, local search, PPC, web design and development, and variations on these tactics.
In social media marketing, you have social networking, social bookmarking, video marketing, podcasting, forum marketing, blog marketing, and other variations of these.
For the paid marketing channels, you’ll see pay-per-click advertising, display advertising, PTC (pay to click), CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPA (cost per action), and variations on these channels.
If you analyze the reach of each of these types of online marketing and what they are capable of on their own, then you can select the best channels and subchannels for marketing your business.
Local Search Is In High Growth Stage
Predictions show that local search ad revenue will increase by as much as 10% per year through 2015. Furthermore, 30% of all searches performed by then will be local in nature. That spells it out loud, if you’re listening: Get on now to get ahead.
By “local search ad revenue,” let’s be clear what we’re talking about. It’s a clear reference to pay-per-click advertising. And that leads us to an obvious question: Whose revenue?
The search engines, of course, will be profiting from that growth. However, that doesn’t mean that others won’t profit as well. Local businesses that learn how to leverage online advertising – particularly PPC advertising – will also profit. They will profit from the traffic they receive from that advertising.
Are you ready to take that leap into local search advertising? You should be. Historic studies show that PPC advertising pays. Advertisers who use PPC to drive traffic to their websites and who learn to harness the power of the written word on their landing pages do rather well.
Here’s the big difference between the PPC advertising of the past and the PPC of the future: It’s going local. All that really means is that local businesses are going to enjoy a lot more of the benefits that global businesses have been enjoying for the past few years. Are you ready to get in on that?
Can You Buy Targeted Website Traffic?
In the 1980s, it was chic to buy a mailing list from a list broker who might promise that the list was targeted to a specific type of customer within a specific industry. You could call the list or use the list for direct mailing. Either way, you were spending money. And if you used the list and it brought you some business, then you were effectively buying targeted sales leads. You were buying customers.
Can you do the same thing online? Can you buy targeted sales leads or customers online? You sure can.
It’s called pay per click advertising. With PPC, it’s all about buying clicks. You bid on what a click is worth to you, write an ad that draws attention, point your link to a landing page, and snag the contact information from your prospect.
These types of leads are solid leads because they have responded to your calls to action. They responded to your ad. Then they responded to your landing page with a request for private information. If you use an autoresponder with a double opt-in process, then they’ve given you permission to contact them twice. They couldn’t spell it out for you any better.
So what do you do with those leads then? You market to them. Aggressively. Tell them what you have to offer and how much is costs. Sell them on the benefits. When you close a sale, it’s because you effectively bought a lead. A targeted lead.
Do You Worry Too Much?
An article at Marketing Pilgrim says that small business owners worry about obtaining new customers. In fact, they lay awake at night thinking about it.
Is that you? Do you lay awake at night worrying about where your next customer is coming from? Don’t. It could come from any number of sources – if you take action.
Prospecting for new clients takes time. And it is costly. More costly, in fact, than retaining the customers you already have. But if you don’t do it, what will happen? Many small businesses find out what happens when they are no longer providing a service after two to five years.
You can’t let worry freeze you. Running a small business is about taking action to attract new customers and keep the ones you have happy. Here are a few tactics that other small business owners have used to do just that:
- Built a website
- Employed search engine optimization on their website
- Drove traffic with pay per click advertising
- Produced online videos
- Engaged in e-mail marketing
- Spent time on social media
All of these tactics are effective if employed correctly. They’re not the only tactics that work, but they do work. They are much more effective than worrying. So stop worrying and start taking action.
Is Local PPC Effective?
We’ve extolled the virtues of pay per click advertising over and over again. We’ve also praised the benefits of local search marketing. But what about local PPC? Is it all that?
Yes, it is. And a bag of potato chips too.
Our take on local and PPC marketing is that you should always drill down as far as you can in any channel you are trying to develop. If you are optimizing your website for search traffic and you are a business that caters to a local clientele, then you should be targeting your SEO efforts to local traffic. If you are using PPC, then you should be targeting your PPC efforts to local traffic as well.
This drill down is much more effective, believe it or not, than the alternative. Just think about it:
If you sell widgets and you write your PPC ads to appeal to people searching for widgets without a local geotargeting key phrase, then you’ll be paying for traffic that you may not want. But if you sell widgets in your local shop and you want to reach a strictly local business, then local PPC makes a heck of a lot of sense. Geotarget your ads and you’ll pay only for local clicks, not global.
Not only is local PPC effective, but it is often more effective.
What’s An Internet Marketing Plan Made Of?
I’m convinced, after years of being in this business, that an Internet marketing plan is something that every business would benefit from. In most cases, a company that has an established marketing budget can get more mileage from their marketing with less outlay if they transfer some of that budget into Internet marketing. But what does an Internet marketing plan consist of?
Of course, every business is different. Therefore, every Internet marketing plan will be different. The first step is to determine the needs of your market and approach those needs with an open mind.
Once we’ve established your priorities and the needs of your market, your Internet marketing plan could consist of any of the following special tactics:
- Pay per click marketing – PPC is a pay-as-you-go marketing tactic. You buy clicks and send them to your important landing pages. It’s very effective and costs are determined by how much you are willing to pay per click.
- Search engine optimization – SEO is the long-term tactic. We’ll help you rank your web pages in Google, Bing, and other search engines in order to attract the right customers.
- Social Media Optimization – SMO is a different kind of Internet marketing. It’s about building relationships through connections off of your website.
- Custom Web Design – Your website should be a reflection of your business and your values.
- Online Video Marketing – Online videos are the 21st century equivalent to 20th century TV advertising – only better.
When it comes to developing an Internet marketing plan, the strategies you use depend on your market, your business, and your goals. Talk to someone who has designed a custom Internet marketing plan more than a few times.
Google Analytics And Page Load Time
Google Analytics is now tracking page load time. This is significant for a number of reasons.
First, conversion rate. It is now widely believed that page load time affects conversion rates. After all, site visitors will not wait long for your page to load. You have about eight seconds to capture their attention. Anything beyond that and they’re off to some place else. This is true whether they arrive on your landing page from an organic search engine listing or a pay-per-click ad.
Secondly, page load speed affects your pay-per-click quality score. There is no doubt about it. If a competitor’s website loads faster than yours and you are both bidding on the same keywords, the slower loading landing page will likely rank lower in the ad placement resulting in fewer clicks.
Thirdly, you will likely lose organic search rankings too. The jury is still out on whether Google uses page load time to determine search engine rankings, but I’m betting that they do. If that is the case, then you will see fewer click-throughs in addition to a lower conversion rate.
What all this boils down to is less traffic to your sub-par pages, and fewer conversions on the traffic you do get.
If you haven’t paid attention to your page load times until now, you should start thinking about it right away. Track and measure those page load times and fix your deficiencies – before they fix you.
PPC Or Social Media: Which Is Better?
Over the years, many Internet marketers have compared search engine optimization with pay per click advertising and offered their opinions on which is better. It’s not an apples to apples comparison, but at least the fruit are in the same family. Both rely upon keyword research and use search engine marketing principles. But what about a comparison between PPC and social media? How would that fare?
While the comparison between PPC and SEO is more akin to a comparison between a lemon and a lime, the comparison between PPC and social media optimization is like a comparison between a raison and a tomato. Both may be fruit, but they have very little in common.
Social media, for instance, does not require keywords in order to be effective; PPC does. That’s not to say that a social media campaign cannot incorporate keywords. If social media is keyword-based, it can influence your search engine rankings. The jury is still out on whether PPC influences such rankings.
Another difference between social media marketing and PPC is that social media is about building relationships. PPC is about driving traffic. Period.
You can develop a relationship on social media and lead your prospect to a sale right there on Facebook or Twitter without ever getting them to your website. With PPC, your goal is to get them to your website or landing page. Period.
PPC is better for short term results. Social media is a marathon. Can short term results happen? Yes, but if you don’t get short term results in PPC, you’ve failed. Not so in social media.
Both social media and PPC can be effective, but the threshold for success on PPC is much higher. You can expect lesser results on social media and still be effective. Plus, it’s easier to measure results with pay-per-click marketing.
Would I discourage you from using either channel? No. I think you should use both deliberately. But understand their differences before you do.
7 Online Marketing Strategies You Can’t Ignore
Ask anyone who has been around for 40 years or longer and you’ll find that the ways of marketing a business have changed. What worked in 1960 was different than what worked in 1980 and what worked in 1980 isn’t what worked in 2000. Even the marketing strategies used today aren’t the same as what worked in 2000.
Here are 7 online marketing strategies that work today and that will likely work ten years from now.
- Search engine optimization – Build a website and make sure each web page is optimized for search engine traffic.
- Pay per click marketing – Spend your money on clicks for a speedy response to your message and watch your income rise.
- Social media marketing – Use social bookmarking and social networking to connect off of your website, then drive that traffic to your web pages.
- Video marketing – Online video marketing has arrived in full force. Engage with your audience on YouTube and other video marketing websites.
- Start a blog – Write to your blog every day. The search engines love the fresh daily content.
- Article marketing – Write articles and distribute them online to websites within your niche. You’ll build your reputation and build links to your website.
- Claim your local business listing – Each major search engine has a local business listing associated with their Maps feature. Claim your listing if you are a local business.
There is no substitute for these 7 online marketing strategies. You can do more, but I wouldn’t dare do less.
Using PPC To Narrow Your Keyword List
If you were to use your entire keyword list for a natural search marketing campaign, it would cost you a fortune. And you might spend a year or two learning which keywords are performing best and which ones are more profitable. We can do that in a month or less with pay-per-click advertising.
By using PPC to test your keywords, we can group those keywords into tight target groups and test them against different ads and landing pages. Using a multivariate approach helps us to gain a better understanding of your keyword effectiveness.
Let’s take an example: If you have three landing pages and five ads that can be rotated to test your keyword list and find that you have one keyword that performs well consistently on all ad and landing page combinations, then we know that’s a strong keyword. But if another keyword consistently fails to achieve any meaningful results, then we know it’s a weak keyword. We can strike it from your list and not waste our time creating content for natural search.
This approach saves you money and time. You will not have to wait a year to determine that certain keywords are ineffective for natural search and the small investment in PPC you make to determine that will save you tons of money on the back end.
How Facebook Is Turning PPC On Its Ear
A few years ago, if you wanted to advertise using a pay-per-click model, you either had to go with Google or opt for one of the smaller search engines, pay less, and get less traffic. In fact, that wasn’t too long ago. But now, Facebook advertising is growing at a very rapid pace and seems to be threatening Google’s dominance. One thing that could tip the balance for advertising is real-time advertising.
According to AdAge, Facebook has started experimenting with real-time PPC ads.
It works like this: You post a status update that says, “I love peanut butter sandwiches.” In that instant, an ad appears on your wall promoting peanut butter. Maybe it’s Jif, maybe it’s Peter Pan, but you know it’s peanut butter. Would you click the ad?
I’m guessing that many users would click the ad – probably enough to make it worthwhile to advertisers to spend money on real-time advertising.
The article doesn’t say whether real-time ads would cost more than regular PPC ads, but if the value is there, it might be worth paying more. Virtually anything can be promoted in real time just based on users’ posting habits. This takes PPC advertising to a new level and it could push Facebook ahead of Google as the preferred PPC provider.
There’s Still A Lot Of Life In Email Marketing
While most online businesses are stressing over SEO, social media marketing, and perhaps even pay per click campaigns, email marketing rolls along delivering a steady flow of targeted traffic. Email marketing suffers from an image problem in some sectors. First, it is viewed as being too hard. Secondly, it is viewed as being below the old-fashioned junk mail that still floods our snail mail boxes.
These are both misconceptions that need clarifying. Let’s take the second point first. Today’s email marketing campaigns are as much controlled by the receiver as it is the sender. If you run your email campaigns correctly, then the only email addresses you have are those who have opted in – and they always have the opportunity to opt out again whenever they want. As to junk mail, that depends on you. You can choose to send junk, or you can choose to send newsletters that receivers will read and find useful.
Is email marketing too hard? Hard is probably too strong a word. There are several services available that will handle the grunt work for you. That is, collecting and storing the email addresses. You just need to make a form available to your visitors, and they will do the rest.
You actual marketing emails are up to you. They can be very simple and very plain emails inviting your recipients to come back to your website, perhaps offering discounts or special offers. You can also make your newsletters quite professional by hiring a specialist in this field.
Email marketing is neither hard nor junk mail. A recent report has highlighted how successful promotional emails are in relation to search and social media marketing. If you haven’t tried before, I suggest you do a little research.
Expanding Your Business and Pay Per Click Campaign Internationally
There are many businesses that are not aware that pay per click advertising can be run internationally. Back in December, Google released a new website that could make life for businesses looking to expand internationally a whole lot easier. The appropriately named Google Ads for Global Advertisers website acts as a central hub for all of the tools required to run successful international campaigns.
Of special interest to advertisers with only a little experience with international markets is a new tool, the Global Market Finder. This tool has the potential wow factor for those advertisers who may at least be exploring international options. Enter your keyword and the new tool will automatically translate it into 56 different languages, and then use Google search data to determine which countries have a high demand for that keyword.
As with other Google tools, you can see the search trend data, what competition there is, and the estimated price for your keywords. For many businesses, you may find that trading internationally has a lower cost per click while delivering similar conversion rates – the difference being either more profit, or more funds to up your keyword bid price locally.
There are a lot of businesses that could possibly investigate including overseas trade in their business development program. Google’s new website will certainly make life a little easier when it comes to research. The only concern I have is the use of translation software, especially for those looking to target two or three word keyword phrases. Translation software can often make a real meal of these translations, often with interesting results. Before proceeding with a pay per click campaign in another language, check on the translation first – just to be on the safe side. Have you ever considered expanding internationally? For many businesses, there is a whole new marketing waiting for them.
SEO Is Only One Link In The Internet Marketing Chain
SEO is not Internet marketing. In fact, SEO is just one link in what is an ever growing chain of Internet marketing options. There are some online businesses that are quite profitable, yet they have not done any ounce of search engine optimization, they have the other links to be profitable. So what are those other ‘links’ in the chain? Here are a handful of marketing options that should keep you occupied for a while.
Pay-per-click advertising. There are many businesses that prefer the targeted traffic that comes from PPC advertising. It can be easy to measure your ROI, and you have complete control of your spending.
Social Media Marketing. There are some niches that are more suited to social media marketing than others. Some businesses can survive by attracting customers through social media rather than search.
Email Marketing. Newsletters have long been a popular channel for marketers. Email marketing has proven to be highly successful for some online businesses, particularly those that are catalog-based.
Offline Marketing. Large corporations still use traditional offline marketing strategies. Online businesses are now finding that some of these channels are well suited for promoting their online businesses.
Blogs. Blogs are certainly not dead. In fact, blogs are becoming a favorite place for many that are researching products and brands before making decisions on where to spend their money. Blogs are also an excellent way for your online business to connect with the social side of the web.
Businesses, both online and offline, that can harness all of those links in the Internet marketing chain are going from strength to strength. That doesn’t mean you need to utilize all of them, but if you can determine which of those options are best suited to your niche, you can focus your attention on building your presence and building your business – to success.
Google Tweaks Adwords For Improved CTR
Google has made a number of minor tweaks to their Adwords pay-per-click advertising program. The aim is to increase clicks, thus driving more revenue to Google, while it is hoped it will also drive more revenue to advertisers. Whether or not it does is open to debate although one change, relating to site links for those that use them, should see improved CTR and with it improved sales.
Do you include site links in your Adwords campaign? It is certainly worth having a closer look if you don’t. Site links allow you add extra links to your Adwords ad unit – up to ten for a campaign. Google has, in the past, shown the top four links in any ad unit displayed. Google has now changed this and will automatically rotate these links based on historical performance. This is good news for website owners who have several pages they want to drive traffic to.
In other changes, Google will change the way that domain URLs are displayed. Over the next week Google will modify all ad units displayed in search results so that the domain URL is all in lower case. This is to match the way domain URLs are displayed in search results. According to Google:
In any given month, we experiment with hundreds of subtle variations of the Google search results page, testing everything from font sizes and colors to layouts and spacing, as well as dozens of other variables. Recently, we found that by standardizing the look of the URLs on the page, we were able to improve many of our user metrics, including ad clickthrough rates
I am not sure that a change in the display of URLs will make a huge difference in click through rates, but then, any improvement is bound to be welcome.
The final modification will be a welcome one for those who have drilled down to really fine tune their ads. Negative keywords, in other words keywords, or parts of keywords that your don’t want associated with your ads, had to be set campaign by campaign. Now you can create a set of negative keywords that can be used with multiple campaigns. That will make life a little easier for Adwords users.
Of course, there are many Adwords users that don’t use site links or negative keyword lists when they really should. This could be costing them a significant amount when it comes to wasted or lost clicks. If you don’t completely understand how to use them, then consider working with a team of pay-per-click management specialists to fine tune your Adwords campaign.
Building An Online Business Without SEO
Can you build an online business without the help of free traffic from search engines? In simple terms, the answer is a resounding “Yes.” In fact, most online businesses are built without the help of search engine traffic – at least, the free organic traffic that comes from search results. The reason, it often takes months before a website’s pages start to appear on the front page of search results.
If that’s the case, can you continue to run a business successfully without traffic from organic search results? Again, the answer has to be yes – if you’re prepared to work at it. There are many businesses surviving on pay per click marketing including pay per click from minor search engines where ‘quality scores’ are not an issue.
The biggest move in non-search marketing is social media marketing, particularly sites such as YouTube and Facebook. They say that YouTube is the second largest search engine online. That may be so, but it does take time and effort, and sometimes money, to put together videos that are of an acceptable quality. Even then, there is no guarantee that viewers will actually visit your website.
Facebook is another story. Being the most trafficked site on the Internet, it is quickly becoming one of the major target areas for business. Add Facebook’s own advertising program and the opportunities are there to succeed without search. If you can steadily build an email marketing list from your social traffic, so much the better.
There is, however, a certain irony in building a business without the reliance of search. Over time, your pages will rank (unless you block them). You will start to get a trickle of traffic from search engines and it will have an impact on your business, even if it’s just a small impact. If that’s the case, then why not incorporate some of the basic tenets of search engine optimization. It doesn’t take a lot of extra effort, and the benefits down the track could be significant. Can you succeed without search? Many businesses already think they do – notice I said “think!”
5 Proven Web Strategies You Should Not Ignore
When it comes to succeeding online, there are more than one way to skin the proverbial cat. In fact, you should never rely on just one way. The best Web marketing is a multi-tiered approach that focuses on the best methods and strategies for the current time.
When planning your Web marketing strategy, try to incorporate these 5 proven strategies that work today and likely will work next year and the year after too.
- Search engine optimization – After all these years, search engine optimization is still at the top of the Web strategies that are proven and work. In fact, it works just as well today as it did ten years ago – if you know what you are doing.
- Competitive intelligence – Gathering information about the competition and your niche is an important starting point for any Web strategy. But it’s more than just a starting point. You should collect information on an ongoing basis.
- Pay per click marketing – Click prices are a lot higher now than they used to be. But pay per click marketing is still a good Web strategy to employ. It’s effective, results can come quickly and conversions are high if you are capable of managing a campaign that draws in traffic.
- Social media optimization – Social media is here to stay. From Facebook to Twitter and LinkedIn to Flickr, there are opportunities to engage with your audience in powerful ways.
- Video marketing - Video marketing is still in its infancy. The right video can go viral in a heartbeat and if you are effective in uploading the right video at the right websites then this Web marketing strategy can pay off big time.
Internet marketing has changed over the years, but it hasn’t changed that much. From SEO to video marketing, these Web strategies should be a part of every Internet marketing campaign.
7 Useful Internet Marketing Services
When it comes to Internet marketing there are services that are worth pursuing and services that you can afford to put on the back burner for awhile. In other words, not all services are created equal. The following 7 services are services that I’d say are worth considering today and that will likely be necessary services five and ten years from now.
- Pay Per Click Management – PPC has become a staple of online advertising. You pay for traffic and if you do it right then your traffic will be targeted and conversion ready.
- Search Engine Optimization – The original search engine marketing. There is no reason not to pursue a search engine optimization strategy. It’s the perfect search engine marketing.
- Online Reputation Management – Don’t wait until you need it. Incorporate reputation management into everything you do.
- Social Media Optimization – Social media is here to stay. This is evidenced by Facebook becoming the No. 1 trafficked website online. Develop a strategy and make it work for you.
- Competitive Intelligence – Learn everything you can about your competition, then use it against them.
- Web Design & Development – It all starts with your hub on the Web. Web design is one of the most important things to do in your total marketing strategy. Give it some thought.
- Video Marketing & Production - Video marketing is the Internet sleeper. It’s taken awhile to catch on, but it is catching on. This is where the money will be in the future. Count on it.
If you’re serious about Internet marketing, these 7 strategies should be a part of your plan – starting today.
How To Find The Right Keywords
Internet marketing is about one thing – primarily. How you employ your fleet of keywords. But what makes a good keyword?
If you don’t know, a keyword is any word (or phrase) that a searcher would use to look for information that would be found on your website. Ideally, you want them to find your site and not your competition’s website. So how do you make that happen?
In a word, it happens when you effectively manage your keywords so that you use keywords that have high conversion rates and that you acquire at lower costs.
So the question is, How do you find these keywords?
There are several methods for finding keywords. Some of them are good and others are not so good. Your real goal is to find your best keywords at the best prices. So what are your options?
- Your first option is to go at it blind. This isn’t a very good option because if you can’t see your target then you aren’t likely to hit it.
- You can use a keyword research tool to help you narrow down your list of keywords. This is a great way to find an initial list of keywords, but it’s limited in giving you information on the effectiveness of those keywords.
- You can evaluate the websites of your competition and come away with some reasonable keywords, but those are keywords that your competition uses. They may or may not be good keywords for your business.
- Or, you can wage a small scale pay per click campaign to test your keywords and see which ones convert better at lower click prices.
Our preference for finding the right keywords for your business is the last option. It will narrow down your list of keywords to the best keywords, tell you which ones convert the best, and provide you with information on expected click-through rates and click prices.
Effective keyword management begins with a good list and from there you narrow it down to the best keywords.
How Do You Choose The Right Keywords?
Whether you are conducting a pay-per-click campaign, search engine optimization or social media marketing, you need to do some keyword research and pick the right keywords for your marketing efforts. But how should you go about doing that?
Of course, even if you’re just building your website then keyword research is in order.
First, study your competition. What are they doing? Write down any keywords you find on your competition’s websites. Analyze those keywords with regard to your differences and similarities to your competition. Does anything stick out?
That should help you narrow down your keywords to a niche that you fill within your industry. Now look for some synonyms. Using a tool like Google’s keyword research tool, enter your keywords and look for related keywords that might help you.
Now search for those keywords in Google and Bing and see what the competition is like. Are there a lot of websites targeting those keywords? That can be both good and bad. It’s bad because the more websites targeting those keywords the tougher your competition; it’s good because if there are a lot of websites targeting a keyword then it’s because that keyword is valuable.
After you’ve done all your keyword research, pick the ones that are best for your business. Those are the keywords that you’d expect a searcher to type into Google’s search box when they are trying to find the products and services you offer.
Don’t cut corners on keyword research. It’s an important part of your online marketing plan.
How Often Do You Check Your PPC Campaigns?
If you run pay per click marketing campaigns and you aren’t checking in on them every single day (or more often) then you are probably losing money. You cannot run a PPC campaign and just let it sit.
Managing a PPC campaign is time consuming. You can’t just allocate money for your campaigns, select your keywords, write your ads and then forget about it. It requires constant monitoring.
To manage a PPC campaign effectively you’ve got to narrow down your keywords and see which ones are working for you. You can’t do that if you aren’t checking in. You should check your campaigns at least once daily. Find out which keywords are most profitable, which ones are getting the click-throughs and which ones are leading to sales. In essence, you want to know which PPC campaigns are most profitable for you.
Until you know these things, you cannot be effective in pay per click advertising. It’s not a set-and-forget deal.
5 Internet Marketing Terms You Should Know
If you want to become an Internet marketer, whether your interest is in affiliate marketing, e-mail marketing or you intend to promote your small business through Internet marketing strategies, then you need to become familiar with Internet marketing terms. Here are 5 terms every Internet marketer should know before starting their IM career.
- Keyword – What’s a keyword? If you don’t know what that means then you’ll have a difficult time figuring out how to market yourself online. It’s a very basic concept and an important one. A keyword is any word that you would like your website to rank for in the search engines.
- Search Engine Optimization – Also called SEO, for short. Search engine optimization is the utilization of keywords and links to help your web pages rank better in the search engines.
- Social Media Optimization – You’ve no doubt heard of social media. Maybe you’ve heard of social media marketing. But have you heard of social media optimization? This is the practice of producing your content in such a way that it has an increased chance of spreading itself around in social media circles.
- Link Building – You cannot maximize your SEO efforts without inbound links. These are links that point to your website without a reciprocal link back to the linking site. Also called one-way links. Link building is the process webmasters utilize to build their one-way link portfolio.
- Pay Per Click Advertising – Pay per click advertising, or PPC, is a form of online paid advertising where you bid on keywords and you pay for the advertising after your target audience clicks on the ad and visits your website. Other forms of PPC-like advertising include pay per action (PPA) and pay per view (PPV), or CPM (cost per thousand views).
These are not, by any means, the only terms you should be familiar with. There are others – viral marketing, video marketing, HTML, PHP, CSS (cascading style sheets), and many more – but these 5 Internet marketing terms are so basic that no one should start their Internet marketing plans without being familiar with them.
Take the time to learn if you want to earn.