Internet Marketing Articles

A Do-It-Yourself guide to marketing on the internet - including how to design a website that is quickly found in searches on the internet - has been launched in Edinburgh. What is a 26-week programme - requiring, on some occasions, a little effort, but every week, and on other occasions, one-off big effort - has been designed by internet marketing consultant, David Bain. Already, within the last few days, over a hundred have been sold, not least because of a series of seminars Bain hosted around Scotland at the end of last year. The course explodes many of the myths about complexity and what actually works in this burgeoning area of marketing, mostly using free advice and software tools available on the web. Six months fitted well with the programme content, and allowed me to cover in detail all the aspects website optimisation I have learned over the last eight years. read more

[Tags], internet, marketing, bain, effort, guide, internet marketing[/Tags]

Search engine optimisation has traditionally been the practice of increasing the ranking of an existing website by altering the content and promoting inbound referral links from other highly ranked pages. The first part (altering the content) can be a bit like trying to panel beat a rusty VW Beetle into a Ferrari. Often to be effective, the entire structure and content of a website needs renewing, including with the coding (especially websites built in tables or Flash), making it a very costly exercise.

A New Beginning

In truth, the best way forward is to completely rebuild the site with fresh search engine optimized text, structure, coding and often design. This way a company can also take advantage of new advances such as content management systems for greater control of content; database driven content to automate the process; RSS news feeds to keep the site current; and standards compliant coding for greater accessibility and usability.

A website may also need to adopt a more sales-driven approach that converts into greater online sales or stimulates a greater response, thus building your customer database for future opt-in mailings. Or it may need to be more interactive and useful to people to encourage return visits and recommendations.

Referral Link Generation Starts at Home

While the new site is being developed, the task of promoting referral links must start in earnest. This is an ongoing process that takes time, effort and imagination. Begin with any websites already under your control. Make sure you are making the most of links from highly ranking pages from websites you own, if it’s appropriate to have links. Then approach suppliers and affiliates. Make sure any existing links from their pages to yours contain core search term keywords and not ‘click here’ or ‘visit the website’. Then try the free listing business directories. Assess the quality of paid for listings, and if your competitors are there, it makes sense for you to be there too.

Online PR is in Your Hands

Many links can be generated through a variety of promotional techniques. Submit your website for review; invite journalists to review your products or services; write your own articles and submit them to publishing websites; create blogs to air your opinions on your trade and use social networks such as Linkedin. As long as it’s ethical and honest, it’s a valid way of generating links to your pages. Dirty tricks such as blog spam can back fire and destroy your reputation.

When the site is complete, continue this process by generating links to specific landing pages to increase their ranking too (remember, your homepage is important, but it can’t do everything in terms of SEO so spread the load).

The SEO Blueprint for New Websites

All new websites should put targeting, content and SEO at the very heart of the process.

These issues must be addressed at the outset:

1) Who is your audience and who is most valuable to you?
2) How will you reach them?
3) What will encourage them to use and return to the website?
4) What will stimulate them to buy or respond?
5) How will you use the customer data to build relationships?

With these findings you can formulate:
1) Core search term keywords and phrases
2) Site structure with key landing pages
3) SEO text, ensuring good keyword densities within URLs, page titles, meta tags, H tags, body text and alt tags
4) Other useful content and media

Then begin the process of identifying and creating referral link opportunities:

1) Within your existing website network
2) On your supplier and affiliates web pages
3) On free business listings
4) On paid for business listings
5) By generating PR
6) Through self published articles
7) Through company blogs
Through appropriate social networks

Always remember that Google ranks web pages according to relevance (the content of the page) and importance (the number of links to it from other important websites). By doing so your website need never languish at the bottom of the heap. And what’s more, when your audience increasingly finds your website, they will be inspired by its up-to-date, fresh, relevant and engaging content, and won’t fail to respond in the way you want them to.

Peter O’Flynn is Creative Director of Marketing Team Direct - the only integrated marketing agency that places search engine optimisation at the heart of web development

Running a home business is something millions of people want to do, but only a few truly succeed at. What is their secret? There are a few tips for ensuring a home-based business will not fade into oblivion.

It is important to note that one of the most important actions you can take to help your success is to start a web site. A web site introduces a company to new clients and gives those who are curious a platform to view the company. Then your visitors see why they should invest in your products or services.

Next, determine your niche. You start your website development with a concept or theme in a particular market niche, a subject you are passionate about, a subject you believe you can make into a business. Then, find a marketing agenda that best suits your product or service and start looking at your marketing options.

For many home businesses a great response is generated through ad campaigns. This is a simple way of getting the word out about your product or service. Take ads out through classifieds, banners or in periodicals or newspapers. It may be a publication from a rival business that will likely bring the most success. Those successful enough to have their own e-zine will have an established base of readers and subscribers. This is a benefit, and as you develop your website, you should focus your attention on building a subscribers list.

For any ad, learn what to place within the allotted space. Some publications online may prohibit animated banner ads and that is a benefit. Many web surfers automatically draw negative assumptions about a company from annoying flashing ads.

Classified ads are organized by lines. Ads are given a certain number of lines with a certain number of characters per line. Make an impact within that space. Use free classified listings available online. This gives a good idea of what draws responses and what doesn’t.

A banner ad online is priced based on size and placement on the page. If possible, self-design your ads; this can greatly reduce your marketing overhead.

Article marketing is a great way of letting people know about your product or service by offering free content related to your product or service. Join a marketing distribution service and compose regular articles on relevant topics. For example, if a business pertains to camping equipment, submit articles about the best camping sites around the country.

The reason article marketing is popular is the mutual benefit to all involved. The writer is allowed an “author resource box,” to place links, credentials and a sentence or two about the author. Other webmasters, in turn, receive free content to use as much as they like, so long as the article and author’s information remain intact.

Blogs are another avenue of promotion that a home-based business benefits from. Post information on the company, product, sales events and latest news. Many people find it very interesting to see what happens behind-the-scenes at their favorite web sites. Use blogs to build an email list and build your web site link popularity.

Email marketing is a great tool for getting information about your products out there, but it should be done appropriately. Reserve this for your subscription list. Many “mailing list,” companies are often seen as tools for spammers. By using such a list there is risk of being labeled a spammer and people will add that email address to their filter list. There are many companies online who will help build a subscription list. They have the tools to compose either plain text or HTML emails. HTML emails are nice to look at, but may be seen as spam and discarded.

Link building is another great tool, but also carries some rules. Build links by exchanging them with other webmasters. To be successful, the rules are simple. First, stay within areas similar to your own web site. Avoid link farms as they will cause the loss of status with search engines. Second, personalize requests to exchange links and be polite. Never demand that a webmaster link up with you. Limit links displayed to 25 per page. Lastly, never give another webmaster a “bait-and-switch.” This is unfair and poor business practice. This is a habit many webmasters have of linking mutually, then deleting the outside link a short time later. Many webmasters keep up with their traffic and a sudden drop from any site will encourage them to examine and see why.

Social networking is another viable option to those with a home business to promote. Meet people in the same profession. This is one of the most beneficial aides to a business. Be open to new advice, tips, ideas and warnings. Networking with others is builds relationships that have an immense influence on the success of a business.

A home business is an exciting adventure, but it doesn’t have to be frightening. The ease with which marketing is achieved today gives everyone an extra air of confidence when taking that first step. With the right organization and skills, your business will be as successful, but you will have to work hard and make the right choices.

David Ogden is the editor for www.at-home-business-world.com, a resource website for good information about home business opportunities without all of the “Sales Hype.” For more ideas, resources, and tools in starting your home business subscribe to the At Home Biz News: At Home Biz News

It’s well known by advertisers that even a small change can have big results with prospects. This is the reason that most advertisers feel the need to test various advertising platforms and packages, but of course one of the big concerns with this type of testing is finding a cost efficient way of doing it.

This dilemma becomes especially important for those advertisers relying heavily on a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) marketing campaign. They need a tried and true method when deciding what keywords and/or key phrases actually work and which ones need that little extra tweak to increase page ranking and by proxy sales.

Luckily for such cases there is such a litmus test and it’s called Pay Per Click (PPC). Experts all agree that PPC is an excellent way to test your advertising campaign in several different ways.

First off, with PPC testing the target audience is large enough that you are ensured of accurate results because you can increase and decrease the test size as needed. Usually 30 clicks is the least amount of clicks you need to see if this keyword or key phrase is converting better for you.

The size of the test audience ensures that any results you get can be counted on and not just considered some kind of regional fluke. As well, the reactions of the prospective customers are easy to track with the PPC system. Using it as your benchmark for any particular keyword or key phrase that you hope might make a difference in your SEO marketing campaign, within only hours you’re able to see either increases or decreases in the click through rates which tell you how a particular ad is doing.

As a corollary to that notion, the PPC system is highly flexible. You can come up with and try new ideas almost instantly, and see very quickly what ideas are working and which ones aren’t. This of course becomes essential as you try out new keywords. With PPC there’s no need to look beyond your own screen to evaluate what is working and what doesn’t in the realm of search engine optimized content.

And the experts suggest that PPC testing is very effective but time consuming as well. They stress that the person hoping to get the most from this marketing tool needs to spend the time to monitor it to make sure it works. They suggest the best results are obtained by a constant tweaking process, and that if you’d don’t have the time to spend monitoring its progress, it might be best to try another form of advertising.

Also keep in mind that high clicks doesn’t ensure high conversion. Track you ad clicks all the way to conversion (actual sale). So if 30 people clicked on Ad for Keyword Phrase 1 and 2 converted to a customer then this is better then if 60 people clicked on Keyword Phrase 2 and only one of them bought. Always remember your goal is minimum CTR expense and maximum profit per visitor. Ultimately the only way you’ll be able to beat your competitor is to make each visitor to your website worth more which will allow you to spend more then your competitors for each customer.

To find out more information visit Netlyte | Houston Web Design. You can also request free information to find out how we can help you rank high and generate real profit at Website Design Houston

Never in the history of online advertising have you been able to shell out 10 bucks, spend 5 minutes writing an ad, and quickly reach hundreds of millions of people in less than 15 minutes. Now, with Google AdWords, you can do just that. Are you ready to connect with new customers today?–Customers who at this precise moment are hungrily searching for your products or services?

Setting up a PPC AdWords account on Google is not difficult, but there are many tips and tactics that you should keep in mind. As head of the PPC division for a high-volume Stamford, CT website and graphic design marketing agency, I can probably set up a Google AdWords campaign in my sleep. But that’s a bad thing, because once monotony sets in you may be in trouble.

For others, setting up a Google AdWords campaign is much more challenging. I’ve tested the Google PPC advertising system for several years now, and I’ve had both successes and failures. In this article, I’d like to share 9 simple strategies I’ve come to rely on and trust when creating any Google AdWords accounts.

These tips are designed to help you create ads that generate higher click through rates, and lower cost per click fees.

TIP #1: Create Then Refine Your Keywords As Much As Possible

Defining and then refining your keywords is extremely important. This means using brackets “[…]” around your keyword(s) and key phrase(s). For example: [cooking] and [Italian cooking]. By doing this, your ad will only show in the listings when someone searches for the exact keyword phrase you have written inside the brackets. Your ad won’t show for searches that include other keywords (i.e., “cooking recipes” or “cooking shows.”)

TIP #2: Try To Advertise Only The Benefits Of Your Products/Services In Your Ads

Lots of Google ads don’t really do enough to grab the reader and make them feel hot and fuzzy all over, which is really what you need to get someone to click on your ad. That’s because most ad writers focus on the wrong ideas. Generic descriptions (like “we’re the premier company”) and fancy slogans are not very impressive to most people, even though advertisers love them. To be most effective your ad should enumerate one or more major benefits that the search engine user will get when they either click on your ad or use your product/service.

Some examples include “Save Money!” “Look Younger!” “Lose Weight!” “Live Healthier!” “Improve Your Relationship!” and so on. You may even consider starting your headline with an action word or an attention grabbing word. “Free,” “New,” and “Sale” immediately spring to mind.

Also, make sure you take out common and unnecessary words like “a, an, in, on, it, of”, etc. These words do not absolutely need to be in the ad. Remember, make every word count. Think of your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and try to use that in your ad as well. What is it that makes your product or service better or different from the rest? Say it in your ad!

TIP #3: Find And Use Keywords That Evoke Emotion & Encourage Enthusiasm

No one likes to be bored and no one wants to read boring things. So in your ad, make sure to use plenty of power words (tremendous, greatest, unbelievable, etc.) and also plenty of call-to-action phrases (try it now, call now, visit us now) that provoke emotion, enthusiasm, excitement, and response. Other examples of power words include “cheap, sale, special offer, one-time only, tricks, tips, enhance, discover, learn.”

Call-to-action phrases are important also, like: “Buy Today And Save 50%,” “Sale Ends Tomorrow,” “Download Free Trial Now.” Make sure the power words and calls to action you choose are right for your business, otherwise Google may reject your ad.

TIP #4: Test Different Ads Simultaneously, And Keep Testing

If you want to market anything cost-effectively, then you’ve got to test your ads. Now, you may have heard that before, and that’s because it’s a known fact, proven to work. With PPC, you should always try to test 2 (or more) ads simultaneously, known as A/B split testing.

Now, obviously you’re split testing for a reason, and that reason is so you can find out which ad creates the most excitement and thus the most interest. You can measure this by finding out (via Google’s analytics tools) which one gets a higher click through ratio. Once you’ve determined which ad is doing better, replace the weaker performing ad with a newer one. Rinse and repeat. Continue this process in your ultimate quest to get the highest click through ratio possible.

TIP #5: Use Laser Targeted Keywords Throughout Your Ad

The more targeted your ad the better it will run. It’s really that simple. So make sure you use targeted keywords in your headline and in the description of your ad. Google will see the keywords in your title and highlight them in bold, but they’ll also see your keywords in your ad, and they’ll highlight those as well. Here’s an example:

Website Marketing Pros
Website Marketing Firm, Stamford, CT
Call For Your Free Consultation Today!

When search engine users scan search results, they naturally gravitate towards the keywords and key phrases they’ve entered. When these keywords are highlighted in bold, this amplifies the power of the words and most search engine users feel compelled to click on the ad. Why? Because this is exactly what they were searching for. This is precisely why ads that utilize searched keywords often perform better than ads that do not.

TIP #6: Link All Of Your Ads Directly To Specific Landing Pages On Your Website

In this era of specialization people want to be catered to. They don’t just want a cookbook; they want an Italian cookbook. They don’t just want a travel magazine; they want a French travel magazine. Your ad should cater to this mentality. If your ad is for a specific product or service, create a landing page specially designed to receive the people who clicked on that ad and who are looking specifically for that product or service.

What’s more, it’s tremendously important to include relevant and useful information to convert those visitors into leads and/or potential customers. Statistics show that a nicely designed landing page with the proper sales copy (i.e. written by a professional copywriter) will almost always convert more visitors than if you simply sent visitors to your home page.

TIP #7: Track Your ROI (Return-On-Investment) For Every Ad You Run

While Google tracks the click through ratio of each ad, Google doesn’t track the conversion ratio, which means you don’t know which ad scored you a lead or sale. So to find out which ads are working best, you may want to try using a special tracking link in each ad to track its conversion ratio. As an example, you may decide to attach each ad to an affiliate tracking system link. Doing so, you can ensure that every ad you run produces an acceptable ROI.

TIP #8: Target Your Market By Language

This may seem more than obvious, but making sure you target the right market is critical. You’ll want to select the countries and languages that will be interested in your products and services. That means you’ve got to exclude all the countries where English is not the major language. So, if you’re selling international products/services (like web design), then you’ll want to make sure to include England, Australia, and so on.

TIP #9: Discourage Tire Kickers And People Out For Freebies

If you include the price of your offering right on your ad, you will automatically weed out undesirables. This will improve your overall conversion ratio and lower your average customer acquisition cost. Sure it may reduce your CTR (Click Through Ratio) but that’s OK. After all, you don’t want to cast too wide a net and target everybody; only your potential customers. In most cases, freebie hunters will never become paying customers anyway. Think about it. Imagine you were looking for a new car for under 25k and you saw some ads for cars under 25k and some for cars over 50k. Sure you may out of curiosity click one or two of the over 50k car ads. But chances are most of your clicks will be the under 25k car ads, as that’s the focus of your task at hand.

There are plenty more tips, tricks, and strategies you can learn to starting and managing an effective PPC campaign on Google. Hopefully, these suggestions will do their part in helping you get some idea of what to do and what not to do when starting your PPC advertising campaign.

Richard Cagney heads the SEO/SEM division of the Stamford, Connecticut marketing firm All Access Unlimited (http://www.allaccessunlimited.com), which affordably provides high conversion marketing to companies aiming to expand and grow in the American and world markets.

Search engine optimization is a skill many webmasters misunderstand yet, getting it wrong can cost you big time.

You build a website with all the fancy “bells and whistles” and you wait for people to visit it. It’s a scenario which is all too common in today’s online environment and one which webmasters, particularly inexperienced ones do over and over again.

So what’s wrong with this scenario? Well, you’ve done the hard part right, you’ve put together a website and now it’s time to show it off to the world. The truth is, building a website is really only 20% of the equation.

The Secret To Generating A Flood Of Traffic

The rest is about marketing and promotion and this is the area many webmasters fail to understand. In fact, most new people coming online get hung up on the technical skills of building an internet marketing business.

Yes, it’s good to have some technical knowledge and this was even more pertinent in the early days of the internet but reality is, today, it should be the least of your concerns.

Why?

Because the art of putting together a website is actually easy. That’s thanks largely in part to the many different versions of software which are available on the market today both paid and free. In fact, most of the software available today is virtually point and click stuff and the only skill required to use them is to be able to follow a set of instructions.

There is almost no need to learn html or any other website code language as people search for shortcuts to getting a website online.

Marketing Is The Key To Online Success

Let’s say you visit a traffic kahuna (kahuna being the Hawaiian term for medicine man) and ask him to look at your online business. You’ve got a website but no visitors.

Any traffic medicine man will tell you that marketing is the answer to getting visitors to your site. Without promotion in place, a webmaster may as well pull his beloved site down and take up fishing.

Your traffic medicine man makes three suggestions:

- get links to your site
- promote it with articles
- start a Web 2.0 campaign

Getting links to your site is vital in getting traction in the search engines. It’s the lifeblood of any successful traffic campaign. But how do you get links? Well, articles and Web 2.0 promotion are a great starting point.

Yes there are more ways of marketing a website but if you’re completely new, then articles and web 2.0 promotions are an excellent starting point.

Want to know how to get a back door invitation to your own Traffic Kahuna? Learn how to get hundreds of webmasters to send you all the free traffic you can handle whenever you want. Register for Traffic Kahuna today and put your free traffic generation on steroids!