Study Reveals Small Businesses Build Online Presence, but Fail to Invest in Search Marketing
December 17, 2008
According to a study done by Microsoft a surprising 73 percent of business owners surveyed would rather do their taxes than start a search marketing plan. In these times of economic uncertainty the companies who utilize all of their tools to the fullest extent will thrive and prosper, the rest will fall behind. Now is the time to take action and bolster your online presence.
Here is a portion of the study:
REDMOND, Wash. — Dec. 16, 2008 — Microsoft adCenter today released the results of an online survey examining the search marketing behaviors of 400 small-business owners in the United States. The findings indicate that a majority of the small businesses surveyed invest in developing Web sites, but fail to take even the simplest steps to enhance their online business presence. The study revealed that 59 percent of small businesses with Web sites don’t currently use paid search marketing, and of those, 90 percent have never even attempted it.
Surprisingly, seven in 10 small-business owners who participated revealed that they would rather try to do their own taxes than start a paid search marketing campaign. In an effort to minimize the intimidation associated with initiating a campaign, Microsoft offers free* search marketing assistance for those looking to get started.
“Given today’s current economic conditions, small-business owners need more effective ways to optimize their marketing dollars,” said Brian Boland, director of adCenter at Microsoft Advertising. “By investing in paid search marketing, small businesses can track online sales and determine the return on investment for their campaigns, while at the same time boosting traffic and visibility for their Web sites.”
Despite the lack of investment in paid search marketing, the weakening economy and increased competition, nearly nine in 10 (86 percent) small-business owners surveyed felt that they could be missing opportunities to grow their business, while three in four believed prospective customers could be searching online for the type of service their business offers. Although most do not embrace the practice, the small-business owners who use paid search marketing are very satisfied, as 72 percent reported an increase in sales inquiries and 68 percent consider their paid search marketing efforts successful.
Among the participants’ chief concerns, most cited the common misconceptions of cost, time and complexity as major hurdles to conducting search marketing campaigns for their businesses. Other key insights included the following:
| • | Nearly nine in 10 (89 percent) feared keywords may become too expensive. |
| • | Eighty-one percent questioned if paid search marketing is the best use of their marketing budgets. |
| • | One quarter of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex. |
| • | Twenty-one percent thought it would be too time-consuming. |
| • | Thirty-five percent felt they would need an agency to help set up a search marketing campaign. |
“These opinions run counter to widely held marketing industry views on paid search marketing, which recognize the practice as one of the most cost-effective, easy-to-use, measurable and accountable forms of marketing,” Boland said. More . . .
Tags: search engine news, yahoo, Google, ask, stumble upon, seo, twitter, blogging
Getting More Done with Yahoo! Search Marketing Automation
December 12, 2008
There is a trend in the search engine marketing industry toward account automation achieved via automated bid management tools supplied by the search engines. Yahoo! has some interesting automatic management options that we have found to work fairly well.
The first option is its Tune Up Campaign feature. With this option, Yahoo! will perform an analysis on your account that takes into consideration several factors, such as performance history, your budget, and a chosen metric (either impressions or clicks). You will be presented with a list of suggested changes to your campaign, which you can either accept or deny. To initiate a campaign tune up, click the button on the campaign detail screen labeled “Tune Up Campaign”.
Yahoo! also has a campaign optimization feature which automates ongoing bid management. The difference between campaign optimization and campaign tune up is that optimization is an automated ongoing process, whereas a campaign tune up is a one-time event. With optimization, you specify your monthly budget and Yahoo! will modify your campaign based on either a “conversion funnel” or a “business objective”.
The conversion funnel option spends your campaign budget based on a set of priorities that you set. These priorities include customers seeing your ad, customers clicking your ad, and conversions. Yahoo! provides a scale that runs from “Not important” to “High”. Specifying an importance level for each priority will cause Yahoo! to adjust bids differently.
For example, if your main goal is visibility by displaying your ads to as many people as possible, you would set the “Customer seeing your ad” option to a high priority. If generating conversions at a target cost is your top priority, you would set the campaign conversion priority to high and specify your target conversion cost. You can also set a target return on ad spend as your high priority event.
The business objective optimization option lets you specify the value for a parameter: your target cost per click, cost per conversion, or cost per thousand impressions (CPM). It is very similar to the conversion funnel option but is more straightforward. There is no setting of priorities - just a dollar amount for the most important parameter.
If you have conversion tracking in place and know exactly how much you can afford to pay per conversion, or what you can pay to generate the most total conversions at maximum profitability, then you should use the cost per conversion option. Ultimately, that is the most important parameter - what it costs to get a new customer or qualified prospect.
We have found Yahoo!’s campaign optimization feature to work reasonably well once it has run long enough to make the necessary changes. They are definitely worth a try. However, it would be a serious mistake for you to just set it and forget about it. It may be the case that Yahoo! technically does what you told it to do, but it could end up producing the wrong results. For instance, you might specify a target cost per click, which Yahoo! achieves, but it could shrink your total traffic so much that it becomes pointless. So keep an eye on things to make sure that Yahoo! is making adjustments that are going to help you reach your goals.
Tags: pagerank, ranking, wordpress, seo, twitter, pligg, live, search engine news
How to Get Your Website Featured in Google News
December 8, 2008
Getting Google to use your website as a news source is quite difficult, this can usually take several ages and a lot of effort, traditionally this is unrealistic. However there are ways to get your website or product featured in Google news. One of the most effective ways is to have a grade forecast written that is searching the web engine optimized and submitted to appear in the news source.Such articles usually hold links returning to products and or ones to gain traffic. This can vary depending on the website but a boost in income can normally be seen.The aide of such exposure include: Your article making featured in many severe Internet searching the web engines as perfectly as in different critical news aggregators, such as Google News, Topix, Lycos and other shocker aggregators. Brining visitors to your site through the articleAlso speedily Inclusion into Google search is gained along with extra going back links that can improve your sites performance. This can too impress clients and warn competitors this you mean business.This can be beneficial to a whole margin of websites, including entertainment, business, humor, money. Although not every site is guaranteed, approximately all can be featured. Depending on the website subject an second boost of money can be received along with the ‘wow’ factor of making in Google news. Getting Google to use your website as a news source is quite difficult, this can usually take many years and a lot of effort, usually this is unrealistic. However there are ways to get your website or product featured in Google news. One of the most effective ways is to have a quality article written that is search engine optimized and submitted to appear in the news source.
Tags: google, msn, stumble upon, blogger, ask, keywords, search engine news, page rank
Page Rank Transfer From an Old Site to a New Site - Search Engine Optimisation
December 7, 2008
When moving from an old to a new website it is extremely important to consider the old sites existing organic search engine position. If the correct strategy is not undertaken then the old sites position in the search marketplace could be dramatically compromised. It’s important to gain an understanding of two specific areas of the old site before undertaking a strategy:
1) The existing listing saturation: This is the number of pages which have been listed, cached and indexed within each of the major search engines. Each page listing will be producing a level of visitor traffic, each associated to different groups of keywords and search terms. It’s essential to make sure existing page URL’s remain the same or old URL’s are directly mapped to the new site. Making sure that every page directly maps to its new version.
2) The existing link popularity: This is the number of pages which form one way links back to the old site or where the old site has been directly referenced by another website using a hyperlink. These include 3rd party websites, directories, social media sites, articles, news and review websites etc. The Links form the basis of the sites popularity, and page rank. It’s essential to make sure that all links remain live and point to the same active page weather new or old.
Both of these areas are directly related to the old sites existing search engine presence and performance. If a strategy for moving and maintaining these links is not put in place before the DNS is transferred to the new site, it is possible that the new site will receive a massive drop in Page Rank, Trust Rank and listing saturation. It can take up to 6 months to recover from this type of situation and unfortunately there would be a percentage of links to the site which will be lost forever.
There are two main strategies which can be used to prevent this from happening and to maintain the sites online presence:
1) To use all existing URL strings, page titles and meta data in the formation of the new site and its pages. The content, page titles and meta data can be improved or adjusted but the relevance of each page will need to be maintained. With the creation of most new site upgrades, this is the most practical way forward and is more time efficient. As the site and its pages will appear the same to the search engines but just upgraded (i.e. the page URL is identical, but the page content and files sizes will be different.), page rank, link popularity and link saturation will be maintained and transferred to the new site. The search engines will notice a difference in page size, files sizes and file names etc. This should improve search engine interest, as they will believe that the content has been updated, as this is across the entire site it will increase robot visits and should lead to the site listings being updated. This should mean that any new pages will be picked up and indexed fairly rapidly.
2) All of the old websites pages are indexed and mapped to their counterpart pages on the new website using a 301 redirect (permanent redirect) and Mod-Rewrite. In most cases each page will have its associate page rank transferred to the new mapped page, but this is not always the case and it will take some time. Quite often search engine listings will initially drop in rank, as all of the site will appear new and then start to increase once the page rank is transferred. Some pages lose their page rank and popularity and it’s difficult to predict the reason behind this. Inbound links from 3rd party websites will be mapped to the new pages of the website using this strategy. Associated page rank will be transferred to the page but this will not be immediate and may take some time, anything from 1-3 months, depending on the linking sites importance. If possible it would be worth contacting link partners and directory sites in order to change the associated URLS. This can be a difficult and time consuming process and as a result it is sometimes more time and cost efficient to continue the sites ongoing search marketing strategy using the new URLS.
In order to help promote the indexing of new pages it will be essential to create regular XML sitemaps (Monthly or when the site has new content added.) and to submit them directly to the search engines, giving them a complete guide of the entire sites page structure.
Tags: search engine news, search ranking, autoprimemedia, google, digg, twitter, delishio, blogger
Google Page Rank
December 6, 2008
The world today is dominated by computers and the Internet. With more and more entrepreneurs engaging in ecommerce, having a high site page rank is important.
There are a million pages on the Internet today, each one having different page ranks. Page rank, in sum, is a measure of website link popularity. Google ranks pages based on the importance and relevance of pages, though some pages can be seen in context with the reputation of the whole site. The higher the page rank is the more people who get to see the page. In general, however, a website’s homepage can have a different page rank from the “articles” pages.
Business owners and many Internet marketing professionals constantly study the algorithm being used by top search engines especially Google as most traffic comes from this site. Knowing the algorithm used to determine page rank; professionals can now create the fastest and easiest way to increase page rank.
When Internet users search for information on the Internet, they use certain words to find what they need. Internet marketers use all sorts of techniques to find these keywords and focus their efforts to increase page rank by using these terms. Some use search engine optimization methods such as the installation of Meta tags and description to help search engine spiders understand what the page is about. Others take advantage of better web design while others buy text links so as to redirect traffic towards their site. Some webmasters choose to exchange links with other sites in the same niche.
According to a survey conducted in 2005, majority of web traffic to sites come from major search engines such as Yahoo, MSN, Google and AskJeeves, with Google leading the pack and sending 37.3% of traffic to sites. This is the reason why most webmasters aim to increase Google page rank. Pages are ranked from 0 to 10 and it is said that 97% of sites are ranked between 0 to 6.
When you buy web text link as a strategy, don’t expect that you can get an immediate increase Google page rank since Google uses a secret algorithm in ranking pages. You need to ensure that the site you are linking to is relevant to your site’s content. This means that even if you have 1,000 links to different real estate sites and but your website is about music production, you can still get a page rank of 0 because your relevancy factor is low.
Targeting the right audience is the best way of increasing your page rank. As such, internet marketing is more complicated than what most people think as you will need to make your research so you have a better idea about the people who are actually using your product so you can make the necessary adjustments for your marketing strategies.
In sum, a higher Google page rank doesn’t guarantee higher traffic and sales but ranking good in search engines opens new business opportunities for these sites at the top.
Tags: pagerank, page rank, google, pligg, delishio, msn, live, keywords
How to Increase Page Rank: Another Google Myth Revealed
December 3, 2008
In the SEO world there is an addiction. Its the green blocks that appear on the google toolbar that is know as Page Rank or PR. Due to the recent update of this counting system, which is powered by Google, its time to review the real understanding of PR. Focus on this mis-information, which, doesnt really help them get a top ranking
Lets look at the base of information that is Google PR. Much has been written and discussed. Google has used PR as a form of ranking and, for a long time is was seen as a major factor of getting results . If you search for increase page rank you will find many articles, features and opinions.
Enter 2007 and beyond, Google Page rank has created services who sell links, based on PR. Some content sites with with good PR are selling focused keyword text links to those who want links, as a way of getting a higher ranking. Google has come out saying this is essentially attempting to buy a ranking to manipulate the search results.
Also submission to search directorys is seen as a valid way of gaining backlinks .Pricing can be based on the PR of the home page. Here is a statement you need to remember:
Google ranks pages not web sites”
Remember when doing submissions to directory sites and more importantly paid listings, it’s the Page Rank of the PAGE that the link is on, that is important. Keeping in mind that it the internal page has a good ranking, it should send traffic to your site too.
It is possible for internal pages to gain a higher page rank than the home page. However keep in mind that if a site has page rank (of some amount) then it is seen as trusted source of information, both by visitors (if they are webmasters) and by Google
So is there a way to increase PR and your ranking?
Firstly dont focus on PR- in can be fickle and misleading. It is subject to Google changing the rules, which they reduced serveral times at least once a year. If you focus on creating reasons for Google search engine spider, to come back, that by itself will help with PR and ranking.
The simplest thing you can do is change and update your pages. Keeping your pages fresh will be seen as new content and bring back the google spider. The more this occurs, the more likely your Page Rank will increase.
This is why blogs (in general) do well in natural search results because they provide regular changing information.
This may seem blunt, but Page Rank is not the key to rankings. You are best focused on building a site that is 100% search engine friendly and focusing on getting links you cant go wrong.
Tags: yahoo, social media, ranking, pligg, Google, delishio, msn, search ranking
Customize Your Google News to Stay Ahead of the Competition
December 3, 2008
Personalize Your Page NowGo to Google.com and just above the searching the web box you’ll see the text link titled ?News’. Click this to get a standard news format featuring World News, Weather, Sports and the usual fare.Let’s presume for a second that you are a realtor who specializes in Virginia Beach, VA real estate. Click on, ?edit this personalized page’ in the upper right-hand corner and include the keywords for the revelation you look for delivered to your tailored to know page. You might choose Virginia Beach Real Estate, Virginia Mortgage, Virginia Fore Closures, Virginia HUD Properties and Home Interest Rates.Presto! You now have a customize shocker web site too delivers current and breaking Virginia true estate tied news to your browser at a glance.As a web designer and SEO developer I stay on top of what’s happening in the major search engines and the hi-tech sectors.I set my Google news web site to screen news for SEO, (Search Engine Optimization), Sci/Tech, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com and Top Stories.Let’s presume you are a Virginia attorney, you could set your Google news page to; US Supreme Court, Virginia Appellate Court, Virginia Beach Local Courts, Crime Busters and so on.Depending on your career track or how interests you the most, you can personalize your Google news page for virtually any person, place or thing!It’s a great way to stay at the tip-top of what’s happening, while it happens!See a screen-capture of my Google News page !
Tags: autoprimemedia, live, msn, stumble upon, blogging, PR, digg, social media
Why Page Rank Matters for Your Website?
December 2, 2008
Page rank of your website is just a measurement of preference it gets from the search engine. Whenever your type your website’s URL on the search engine that is normally Google you can find the page rank after finding your website on the concerned page. The higher the page rank the lesser time it takes to come before you. But even after knowing all this you may have question that why we are discussing all this at all. Yes it is essential to have a fairer page rank to let your website expose before the user more. Normally user tends to enter only those searches which come on page one or two hardly. No one bothers for surfing all the pages the search engine has searched over there. So only launching a site will work nothing for you unless it has a good page rank. Now your further query can be to know the process these engine employed while giving rank to your webpage. In fact this process is still a mystery for the whole internet expert but there are some factors assumed by these experts that should be followed to make your position better on search engine crawlers. Having a quality content and best website architecture are some of good ways that help your website better ranking. But besides it takes several other niches that should be followed continuously to maintain the page rank. Another thing the page rank of a site is a transitory attribute and it can be loosed if your fail on attempt any time. So it takes a consistent effort to maintain your position on the web always. From beginning page ranking has been much important for a websites but with the coming of lacks of website today it has become more essential to know your rank in this mess. The introduction of Google toolbar in 1995 is a big enhancement towards this issue that can be installed onto your browser to read your page rank any time. Apart from getting a greater expose, your higher page rank has also the advantage over getting advertisement revenue. Normally the advertisers rush to buy ad space only to those sites which have a higher rank on search engine. Of course they spent considerable money to get more viewers to their advertisements.
Tags: stumble upon, google, wordpress, PR, twitter, ranking, delishio, search ranking
Ask.com Seems to be Getting Smarter After Loosing Jeeves
December 2, 2008
Ask.com seems to have gotten a lot smarter after loosing its butler in 2007, bucking the trend of full automation of computing search engine results. Ask launched a new version of its search engine on Monday that has further refined its search terminology, allowing users to get answers by typing in questions the way they’d ask a real person rather than a collection of keywords. The search engine was first launched in April 1997 and has since added several other engines to its stable, including a UK version. The service attempts to provide information in simple question-and-answer format and avoid the Boolean strings which give thousands of matches, many specious, to users of other search engines. Using natural language processing technology and human editorial skills, the programmed attempted to determine both the semantics (the meaning of the words) and syntactic (the meaning of the grammar) of each question. The revamped search engine includes a new user interface with three new technologies — DADs (Direct Answers from Databases), DAFS (Direct Answers From Search) and AnswerFarm that offer users the ability to search the Web using commonly spoken language. The new technology is designed to serve up answers quicker in a bid to increase its share of the market dominated by Google. Ask.com’s uniqueness lies in its ability in field questions from web users as they would ask when speaking to a person. For example “what is the search engine optimisation?” The new technologies are intended to produce more relevant results so users click less. “Our goal is to return the best answer the first time, every time. We think its a better approach. We make your search faster and we’re trying to reduce the amount of clicks it takes for you to find what you’re looking for,” said said Erik Collier, vice president of product management at Ask.com. “The Ask.com redesign is not a game changer. Google has incredible brand recognition. An incredible number of U.S. consumers are in the habit of Googling. We know that media habits are hard to change. According to IDC’s recent U.S. consumer online attitudes survey, 75 percent of online Americans said they had used Google.com in the past 30 days whereas only 15 percent said they had used Ask.com,” she concluded.
Tags: yahoo, blogger, pligg, wordpress, seo, live, msn, google
Webmasters Are Obsessing Over Page Rank
December 1, 2008
Page Rank was started to help internet users understand which page is relevant and important in a search, normally the higher the page rank the better search position you will have on Google. Page Rank is a number form 1-10 which Google gives each web page so internet users know the importance and the Google search engine knows how to position the page on the search engine results. Google thinks the page is on the web. Many people who have a website are looking at the best ways of increasing their Google page rank. An important fact to remember is that Page Rank is calculated on a webpage by webpage basis not on a website by website basis.
To other website owners your page rank may be a source of envy. Given that the internet has grown so rapidly over the past decade, the competition for the best search engine position has created an enormous market focused on how best to position a website for better rankings on Google, Yahoo and other prominent search engines.
Search engines will rank your page higher than one with less links back to it. The formula to increasing your page rank is quite easy, but you will have to work to get it.
1. Join a reciprocal link exchange program, some are free some cost money. Try to get at least 30-50 exchange per week.
2. Write article and distribute them to as many article sites as possible or join a program that will distribute for you. Write at least 4-5 article per month.
3. Submit your links to as many web directories as possible. Submit to 30-50 per week.
4. If you are selling a product create an affiliate program where others sell your product. They will place the links their sites and they will point back to your site, another one way link.
Links that are pointing to your site are very important in the page rank system, each link is counted as a vote to your website, if you receive votes with high pr that will you’re your pr, more links the more votes the better the ranking in the search engine results.
PR does not depend on the quality of site but it is the criteria which measures the value of a web page only. Many webmaster put a lot of emphasis on page rank, and most of the time they will not link their site with a site that has a page rank that is lower than their own in the fear it will drop their page rank. When you link your site to another website that means you vote for it. To get your PR rating up it is essential to have a significant number of good quality links to your site.
So how do you attract traffic the natural way. Sadly, most of this traffic is not qualified. The most difficult challenge most web designers face is getting traffic to your site. If you do not have a large advertising budget, traffic exchanges can be an effective way to advertise your site for free. Traffic exchanges, sometimes known as surfing sites, can bring a steady stream of visitors to your website, for no payment - very important for a business startup if you want to make money online from home.
Most people believe that the higher your Google Page Rank, the higher you’ll be in the search results listing. Yes pages and or sites with a higher page rank seem to rank better than those sites that do not have a page rank, but don’t be fooled the site without a page rank might have a higher ranking but Google has not updated its page rank on the tool bar, Google usually updates 4 times a year. The only thought on most peoples minds if they own a website is how do increase traffic and how do I get a higher page rank.
Tags: blogging, wordpress, pagerank, keywords, PR, ask, marketing, social media




