Using SEO & PPC Together! Tutorial

This post is part three of four content articles to help you learn how to market your website.

Why does your business need both organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and PayPerClick (PPC)?

You are sacrificing traffic if you aren't targeting customers in both areas:

• 80% of the time searchers go to the organic results first
• 65% of search traffic goes to the top ten search results
• 60% of searchers click on paid ads sometimes while 12% say they click on them always or most of the time.

Use them together for the most effective marketing strategy:

• Organic SEO is a great long term investment which everyone who is serious about their website should invest in, but PPC can start driving traffic right away. Smart customers will use this to their benefit—Begin SEO and PPC at the same time so you are getting traffic to your site right away, while you wait for your organic rankings start to rise. Once you've obtained strong organic rankings, you can reduce your PPC spending, but you shouldn't stop it altogether.

You should never put all your marketing dollars in one basket—it's too risky. A solid marketing plan should minimize risks and maximize impressions:

• If you have high organic rankings but no paid ads, then you are letting your PPC-savvy competitors steal away some traffic from you b/c a large percentage of potential customers will click on paid ads too.
• If your organic rankings suddenly take a dive due to search engine algorithm changes and you don't have a PPC campaign then you are suddenly invisible in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages). Granted you can start PPC at any time, but if you aren't familiar with it, it can take some time (even for a professional) to figure out the most-effective PPC strategy for your site.
• If you only focus on paid listings, you are missing out on the 80% of traffic that goes to organic rankings. Also, research indicates that many customers put a higher "trust" level on organic rankings since many customers are aware that those ads are paid for. You may find that your conversion rate for organic rankings is higher than that of your PPC campaign.
• If you only focus on paid listings and suddenly a competitor enters the PPC market with a big budget that you can't compete with, then you are going to lose your placement and now you are looking at 3-5 months before you can counter that with organic rankings.

Budgeting

PPC and SEO can be combined to offer an excellent search marketing campaign. Together they can help to maximize web traffic, capture highly targeted visitors, enhance sales, and generate brand awareness. By budgeting wisely, you will be able to use PPC and SEO to their full advantage.

• For new online storefronts or websites, PPC will drive traffic to your site immediately. Based on your budget, a good strategy will be to start using PPC advertising, invest in SEO as soon as you have the funds to invest in it, and begin to taper off your PPC advertising as your organic listings begin to increase.
• From a recent study at the Penn State School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), researchers found that on more than 80% of searches, study participants went first to the results identified as "organic." Sponsored links were viewed first less than 10% of the time. A safe bet is to break down your SEO and PPC budget into roughly 70-80% organic SEO and 20-30% PPC. This will help you drive long-term, consistent traffic to your site.
• Set a goal for the amount of traffic you expect to see in a given day. Then, monitor your traffic sources using a quality web analytics program. Turn on conversion tracking code provided by PPC engines like Google and Yahoo!. Information is power. You will begin to see which form of advertising is working best for your industry and your unique situation. When you know where your traffic is coming from and which visitors are converting, you'll be able to make better marketing decisions.
• Diversify your efforts. Remember that the search engine marketing industry is not limited to these two forms of advertising. Additional options such as blogs, press releases and RSS feeds will help you take advantage of the fact that consumers are first visiting search engines when they are looking to make a purchase.

More!

I also wanted to direct your attention to a new tool available at Network Solutions called the Online Marketing Budget Calculator.

What is Search Engine Optimization? Tutorial

This post is part one of four content articles to help you learn how to market your website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of "naturally" driving traffic to your site and is generally seen as the more cost efficient way. By making a website more search engine friendly, a site will rank higher on the search engine result page. To optimize your site for the search engines is to try to get it listed in the top rankings when any particular keyword phrase related to your industry is typed into the query box. SEO is particularly important for e-commerce sites. Site improvements include changing or adding content, improving internal and external links, and formatting meta tags. The most important thing to remember is that content is king. Without enough content containing the right keywords, you have very little chance of ranking well. Used correctly, SEO can lead to a very profitable search marketing campaign.

You can perform search engine optimization on your own site if you have the time and knowledge to do so, or you can invest in professional site optimization work. Here is a run-down of the essential elements needed to optimize your site:

1. Do Keyword Research.

Think you know what people are searching for in the major search engines? Think again. The only real way to tell is to ask the search engines themselves. Google and Yahoo make up the lion's share of search engine traffic. Here are some tools to help show you what consumers are searching for on a regular basis:

• Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Keyword Selector Tool

Choose only keywords related to your site. Check all synonyms and alternative phrasing such as plurals and singulars.

2. Adjust your title, meta keyword tag and meta description tags.

These are bits of code that do not appear on the page for visitors to view, but instead are placed into the code for search engines to pick up. You will want to place your chosen keywords throughout these areas of your site, but be careful not to overdo it.

3. Create keyword-rich page content.

Using the keywords that were researched, write paragraphs of information for your on-page content. You will want to describe your business and what you offer for your homepage text. Give a quick summary of brands and features in your category description, and provide detailed information in your product descriptions. These are all primary opportunities for optimized text. Make sure you take advantage of them. Here are some quick guidelines:

• Homepage: Write at least 200 words of text, including your main keyword phrases, about three times.
• Category description: Your description should be 1 to 2 sentences. The description should include the keyword phrase one time. Write a natural sounding sentence describing that product category.
• Product description: In your long description, add as much related content as possible: 200-400 words will help fill this page out. Try a <h1> tag or <h2> tag, using your keyword phrases. Include any phrases you are targeting one time only. Include variations, plurals, possessives or synonyms. Occasionally bold and italicize a few of the keyword phrases within your text.

You should also consider creating some custom pages of information about your products using your keyword phrases. Be sure to never copy information from another site or web page. Duplicate content can result in penalties from the search engines.

4. Properly link back to your homepage.

Whenever you link back to your homepage, always use your full domain name with the "http" (http://www.domainname.com/) instead of a relative link to /index.asp. This will help increase your site's link popularity.

5. Work on link popularity.

Having strong link popularity means that your site has a lot of other websites linking to it and that the sites that link to yours are also doing well in the search engines. You'll want to work on both quality and quantity when it comes to getting other sites to link to you. The more sites that are linking to you and the better those sites are doing with the search engines, the more search engine visibility your site will have.

• Submit your site to search engines and directories
• Trade links with related sites
• Read more about link popularity and how to increase it

These five basic steps will give you an idea of what it will take to start getting your site listed in the major search engines. Of course, search engine optimization is complex, and the methods for achieving top rankings change often.

Webinar from Mzinga: Marketing Communications in a Social World

Although it might be clichéd to say that social media is revamping the way people and businesses communicate online, it is definitely true. Businesses today need to know about the commonly used applications that are available today. And business owners and marketers need to have a strategy for how they will approach these communities.

Mzinga has a free webinar next week that you will want to sign up for to get a basic knowledge of how to form your strategy. I've attended at least one webinar they offered previously and it was pretty well run and well attended. Read the following description.

From everyday blogs and micro-blogging sites like Twitter to social networking giants like Facebook and LinkedIn, social media has emerged as an essential component in every media-savvy company's corporate communications and marketing outreach strategies. But with so many tools, applications, and websites to choose from, it's important to fully understand your options so you can decide which applications are best-suited to your company’s unique needs and goals. Join early Internet and social media pioneers Dan Bruns and Rusty Williams as they discuss how social media applications and social networking sites are changing the way organizations across all industries approach corporate communications internally and externally.

Would you like to learn more? Sign up for this event: Marketing Communications in a Social World.

We Have Specified Your Canonical

There's been a good discussion lately about a potential Canonical Issue on the Network Solutions Forums and I wanted to explain a little bit about it so that everyone is up to speed. Our top notch ecommerce (v7) development team made a minor software change several months ago based on client-submitted feature requests and the recommendations of our industry-leading search engine optimization experts. We added a canonical link tag to each page. It looks something like this:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx" />

The intent with this dynamic tag is to indicate to the major search engines which choice is the proper URL for the page that loaded. It's possible that for the example above, a search engine may find multiple links to it formatted as...

• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• http://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• https://example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• https://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?ref=foo
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?start=25
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?next

Even though a user loading the pages above would see the same content, the search bots would treat them as different --unless there is a specified canonical.

Google added support to this format to allow sites with content accessible via multiple URLs to specify a preferred URL to be returned in search results. We added this feature to point them in the right direction. This feature is a valuable improvement to help eliminate duplicate content worries.

Clients may see temporary fluctuations to their SERPs rankings as Google re-indexes their site to take into account the new format support. However, given the variables involved and recent Google update, it would be nearly impossible to determine the exact cause of any changes in their SERPs.

The forum discussion revolves around the fact that the home page is specified with a /index.aspx rather than just a /. It's perceived that home page ranking may have fluctuated due to this change. It's certainly possible, but I'm also aware that Google changes all the time and it may be unrelated. The SERPs are showing the /index.aspx for the home page, but that just might be because they are now displaying the canonical choice in the rankings page and does not indicate anything that would affect a site's actual listings.

If you'd like more information about Google and how they treat canonical, please see official Google blog post as well as Matt Cutts' post. In the future, we may be adding a new feature that will allow our merchants to specify their own home page for this link tag. But even so, normal "don't panic" rules of SEO should apply.

Email Marketing Solutions from Constant Contact

It's time to start ramping up your relationship contacts with your current customers. If you aren't already keeping in touch with them via email marketing, you will want to have an option available for capturing subscribers. When crafting and sending your promotions, you have got to have a tool for building your newsletters, sending them to your customers and tracking the effectiveness of your media.

View more about Email Marketing Solutions from Constant Contact.

Local Search Visibility at Network Solutions

Everybody's budget is tight these days and it might be tempting to tighten the purse strings when it comes to marketing. Here is an interesting bit of information I learned today.

According to Harris Interactive, 80 percent of Internet traffic begins at a search engine.

This makes sense, but it is under-emphasized when considering how to succeed online. Simply put, if your site is not in the search engines, you won't be found. With Google's Universal Search, the entry point for small business owners that want to compete locally has changed a bit and our products have changed to meet this need. Our Local Search Visibility service helps our clients get listed in the local directories more quickly. Visitors that use local search to find a site are much more likely to convert into a sale. And right now, there is a coupon code I can offer that will make it even easier to sign up. Use the code BCXXX02737 and the $20 set-up fee for the Local Search Visibility Plan will be waived.

More Information: Universal Search

• Official Google Blog: Universal search
• SearchEngineLand.com: Google Universal Search

Official Google Blog: Introduction to Google Search Quality

Okay, I've only just now gotten to view this post on Google's Official Blog, but from my first reaction this may be a big step in the direction where Google is going to be opening up some of the secrecy behind their search results and how they are determined. This could potentially be a big deal to any search-engine optimizer and small-business owners who rely on their search results. Many businesses live and die by visitors from Google. Get ready to learn more with this Introduction to Google Search Quality.

E-Commerce Pro v7.0 Press Release

I can deliver a press release on my blog right?

Premier Online Solutions Provider Network Solutions® Releases E-Commerce Pro v7.0 Web Site Creator Package

Network Solutions makes conducting online business easier with the release of its latest E-Commerce Pro Website Creator package. A number of advancements have been integrated into the new version of the award-winning e-commerce solution to simplify the task of maintaining an online store.

(PRWEB) – Nearly 10,000 online stores are already powered by Network Solutions e-commerce products, which helped sell over $650 million in products and services during 2006. In order to help even more small businesses set up and run an online store, Network Solutions has just released a new version of its award-winning E-Commerce Pro Web Site Creator package. The new E-Commerce Pro v7.0 Web Site solution is an easy-to-use, one-stop tool that allows users to construct a customized online store, accept and process orders, drive traffic, and increase sales. New features and benefits in v7.0 give online entrepreneurs the power and flexibility to quickly meet their online business needs in a more straightforward and organized way via powerful yet easy to use tools right at their fingertips.

New features that are incorporated into the new E-Commerce Pro v7.0 product include a new set-up checklist that facilitates the process of a store set-up by guiding the user from start to finish. The redesigned control panel user interface makes everything easier to find and use, with a new look and feel to allow for faster, simplified design and launch time. The new point-and-click Web site design editor is easier and more flexible, incorporating click-and-drag options and potential customization of all pages. The Web site design editor gives users the ability to manage and make changes to the site design at any time. Newly integrated Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools can help the site get higher rankings on the major search engines, thanks to a built-in sitemap and search engine friendly URLs for product and category pages.

The release of the Network Solutions® E-Commerce Pro v7.0 software is designed to help small businesses succeed online, says Jeff Zimmerman, Vice President of Product Management at Network Solutions. New features added to our already award-winning E-Commerce Web Site package make it as easy as possible for our customers to set up their online business and manage it from day one with ease.

This award-winning e-commerce solution is designed for small business owners who want a fully customizable site design, as well as the ability to boost sales with incentives such as promotions, coupons and discounts. Network Solutions new Pro E-Commerce Web Site package is available at $99.95 a month with a $99 one-time set-up fee. To speak to a customer service representative for more information, please call 1-888-252-3266.

About Network Solutions:

Network Solutions® is a leading provider of e-commerce Web site hosting with an all-encompassing suite of products for small businesses, including domain, e-commerce, free hosting, name registration, Web promotion and other Internet solutions and strategies. With 28 years in the Web services industry, Network Solutions is committed to providing businesses simple and cost-effective web-based solutions. For more information on business to consumer and business to business e-commerce solutions, visit NetworkSolutions.com.

Digesting Google's New PPA Advertising Product

Here's a new product from Google that ought to of interest to webmasters looking to boost their paid advertising effectiveness.

Google announced the testing of a new pay-per-action, or PPA, advertising product today. It's important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that Google controls so much of the online advertising market that just about anything they do in advertising has real consequences around the Internet.

Get started Digesting Google's New PPA Advertising Product.

How to Attract New Customers With Google AdWords

Here is a very useful article on how to get started with Google Adwords for the first time. An effective web marketing plan will include Pay-Per-Click advertising from the very beginning and Google's system is one of the best to get started with.

Small Biz Resource - How to Attract New Customers With Google AdWords - Small Business Business Analysis

The AdWords program allows you to target your advertising to customers seeking your services by specifying key words with which you'd like to associate your product or service.

The best part is that Google's fee for the service is structured so that you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad -- and you set a cap on how much you're willing to pay. Assuming that your goods and/or services are satisfying to customers and that they will become repeat consumers, the ability to use Google advertising to draw in new customers has tremendous value for small businesses.

The four-page article walks you through all the necessary steps with some well done screen shots to highlight the features and benefits.

More information:

• Budgeting PPC and SEO
• Tips For Enhancing Your PPC Results
• Understanding Click Fraud
• Keyword Density Analyzer
• Keyword Suggestion Tool

Don't have the time to learn PPC advertising yourself? Have Network Solutions Online Marketing take care of it for you.

Google SiteMap Now Included with SEO Packages!

A Google Sitemap is now included when you purchase an SEO package from the MonsterCommerce Web Promotion Team. The packages are outlined on MonsterWebPromotion site, or call 877-663-5169 to speak with an SEO Account Manager.

New Business Cards - NetSol

There are a lot of changes lately within our company, as is to be expected with any sort of merger like this. One small change arrived in my mail slot -- which is also new -- in a small familiar white cardboard box. Over the three years I've worked for MonsterCommerce, my job title has changed frequently, but my business cards have not changed much. With Network Solutions, the entire company got updated business cards.

Old Card

Images have been modified to prevent counterfeit.

New Card

Images have been modified to prevent counterfeit.

The job title difference is not actually a promotion within the new company, but simply the cards catching up (for the moment) with my title. Actually, the paperwork information for Network Solutions has me listed as Technical Support III, which is not really very interesting or descriptive but it works for me.

The logo and color scheme changes have been in the works for a little while as our team works on keeping the branding fresh. So where you see the older MC logo with the yellow eye replaced with a more solid two-tone, this is not new with NS.

Thanks to Chris S., Chris T. and other team members for the work done to design and distribute the finished cards around the office as well as double checking them for accuracy.

MonsterCommerce Live on WebmasterRadio.FM for TownHall Meeting

I personally use Google news alerts to have any new information about subjects that interest me automatically sent to my email inbox. The following story showed up on Sun, May 1, 2005. The article is posted to PRWeb.

The WebmasterRadio.FM MonsterCommerce TownHall meeting is an hour long radio special airing May 4th at 6:00 p.m. EST.

Fort Lauderdale, FL (PRWEB) May 2, 2005 -- MonsterCommerce senior executivesDan Kennedy (VP Client Services) and Jen Heil (CTO) are set to co-host a live "TownHall" meeting on WebmasterRadio.FM scheduled for Wednesday, May 4th at 6:00 p.m. EST. To tune in, visit http://www.webmasterradio.fm.

The WebmasterRadio.FM MonsterCommerce TownHall meeting is an hour long radio special. Listeners will have the ability to either call into the show live or post questions or observations in the Lounge (formerly known as the chat room). The TownHall meeting is open to WebmasterRadio.FM listeners currently doing business with or interested in finding out more about MonsterCommerce. This program is a continuation of their strong outreach program to the webmaster / on-line business community.

"As e-commerce experts, we feel that providing an open forum for WebmasterRadio.FM listeners allows us to show our continued support of webmasters and the industry in general," Dan Kennedy explained.

MonsterCommerce is the industry leader in web-based e-commerce storefront systems, trusted by thousands of companies to manage their vital e-commerce operations. A provider since 1998, MonsterCommerce powers over 5,000 stores with their customizable and integrated services including domain registration, storefront systems, merchant accounts, Web site promotion, SSL security and e-commerce power hosting.

MonsterCommerce also offers Reseller Packages with deep discounts for webmasters with multiple stores. To meet customer needs in accordance with the company's dedication to exceptional customer support, promotion services and design are also offered.

About WebmasterRadio.FM
WebmasterRadio.FM strives to lift the "veiled curtain" of the Internet to bring the business community together through an interactive radio network. Its listeners are a global group comprised of everyone from corporate executives and decision makers to individuals who work for themselves, small and mid-sized businesses to those just starting out. The WebmasterRadio.FM listening audience has a vast appeal to anyone looking to learn industry-specific information from the most successful marketers and technology experts in the world. These Internet "influencers" create, learn and listen in a true community destination. Visit http://www.webmasterradio.fm to join in the MonsterCommerce TownMeeting or to check out the stellar lineup of programming.

Media Contact:
Brandy Shapiro-Babin
303-882-5246

# # #

Read more: MonsterCommerce Live on WebmasterRadio.FM for TownHall Meeting

How Google Can Make or Break A Small Business

Slashdot: How Google Can Make or Break A Small Business For those of you too young to remember the days before Google, there were other search engines, such as Altavista (the first big one) and Yahoo. The reason Google became the most popular is that they do a very good job of ranking the interesting items first, which is important when there are 39000 hits for your query. The Search Engine Promotion business, when it's not just a scam sold by spammers, is mainly about doing artificial things to make Google's robots think your page would be interesting to humans; it's much better to actually make your page interesting to actual humans, and hope Google's robots pick up on that.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Of course, every web site promotion company will tell you that is exactly what they do; 'make your page more interesting.' What I like best about our web promotion department is the level of dedication and research that goes in to improving the site's features, researching the specific company's industry and creating or placing relative content onto the site. They also stay away from so-called 'black-hat' tactics that inevitably get a site banned.

For more information, check out our team's work at MonsterWebPromotion and prepare for more qualified traffic!

MonsterCommerce shopping cart software powers online stores. MonsterCommerce offers small business information and a comparison shopping marketplace. MC's e-commerce software solutions include shopping carts for building your e-business, website promotion to earn top 10 placement in search engines and logo design. MC also offers merchant accounts for accepting secure online payments, e-commerce web hosting and a cheap domain name registration service.