How will the recession affect Google AdWords?

The following article is from Shareware Promotions and it is very important that internet marketers read it . This website contains many articles about Adwords in the news.

How will the recession affect Google AdWords? October 29, 2008

The recession is upon us. The credit-crunch has been stinging, the deteriorating exchange rates are good for no-one, and as depressing as it sounds, it's going to get a whole lot worse before it starts to get better.

Perversely, however, the recession is probably going to be quite good for businesses with a Google AdWords account, assuming they know what they're doing.

In the struggle between brain and brawn, the past few years have seen Google lean increasingly towards brute strength; companies who achieve high volumes of traffic by paying dearly for it. And those of us who prefer to use more cost-effective methods of skill, experience and technique have often had quite a fight on our hands.

The recession is set to change this. I predict that as the less-skilled businesses have to start tightening their belts, they won't be anywhere near as eager to recklessly hurl money at their Google AdWords accounts, and may slash their budgets or even stop spending altogether.

This will result in less competition, more clicks, and should even lower the costs.

We've already started seeing the beginning of this trend in some of our client's accounts, and I predict that as the economy gets dragged deeper down the toilet, we'll see a lot more.

There's never been a better time to make sure that your account is in good hands.

AR

Reach Your Target Market Through Adwords

The following information is from the Google Adwords website:

Local and regional targeting Set your ads to appear only to people searching in a particular state, city, or region. Now it's easy to target online customers within, say, 25 miles of your front door. Learn more

Local business ads Get noticed on Google Maps. People searching for information related to your business will see your location, contact information, and an image of your choosing highlighted on a map of your area.

AR

Adwords Costs

The following information is from the Google Adwords website:

Set your budget. There's no minimum spending requirement--the amount you pay for AdWords is up to you. You can, for instance, set a daily budget of five dollars and a maximum cost of ten cents for each click on your ad.

Avoid guesswork. We provide keyword traffic and cost estimates so you can make informed decisions about choosing keywords and maximizing your budget. (Estimate keyword costs)

Pay only for results. You're charged only if someone clicks your ad, not when your ad is displayed. Payment options vary by country and currency. Learn more

AR

Increase Traffic Through Adwords

The following information is from the Google Adwords website:

Expand your reach through the content network With hundreds of thousands of high-quality websites, news pages, and blogs that partner with Google to display AdWords ads, the Google content network can reach users all over the web to help you drive conversions. Choose from text, image, and video formats to communicate your message.

Target the right user in the right context Using your keywords, Google's contextual targeting technology can automatically match your ads to webpages in our content network that are most relevant to your business. For example, an ad for a digital camera may show up next to an article reviewing the latest digital cameras. If you want greater control, use placement targeting to hand-pick specific sites or sections of sites you want your ads to appear on.

Measure and optimize your results. With the Placement Performance Report , you have visibility into where all your ads appear. Review your ad's performance on a site-by-site basis to see impression, click, cost, and conversion data, and use this data to identify well-performing sites to target more aggressively and low-value placements that require content optimization or exclusion.

AR

Origination of SEO

The Web undergoes rapid changes as sites change weekly when new sites are added and deleted. A sample of websites were studied for a year and the results showed that the pages changed by up to 15% per week and, thus, only 50% the pages remained. As websites constantly changed, search engines experienced more difficulty in keeping up with the new content which also increased the costs involved.

Marketers also began to have trouble with their links showing up in search engine listings. One way they could help search engines is to be highly linked to the core by using a combination of both new and stable sites with links from other sites. The need for marketers to generate more traffic to their sites through search engines involves a technique called search engine optimization (SEO).

AR

Source: Hanson, W. (2007). Internet marketing and e-commerce. Thomson South-Western. pp 78-79

How Does Adwords Work?

Google Adwords is a good place to start promoting your business if you are new to internet marketing. Here’s how it works:

You create your ads: You create ads and choose keywords, which are words or phrases related to your business.

Your ads appear on Google: When people search on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may appear next to the search results. Now you're advertising to an audience that's already interested in you.

You attract customers: People can simply click your ad to make a purchase or learn more about you. You don't even need a webpage to get started - Google will help you create one for free. It's that easy!

This information was taken from Google Adwords webpage. Be sure to visit it for more details.


AR

Internet Marketing Costs

Question: How much does it cost to promote your business?

Answer: Well it all depends on they type of promotion you want and which service provider you choose. Here are some different ways you may be billed for promoting your business:
- Free trials
- Fee for signing up
- Flat monthly fee
- Pay-per-click
- Commission from sale
- Set daily budget

Remember to find out the costs entailed with a service before giving out your personal information such as billing address or credit card number.

I will be discussing the benefits and costs of promoting your business on Google’s search engine, through Adwords, in future posts.

AR

Web Page Usability, Credibility, and Persuasion

This post is a summarization of a few more major topics we have been discussing in our Internet Marketing class at Laurentian University; Web sites and their attributes that promote Usability, Credibility and Persuasion.
Research has been conducted that suggests the average length of time spent is less than three page views per web site. With these kind of low numbers being found, it is imparative that web sites create a strong first impressioin and are easy to navigate with dynamic personalization systems to adjust information for the purpose of user goals. In addition, being able to identify major entry and exit portals can increase the effect of customization for the user. Task-oriented sites need to provide efficiency and effectiveness with fast response times, effective navigation tools, and a high level of interactivity with quality content. In contrast to task-oriented sites, experiential websites such as Pokerstars.com, or Facebook.com have the highest level of "stickiness", and are designed with emphasis on flow and attractiveness with greater concern on latency.
It is no secret that anyone can build a website, credibility on the other hand, is a valuable asset that users can detect through things like ease of use, outside endorsements, accurate and complete information. As well, the absence of advertisements usually signifies that there is very little traffic on the site and raises flags regarding credibility. More often than not, experts of usability emphasize the importance of simplicity in text and imaging for persuasive purposes.
I think the bottom line is that it has become very easy for users to identify a home-made web page designed from someones basement compared to a professionally designed and properly executed web page design for usability and business purposes.


AB

Increasing Traffic Through Search Engines

One of the most fundamental ways to create traffic is to ensure that your website is appearing on search engine results. To make sure crawlers are picking up your website with the relevant keywords there are a couple of things you can do.

1. Add your URL to Google. For some reason Google’s crawlers may not be picking up your site. So by going to the link provided you easily fix this problem.

2. Network. Another reason your site might not be appearing on organic search lists is because it is not highly linked. Crawlers are more likely to find sites that have a lot of in and out-going links. There are several ways to network. If you have a blog you can network by visiting other blogs and leaving your link behind by simply commenting on others’ posts. You can also sign up for networks such as WidgetBox (which is free to use).

AR

Importance of Search Engines

For Its Users: Search engines are used by most people to find answers to questions, research specific information, find opportunities, good deals and general entertainment. The possibilities are endless while using search engines.

For Marketers: Internet marketers can use search engines to promote their business which will increase sales, brand loyalty, reputation, awareness and revenue.

So, ultimately, anyone utilizing the Internet will at some point benefit from search engines.

AR

How Do Search Engines Find Your Business?

Googlebot: "Google’s web crawling robot, which finds and retrieves pages on the web and hands them off to the Google indexer. It’s easy to imagine Googlebot as a little spider scurrying across the strands of cyberspace, but in reality Googlebot doesn’t traverse the web at all. It functions much like your web browser, by sending a request to a web server for a web page, downloading the entire page, then handing it off to Google’s indexer."

Google’s Indexer: "Googlebot gives the indexer the full text of the pages it finds. These pages are stored in Google’s index database. This index is sorted alphabetically by search term, with each index entry storing a list of documents in which the term appears and the location within the text where it occurs. This data structure allows rapid access to documents that contain user query terms."

Google’s Query Processor: "The query processor has several parts, including the user interface (search box), the "engine" that evaluates queries and matches them to relevant documents, and the results formatter.
PageRank is Google’s system for ranking web pages. A page with a higher PageRank is deemed more important and is more likely to be listed above a page with a lower PageRank"

For more information visit How Google Works.

AR

Comparable Marketing Tools

Internet marketing and search engines are valuable marketing tools. They allow companies to reach a bigger target market, and with a few alterations, they are able to individualize various ads to suit specific target markets.
However, one may ask is there other comparable marketing tools to using the internet? The answer is yes, to reach a wide variety of people, implementation of radio ad's and television commercials work equally as well.
Radio's allow marketers to reach a number of people who may not be hooked up to the internet, as they are traveling to and from work (primarily when people are in the car). Radios are also wireless making them relatively comparable to the internet.
Television commercials reach a huge span of people, especially when aired at prime time when everyone sits down to watch their favorite shows. However this alternative is more expensive to use and implement then internet marketing and may be desirable for use if you have a large marekting budget.

These three tools each have their own advantages and disadvantages and it is therefore up to the marketing team to determine what media is best for their product and budget.

CL

SEO and The Marketing Mix

A marketing mix is a manager's controllable factors, including, the marketing actions of product, place, promotion and price that he or she can take to create, communicate and deliver value. Creating a marketing mix for search engine optimization gives the marketer a starting point and general outline of what may be done to gain awareness of the product (in this case search engines). An example of a search engine marketing mix is as follows:
Product: Offer a user friendly search engine that allows students access to hundreds of thousands of web pages of information on various topics, at a fast speed
Price: This element does not pertain directly to search engines, as it is most often a free internet tool
Promotion Strategy: a press release will help generate awareness, as well as paying to post a link of the search engine onto other websites that it relates to
Place Strategy: create a well defined web address that clearly states what the product is and make sure it is unique and will not be confused with another web address

To ensure the websites success, it is a good idea to create a forecast of expenses and create a budget so you are aware of how much money to spend in what areas of marketing and promoting your site on the internet.

Internet marketing can also be encorporated into the marketing mix as an additional tool to potentially cut down costs. It can be used to determine competitor prices, it allows your media coverage to drastically increase (provided you reach the top 10 in search engine results), you are able to post your product on other websites that allow free advertising and if you have an online store, your target market will drastically increase.

CL

Marketing, 6th Canadian Edition, Mcgraw-Hill Ryerson. F. Crane, R. Kerin, S. Hartley, E. Berkowitz and W. Rudelius

Bow Tie Model of the Web

It is important to understand the foundational form of the Web. It can be described as a "bow tie" when examining it on a macro level.


The Core: The center of the model is the core. It consists of intensely linked sites; much like a network where starting at one site you can eventually find all the websites in the core through their links. Sites that are highly connected are viewed with high importance by search engine ranking systems. When this important site links to another it increases that sites importance as well. This demonstrates that there is a lot of unequal distribution within the core.


Origination Sites: These are sites that have outward links connecting it to the core sites. They can therefore be hard to find because they do not have many links back from the core.


Termination Sites: Termination sites are the opposite of origination sites. They have links coming from the core but not back to the core.


Other sites: There are other sites outside of this model that do not have any links to or from the core. These are called "islands" because they are very isolated.


To learn more about the bow tie model of the web, visit:
1) Link Popularity and the Bow Tie Theory
2) The Web is a Bow Tie


AR


Source: Hanson, W. (2007). Internet marketing and e-commerce. Thomson South-Western. pp 76-77

Thanks for the memories and advice King of the Hill

Last night I watched a recent aired episode of the animated series King of the Hill (Fox, Sunday November the 2nd, 2008) titled "Lost in MySpace". Below is the Wikipedia summary of the episode:

"To boost business, Strickland Propane creates a MySpace page despite Hank's bad feelings about the idea. Mr. Strickland gives Donna full responsibility over the page, but she fills it with personal information about the employees, leading to conflicts throughout the office. Meanwhile, Dale rents a pig to hunt truffles, loses it, and has to borrow Ladybird in order to track it down." (Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_King_of_the_Hill_episodes)

After watching the episode, I noticed that this episode involved a fair deal of hints and pitfalls of Internet marketing, especially when it crosses the line between professional and personal life.

Specifically (although it is not mentioned by the Wiki summary), while the MySpace page did promote personal interoffice conflicts, it also included an element of customer attraction, retention, even so much such that the 'friends' of Donna arrived in a flash mob to confront Hank when he posted that Donna was an 'idiot' (while in fact that beat the owner, Mr. Strickland, instead). After this, Donna is fired. However, since she still has account access to the company website, she proceeds to begin a smear campaign against the company, calling for it's closure and 'death'.

What a frightening and potentially dangerous concept! Not only to a buisness but even an individual!

Therefore, it seems that Internet marketers and those who have an active online life should be even more careful with their choices and statements in the e-world. Disgruntled employees and customers have been given a very public space in which they can voice their opinions, rightly or wrongly, about a person or company. Given this risk, it would be prudent for companies to evaluate and investigate the online actions of their employees, both current and former, to ensure that no negative campaigning is occurring. While negative campaigns can be countered by positive campaigns aimed at dispelling the misinformation, if slanderous events are occurring, especially when of a threatening nature, the perpetrators must be held accountable to the full extent of the law. Those companies and individuals who do not take these actions only welcome more negative behaviour from these people and risk further damage to their reputation and perhaps more.

Thanks for the advice King of the Hill.

P.S. Unfortunately King of the Hill has been cancelled by Fox networks after a very long and successful run. It is being replaced by a cartoon by (who else?) Seth MacFarlane (creator of Family Guy, American Dad, and now "The Cleveland Show". While I enjoy Seth's work, isn't it enough to have 2 out of the 3 prime Sunday night spots? Oh well, it was a good run.

AA

Most Popular Search Engines

This chart demonstrates which search engines were being used the most by online users in 2006. The search activity of over 500,000 people were examined across the world. The results showed that Google occupied an amazing 49.2% of search shares.

To learn more about search engine trends, visit:
Search Engine Rating and Trends

AR

Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs

Hello All,

This blog has had extensive posts regarding the tactics of Search Engine Utilization and Internet Marketing. I thought it would be a good idea to introduce a "real life" story of a young entrepreneur that has become a very successful internet marketer using a vertical market approach for implementation.
Rob Laidlaw is President and CEO of Verticalscope Inc. He founded the company in 1999 and has grown it from a basement run company as a teenager, to a multi-national marketing authority of websites, online communities, and print magazines for Automotive, Sports and Technology markets. Rob started the company as an ambitious teenager from Saskatchewan working from his home and grown the company to having a large head office in downtown Toronto, Ontario.
Verticalscope Inc. used to produce a group of print magazines under the Modified brand, which I had the pleasure of working with for a couple years. Being an entrepreneur means identifying opportunities when the arise. In March 2007, Rob sold the Modified Automotive Group properties to Primedia Inc., a very large media company based out of the United States. Since then, Rob has focused his efforts building a leading company that owns hundreds websites and online communities including motorcycle.com, autoforums.com, and atv.com just to name a few.
Rob is definitely successful entrpreneur that has worked very hard, implementing and executing tactful business plans that have resulted in very prosperous outcomes.
For more information about Rob Laidlaw and his businesses, check out the links provided below;
http://www.rob-laidlaw.com/
http://www.verticalscope.com/

Cheers Rob! Keep up the good work!

Andrew B

Online User Experiance Decreases Traffic

Due to an increaseing amount of high volume and user experiance with the internet, attracting new visitors is becoming increaseingly difficult. When the internet first started out there were few high quality pages to visit and people would roam the internet, stumbling upon new pages. This exploritory browsing decreases with user knowledge and experiance. This is often due to busy schedules and an abundance of new sites- the task of finding a new good site is daunting. Gaining free media is difficult to generate and there are fewer opportunities to be the top page in a random seach. The key to attracting new visitors is motivating them to visit your site by placing a link or ad on exisiting sites they currently visit.

CL

Search Engines of Importance

If you are interested in marketing on the Internet, through search engines, it would be a good idea to begin your understanding by simply visiting them. Try them out by doing keyword and key phrase searches to see how relevant the results are. But don’t forget to check out their other features as well. The following is a list of links to a few of the most popular search engines on the Net.

Google

Yahoo!

Ask.com

Live Search

YouTube

AltaVista

Dogpile

AR

How are search engines related to internet marketing?

Marketers can utilize search engines for many purposes. They can advertise their websites on search engines so that when a person searches a specific keyword their company’s link will appear. These companies must pay the search engine owners for this feature. They may pay on a pay-per-click basis or a flat rate, depending on the agreement. This is termed ‘search engine marketing’. It allows marketers to direct potential customers to their website where they offer a product or service. From here they can sell their product or service, receive customer feedback, and build brand loyalty, brand equity, customer relationships, company reputation, etc. Search engine marketing will be addressed with more detail later including search engine optimization.

To learn more about search engine marketing, visit:
1) Search Engine Marketing
2) SEM Professional Organization
3) SEM Guide

AR

What Websites are Consumers Most Willing to Pay For?

During these tough economical times fewer and fewer things are being offered for free. How long will it be until websites are going to charge you just to do a simple search? I can’t honestly say but the numbers from a recent survey are not promising. 64% of online companies say that they are feeling the crunch or will start to feel the crunch in the next 6 months. So something that seemed unperceivable just a year ago is slowly starting to become a reality. With all of this talk of websites charging you to use them, a study was done asking Americans which websites they would most likely be willing to pay $2 a month to use. Any guesses what website received 52% of votes?……that’s right: Google. Yahoo was considerably lower with only 22% of Americans saying that they would pay to use it. This just shows how much of a market share that Google holds and how their product is placed in the minds of consumers. I think that the biggest surprise would be that less than 20% of people would be willing to use websites such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace. So, for now, enjoy the free websites as long as you can because they might not be free forever!

DT

New Top Priority for Online Marketers

When most companies start to move their marketing efforts onto the internet they are only thinking one thing: teenagers. In reality this makes the most sense since they typically live at home and don't have bills, they are on the internet for hours each day and they are easily amused. But now companies are looking to the people that spend the most time at home and are looking for something that allow them to take their minds off of things. Who would this be you ask? Mothers. Many mothers are at home looking after young children. What do they do while their children are napping or watching TV? Mothers are quickly signing on to do their favourite activities on the web. In 2007 in the US 34.2 million mothers over the age of 18 signed on, this accounts for 18.2% of the internet population in the US. This number is only projected to grow to 39.6 million by the year 2012. What types of things are they doing online? 85% of the respondents in this recent poll replied “checking email”. Some of the other tasks that they are doing include paying bills/banking (64%), reading news (57%), checking weather forecasts (56%) and shopping (46%). So if your company is looking to at a new marketing campaign don’t overlook your mother and other mothers in general as they are continually increasing the time they spend online.

DT

SEO - How To

The following is a quick overview of some important yet preliminary steps to follow in order to get your website higher in search engine results. I came across this and thought it was an excellent introduction for people like us and our readers to understand the basics.

1) Remember that each page of your site is a separate entity. You need to apply the basics of effective search engine optimization to each individual page. Therefore;

2) Choose appropriate key words or phrases for each page. For instance, although this page is part of the Small Business: Canada site, that's not one of the key phrases I've chosen for search engine optimization. (If you've read this far, I bet you already know what the main key word phrase of this page is!)

Phrasing matters. Many more people search for the term "effective search engine optimization" than for "effectively optimizing for search engines". To find out which key words or phrases are more popular than others, you can use a tool such as Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool; enter your chosen phrases and you'll see how many people searched for that term recently.

3) Give each page an appropriate title that includes the key word or phrase at least once. I so often see sites that use the name of their business as the title of all their pages. Is every page of their site about their business? Probably. But chances are really low that people will be searching for their business' name!

4) Put the key words or phrase that you've chosen in the page's title tag, meta keywords, and meta description. Make sure that the meta description is as appealing as possible, because some search engines actually use this description in the search engine results pages that people will be reading.

5) Be sure your chosen key words or phrase is repeated judiciously throughout the content of the page. You don't want to overdo it, or your page may be rejected as spam, but you need to repeat it enough times that the search engine's software will consider the phrase relevant.

As anyone in the business will tell you, these are the barebones basics of effective search engine optimization. But applying just these five basic rules of search engine optimization will give your web pages a much better chance of showing up on those critical first few pages of returned results.

To read more about the step-by-steps to SEO click here:  http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/searchengineoptimization/ss/seosteps_2.htm

PL

Creating Web Traffic

I would like to take a few minutes and discuss another main topic that we have been discussing in our Internet Marketing class at Laurentian University. It involves creating web traffic which is probably one if not the most important variables when determining the success of a web site.
Because web users are becoming more experienced all the time, they inevitably become less likely to visit new sites without cause. There are web traffic plans that can be implemented to help generate more traffic to your site. Some of these include: Search Engine Marketing, Online Banner Advertising, Social Marketing, and of course Email Marketing.
Creating effective traffic plans will help assess the volume and quality of traffic being generated. A key tool when anaylyzing traffic is using the cost-per-action method. This method is best explained as the number of visits that end in a particular action divided by the cost of the campaign.
Of all the marketing tools used to generate traffic, top placement in search returns is key to generating organic Web traffic. Of course, this also refers to one of our key topics: Search Engine Optimization.

AB

When was the first search engine launched?

The first search engine, Archie, was created for searching webservers. It was launched in 1990 by a student at McGill University. It was hosted by the CERN webserver which had a database where you could search sites using file names, but they were not indexed. But eventually there were too many servers for it to handle. A new server, NCSA, listed the most recent only and there was no longer a list of all webservers.

The first web search engine was Wandex which only searched for keywords in website titles. Soon afterwards WebCrawler was created. It was a crawler-based search engine that searched for keywords throughout the whole webpage. This how most search engines operate today. Some of the most successful search engines will be discussed on this blog.

To learn more about the history of search engines, visit:
1) Wikipedia: Section 2
2) Searchenginehistory: Comprehensive Overview
3) Webreference: Brief History

Guess what? I found that Archie still exists. Click the image below to visit the world’s first search engine. AR

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engines

You Tube

A very popular search engine, often used for personal use is youtube.com. Youtube enables people to upload, share and view videos. Youtube is owned by another popular search engine- Google.com. While personal use is most common, youtube is a source for ads often seen on TV commercials worldwide. When viewers log on to youtube and type in for instance Honda Civics (perhaps you want to watch a drift video), you get a general list of videos all pertaining to Honda Civics but it also brings up commercals, therefore indirectly marketing Honda's.

Youtube is also useful for school projects when you want to reinforce an idea with the use of video- humans are visual creatures and a video helps stimulate interest. Additionally, you are able to narrow search's down with specifics and the youtube search bar gives you a listing of potencial topics as you type it in. It can also be used for self help videos, as some users have uploaded how-to videos.

CL

http://www.youtube.com/

SEO or PPC?

I came across a great article discussing Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click marketing techniques and more specifically comparing the differences between the two and describing the benefits of each. I will add some of the main points of the article into this blog entry but I highly recommend to everyone even remotely interested in this topic that they read the whole thing by following the link at the bottom. 

-  PPC and SEO are the online marketing techniques that are used to attract the target audiences to specific websites. Both SEO and PPC serve as preferable marketing tools for starters entering the online marketing arena. Even though both SEO and PPC have their own advantages, marketers often get confused about which marketing tool to choose? To tackle this controversy, let’s first consider what each option offers.

Search Engine Optimization

• Let us first consider the definition of traditional Search Engine Optimization. It refers to the process of tweaking or optimizing your website by incorporating certain keywords or key phrases. These key words or key phrases are generally words related to your business for which you want to attract web surfers who are looking for these words on search engines. This tweaking is not only related to the home page of the website but it is done on all the sub pages as well to gain maximum results and maximum visibility.
• SEO is a time consuming process in which you will have to constantly update your content to attract traffic. One needs to make sure that all the crawler based search engines are able to locate your site and include the maximum pages possible in their indices. Crawler based search engines generally start from the first page of your website and then crawl into the rest of the pages. 
• Search engine optimization requires you to keep a constant vigil on your page rankings in search results and make the necessary changes and directory submissions through the course of time to keep your website on top. One also needs to ensure that the site is listed in major directories such has Yahoo and Open Directory.

Pay Per Click

• To put it precisely, Pay Per Click is a sponsored marketing strategy in which a marketer or website owner buys visitors or clicks from search engines. In this a marketer selects certain keywords or key phrases and then makes a listing that will come up each time someone searches for that word in the search engine. The marketer pays a specific amount for every click that is made on the listing created by him, which in turn leads the visitor to his website.

• Another added benefit of PPC is that if you pay for your listings in one search engine then those listings are distributed to partner sites as well. This means if you bid for one of the top five positions in a particular search engine then your listings will show up in top positions in its partner sites as well. Pay per click has allowed marketers to straight away pay their way up to search engine rankings rather than wait for the natural or organic processes like SEO to yield results, which take time and efforts.

In my next post I will add the advantages/limitations of each as well as a look at the initial investment required and the ROI potential of each as well as a summary of the articles conclusions that are made. In the meantime have a look at the article: SEO or PPC?

PL

Internet marketing and mobile devices - a personal opinion

Having recently purchased a phone with Wifi and 3G network capabilities, I was shocked to find two things:

a) my pattern of usage has changed. Before I would only surf using a computer and figured that my cell would only be a means to get emails. However, this is far from the case.
b) the number of sites that are not optimized for mobile browsing, both in layout and design and regarding their SEO focus.

First, my mobile browser surfing time now takes up approximately 50% of my overall online time. This was a shock to me as I was under the original impression that I would barely surf at all. However, I find now that whenever I'm bored or have the opportunity, i'll quickly reach for my phone and go check out one of my favourite sites just to catch up on current events. Whether it be checking on a social network like facebook, the news, or sports scores, I always seem to be taking my phone out to surf, even if only for a few seconds at a time.

This brings me to my second point, which relates more to the topic of this blog.

Having recently switched from regular browsed to mobile browser surfing, I am appaled at the number of sites who completely ignore the mobile browsing community, and feel that anyone who ignores this potential revenue stream is putting themselves in a very dangerous position of missing a new and powerful trend. Based solely on my own usage, I can attest to the fact that I have switched my main news source sites (for local, international, and sports related news) from my old favourite sites to different companies alltogether, based solely on the browsability and ease of use of their 'made for mobile' sites.

While designing a seperate layout for mobile browsers may seem unnecessary, as the browser can still read non-mobile specific sites, I argue that the relatively minor amount of investment required palls in comparison to the potential for increased visitor hits as a result of being one of the few / new sites that offer a specific mobile site. This seperate layout is made even easier to create given the popularity and widespread / easy use of CSS layouts, which allows for a single site to have very different layouts, and can be switched by the type of browser requesting the information.

Below I have included some code that will check to see if the user agent is an iphone browser or not.







(Taken from http://www.askdavetaylor.com/detect_apple_iphone_user_web_site_server.html )

While configuring this blog for mobile browsing is a bit outside the realm of this project, I would certainly recommend to anyone looking to expand their potential client case to be sure to take care of the mobile browsing community, as trends indicate that this market segment will continue to grow in the near and long term futures.

AA

Money Well Spent

Companies are continually freeing up money in the budgets to increase their marketing campaigns on the internet. To receive any perceivable traffic from search engines, you must be in the top 30 results, and preferably in the top 10 (considering that approximately 90% of users do not look past 3rd page). 55% of UK adults have purchased something over the internet, 81% of those purchases have come in the past 3 months. It is no wonder why it is important for major companies to spend millions of dollars on trying to get to the top of the search engine pages. This trend is expected to increase; 55% of companies are planning to increase paid search spending in the next 12 months. A recent survey in the US has found that by the year 2013, 221.1 million (69.2%) of all Americans are expected to use the internet. This is 34.1 million more than 2007. With the holidays coming it is even more important for companies to get to the top of search engine results. This upcoming year it is expected that sales online will increase 10.1% from last year to $32.1 billion. So if you are a company looking to increase sales it appears that it would be in your best interest to start investing in internet marketing!

DT

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/seo/search-engine-optimization

How do I use search engines?

Search engines are designed so they are very simple to use. All you need to do is use the search engine that specializes in the information you are after and then type in a keyword or keyphrase.
For example, if you want some ideas for Halloween costumes you could go to google.ca and search for ‘Halloween costumes’ websites. The result is a list of over 10,000,000 sites but the most relevant are listed first. You could also narrow your search by using more specific keyphrases, such as, ‘homemade Halloween costumes’, ‘best Halloween costumes’, ‘Halloween costumes for kids’, etc.

To learn more about how to use search engines effectively, visit:
1) Wikipedia: Web Search Query
2) Google: Web Search Help Center
3) aarp.org: How To Use Search Engines

AR

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Now that our readers have had a chance to view some Internet Marketing terminology and have been presented a general overview of the topics we discuss in this class what we will do now is get into our more specific topics: 1-) Search Engine Optimization and 2-) How search engines aren't just for porn. Essentially what this means is that we will discuss methods and techniques for SEO meanwhile depicting to the readers of this blog the many uses of search engines (both in a marketing sense for companies as well as for personal users). In marketing Search Engine Optimization is very important. For a quick overview I have selected a short snippet from a Wikipedia article discussing what SEO is. For the entire article follow the link I have provided at the bottom. 

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks," the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Sometimes a site's structure (the relationships between its content) must be altered too. Because of this it is, from a client's perspective, always better to incorporate Search Engine Optimization when a website is being developed than to try and retroactively apply it.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search%5Fengine%5Foptimization

PL

Facebook More Popular than Porn

"Visits to porn sites have dropped from 16.9% of all site visits in the U.S. in October 2005 to 11.9% as of last week, a 33% decline. Currently, for web users over the age of 25, Adult Entertainment still ranks high in popularity, coming in second, after search engines. Not so for 18- to 24-year-olds, for whom social networks rank first, followed by search engines, then web-based e-mail — with porn sites lagging behind in fourth." Found this article and thought this excerpt was a perfect example of how search engines aren't just for porn. Click the link below to have a look at the rest of the article. Essentially what we are seeing is a decline in users seeking porn and an increase in the use of social-networking sites (Facebook of course being the most popular). 

Speaking of Facebook...do us a big favour and join our group at this link: SEOIM Team Facebook Page

PL

Source: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1678586,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

The importance of search engine marketing

Following my discussion last week with Mr. W from Back2Front, I figured i'd again take advantage of the oppourtunity to speak with him about a question that had been on my mind.

Specifically, I was wondering whether or not focusing on search engine optimization as advertising would be enough for a business to succeed in the new e-marketplace?

After discussing the topic with Mr. W, the summary of the conversation is below:

Depending on your particular industry, relying on search engines alone to drive traffic to your web site and lead to sales may not be sufficient for running a successful business. Search engine performance is an indicator of supply and demand market forces: If online demand is high, then even low-ranking sites will see traffic and sales, and similarly if online supply is low, then it should be easy to rank high on search engine results. However, if your business is in a highly competitive market, or if you are selling a product that is not in demand or not well known, then search engine performance will probably not be as successful.

The following are a couple of additional suggestions Mr. W provided for generating additional traffic and ultimately sales for your site:

• Cross-linking: The practice of trading links with other (related) web sites is called cross-linking, and can be extremely effective for driving traffic to your web site, improving search engine rankings, and generating qualified leads. Find other related web sites (eg, suppliers, complementary products, associations, etc), and offer them a link on your web site in exchange for a link on theirs. You can include links to other web sites on any of your existing pages (eg, Home, Contact, About), or if you are very active and collect many links, you can have a dedicated Links page added to your site.
  
• Business directories: There are many business directories online where you can list your business in a category or region-specific location. If your budget is tight, there are several directories that provide free listings, and if you are willing to invest in the advertising, premium listings are available in many more directories. As with cross-linking, business directory listings can help drive additional traffic to your web site, improve search engine performance, and generate qualified leads. Free directories may request a reciprocal link from you, so they work just like regular cross-linking.

It appears that while search engine marketing is an important piece of the pie of success for the e-marketplace, additional methods (cross linking, business directories) are also recommended to try and generate maximum exposure for the lowest costs.

AA

What are search engines?

A definition for search engines was mentioned earlier. But they can be described in much more detail. Search engines are a service where you can look for specific information online. Users (the searchers) can use keywords to find the information or answers they are looking for. A list with the most relevant matches will be generated which saves us from searching through millions of hits. There are many different types of search engines. Some will find you videos (YouTube), images, data, articles and other file types, but most search engines will search for web sites.

To learn more about how search engines operate, visit:
1) Wikipedia: How Web Search Engines Work
2) Wikipedia: Web Indexing
3) SearchEngineWatch: How Search Engines Rank Pages
4) HowStuffWorks: How Search Engines Work

AR

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engines

A Few Basic Definitions

The following definitions will be relevant to the blog’s focus on search engine marketing and optimization:

Banner Ads = "A form of online advertising. Banner ads are graphic images that can be animated and clicking on the banner takes the user to another web location."

Blog = "A website containing frequent postings of material, often centered on a specific topic, and typically organized chronologically. Blogs may be the product of a single indiviual or a collaborative effort among many contributors."

Cost-per-action = "The conversion rate of a marketing campaign for that action, such as registration or purchase, times the cost of the campaign."

Cost-per-visit = "The cost-per-action when the desired action is a visit to a web site."

Organic Search Traffic = "Unpaid visits arriving from search engines and their results."

Pay-per-click = "A system of advertising in which an advitiser only pays for an online ad if the web user clicks on that ad."

Search Engine = "A service cataloging online information and providing relevant responses to user inquiries."

Search Engine Marketing = "Efforts to attract web site visitors as a result of search activity."

Search Engine Optimization = "Spending to ensure that search engines rank a site highly on the relevant search criteria and searchers find the listing and the site."


AR

Source: Hanson, W. (2007). Internet marketing and e-commerce. Thomson South-Western. pp 253, 593, 595, 596, 600, and 601.

Marketing on the Internet Through Search Engines

One purpose of this blog is to provide a clear understanding of search engines and how they relate to internet marketing. We will also provide detailed information about:

• S.E.O
• Adwords
• how companies use search engines to market their products and services.
• how search engines earn their money
• successful search engines
• tips and techniques to successfully market your product/service/ideas
  

We will use only the most credible sources for this blog, including Internet Marketing & e-Commerce by Hanson and Kalayanam (published in 2007), as well as trusted websites for the most updated facts. Check this blog often as we will be posting information, about these topics and others, as frequently as we can.

AR

SEO and ethics

While working on this site I wondered to myself: "Aren't there any "tricks" to help with SEO results?"

I remember seeing websites in the past embedding invisible text into the background of their sites, listing inaccurate meta-data in the headers, or a combination of the two combined with an automatic redirect, all of which would add up to not arriving at the information I was searching for. Over time, the number of sites that I noticed doing this decreased and now it occurs seldom at best.

After researching the topic, I discussed the topic with the owner and operator of Back2Front, a web management company who focus their efforts on SEO. When I asked about the use of tricks with SEO, Mr. W replied with the following:

"Think about the service that search engines provide: Useful search results! It is in their best interest to detect and avoid SEO "tricks". Over time, all such tactics are detected, and possibly penalized. Be an ethical web site owner instead, and provide the search engines and human visitors alike with lots of clear, specific, organized, readable content. "

Essentially, it appears that although unethical behaviour may get your site some more hits than you would normally at the beginning, over time these actions can lead to negative ramifications for your site, ranging from being blacklisted to being shut down or forced to move off of their current server.

Therefore, acting ethically can not only lead to happy users who are finding what they are looking for, but it can also avoid a number of negative ramifications that could jeopardize the success of the site.

AA

Introduction to Major Topics

Hello Readers,
The purpose of this post is to introduce the major topics that have been discussed throughout the classes of Internet Marketing at Laurentian University.
Myself and my team members encourage any insight and feedback regarding these topics and look forward to discussing them with everyone.
In addition, because this blog has been created mainly to discuss Search Engine Optimization, it would be very much appreciated to hear from individuals that possess knowledge of this topic.

Since the start of the Internet Marketing course we have discussed such major topics as Networks and Networking, Becoming Digital, Web Individualization, and Web Business Models. I have created a quick summarization of these topics for anyone that may not understand what these topics entail.

Networks and Networking:
The main focus of this topic is to understand the nature of the Internet's content and its most widely used tools including email, instant messaging and of course, blogging. Networks have a very strong influence on internet marketing, and knowing the value of a network is extremely important. In addition, understanding how Virtual Value Activities can turn large quantities of online information into valuable marketing tools. Networks are a social technology and for internet marketers they imply ubiquity, expectations, sharing, and specialization. Developments such as Instant Messaging and text messaging have helped create a new frontier for internet marketers.

Being or Becoming Digital:
In its most basic form, being digital is defined as when all of somethings properties and information is stored as a string of zeroes and ones. That being stated, everything on the internet is digital. The falling cost of digital technology is said to be one of the most major forces in the modern economy. To better understand this concept, we can refer to Moore's Law, created by Gordon Moore the co-founder of Intel which states: Each new generation of chips (microchips), packs 2x components into the same surface area to create 2x power. Computer speeds have increased by 75 billions times since the 1970's, while costs of technology and storage has continued to decline sharply. Digital environments are procedural, spatial, participatory, and encyclopedic. All of these properties help create opportunities for internet marketers.

Individualization:
When discussing the topic of individualization, we must comprehend the importance its ability to profoundly change the way companies and consumers interact. Another key aspect surrounds the privacy concerns in marketing efforts. Understanding emerging patterns of individual-level Internet use, and the trend lines that are affected by demographics. More online interactions means more Internet Marketing opportunities to the individual. Web sites and online systems are now processing individual data and anticipating future usage.

Web Business Models:
I will be discussing this topic in my next upcoming post because I know that this has been a lot to read so far and I have to go to class:)

As mentioned previously, we look forward to any feedback regarding these topics as well as fututre topics to be discussed.

Cheers! AB

Welcome!

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to our blog. We have implemented this blog to bring you information about Internet Marketing and more specifically Search Engines and their many uses outside of searching for porn sites. In reference to "we" it is a team of 6 people that will be updating this blog on a regular basis. We do appologize for the delay and hope to have more information and such up in the next few days.

Thank you everyone for your patience,
C.L.