Search Engines 101 Paid Vs. Natural Search

Autor: tkdterry

Whenever folks want to store this getting involved in Internet marketing the first thing that comes to their mind is what the difference between natural search and paid search is. Both strategies have their pros and cons but can be very effective as part of a marketing strategy. The following article is a brief description of both natural and paid search strategies.

Paid search is when your ad shows up at the very top of a Google search or down the right hand side of the results page. These are called “sponsored ads”. You pay for those positions. When every you click on one of those ads the owner of the ad pays Google. This is also called “pay-per-click”. The amount you pay is determined by several factors including what you are willing to pay every time someone clicks on your ad.

Natural Search is when you type in a “keyword" and a link and a description shows up on left hand side of the search result page. The only way to get on the first page is to have very relevant content on your web site and links to your site from other relevant sites. This is a long process for people in it for the long haul. There are a lot of companies that claim to be able to get you on the first page of Google. That may be true if the “search term” is very specific and no one else would ever search for it but you or they are using a “black hat” method that could get you site banned from the search engine.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN are really just data bases. When you do a Google Search you are not searching the “world wide web” you are searching Google’s data base. There are two ways to get in to these databases. One is to submit your site to the different search engines. In about 6 to 9 weeks the search engine will index your site. They have software that comes to your site and index every page and adds it to the database. They come into your main web URL and follow the links to all the pages of your site. They capture key elements from the code on your page to the content. These are then stored in the data base. When someone puts a keyword in the search box the “algorithms” determine the best page or links to the best pages for your search.

The other way to get added to the search engines data base is to have the search engine software find you through a link to your site from another web site back to yours. The software, called “spiders” will periodically comeback and re crawl your site to see if you have updated it.

One important thing to know is that each page on your site is indexed individually and each page stands on its own. The ranking are based upon the combination of correct meta tags, relevant content to the keyword they are trying to get rankings for and link popularity. Mostly one way links back to their site from relevant sites.

As long as the search engine can index the site, clearly read the meta tags and content, the better. The big issues come when a site is built in flash with very little content (search engines cannot read or index "flash" sites. Also, if the bulk of the relevant content is in PDF format this is bad because the search engines cannot read PDF. If the search engines cannot index the relevant text there will be no rankings.

You all ready know this but "sites" are not ranked, individual pages are ranked for specific terms found in the content of that page as well as link popularity, (relevant links pointing back to that specific page) for the term that you are trying to get ranked on.
This is why each page has to be giving very specific attention.

Bottom line: Paid search means you pay for your position. The benefit is if you have the $$ you will get instant traffic. Stop paying and the traffic goes away. Natural search is free traffic but it is built over time. The advantage is that if done right, it can provide traffic for a long time.

Search traffic (paid or natural) is the BEST traffic to have because you are being found by folks who are specifically looking for what you have. It does not get any better than that.

Source: Free Articles

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AdWords Ads At Google

Autor: runner

Google is not a whatever market place, over 200 million searches are made every single day. It means that it is like a big department store with huge customer flow.

The keywords, which people use when they dig information from Google, are market segments, to which you can target your ads at Google. When you start to prepare ads at Google, first you have to do a keyword research. This is very important because people search information at Google using keywords or keyphrases. They are the topics they are interested in.

Normally you can use tens or hundreds of targeted keywords to be able to reach enough prospects. And to test which ones are working at ads in Google. Then just skip those, which did not bring the traffic.

The content of the ads at Google is critical, minor changes can turn the pull up or downwards. Use your best and most related keyword in the headline and once in the bodycopy of your ad.

AdWords ads at Google bring excellent targeted traffic very quickly, even in ours, but the campaign must be planned carefully.

It is useful to remember, that searchers are searching information, they are not prepared to buy right away. Those who are, are tire kickers mostly. By ads at Google you have to build relationships with the clickers.

This makes the landing page important. Do not wait for sale, prepare to build relationships with your ads at Google.

Some sort of a gift on your landing page is the best. It is nice to get gifts, it is a compliment. When a searcher has clicked your link, give him a quality eBook, free marketing course or teleseminar.

The searcher must notice the gift immediately and sign up to your form to be able to get the gift. Nothing boring but colourful pop overs for instance. This makes your ads at Google work.

You can raise the number of buyers strongly by giving them a gift, getting their email address and keeping touch with them with quality autoresponder during a long time.

Your gift have to be like a temptation, too teasing to leave.
If a person clicks once your AdWords ads at Google without living an email address, you have lost him maybe for ever.

It is shocking, how many people use ads at Google, but do not think that building a relationship is the issue. Relationship building is a multi step process. In most cases from 5 to 7 contacts is needed, before the prospect is ready to buy.

You may have heard the term preselling. Preselling means telling the top of the iceberg only and building trust with the prospect. It is very polite to let the prospect to get all the information he wants, before your sales pitch.

Planning ads at Google must be very in detail work. Things must be exactly correct, not almost. In AdWords advertising the experience is a valuable currency. You just have to know the details from your own experience.

There are a lot of useful software, which are impossible to list here because of the rules.

Source: Free Articles

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Affiliate Marketing Basics

Affiliate Marketing Basics

Autor: davtom


Affiliate marketing is the process of tracking leads and sales for the purposes of rewarding individuals and companies for referring others to their web sites that convert into leads and sales with commission payments. Usually, this process involves the use of a specially-encoded tracking hyperlink that identifies you as the referrer of the traffic.

There is one very easy way to get started with affiliate marketing. If you've ever used the Google search engine, it's likely that you will have seen some advertisements called "sponsored links." On Yahoo's search engine, you get a column called "sponsor results." MSN's search engine calls them "sponsored sites." In each case, from the heading, you can tell that people pay for those links to be published on the search engine.

These search engines have each set up a nice easy way to relieve you of some money from your credit card, for which they display these adverts for you. You don't pay each time the ad is shown. You only pay if the reader clicks on your ad, which will send the reader to the web site you have specified. You decide on the text of an ad you would like to place, when the ad should be displayed (for example, when somebody searches for "Christmas"), and how much you would be prepared to pay if the person searching clicks on your ad. The person doing the search is then sent to the web site you specified, and you get charged an amount that may be as little as one penny, but typically may be in the region of 5 to 15 cents or 3 to 10p. Google's service is called Google AdWords, and I believe it's the most popular of these services.

Now, if you had a product to sell, you could easily make money this way, as long as enough people buy your product after you've purchased your advertising. If you don't have a product, you can still make money from the commissions, again, as long as the amount you are paying for advertising does not exceed the amount you are making with commissions.

How do you find affiliate programmes? There are many affiliate networks and individual affiliate programmes out there. ClickBank is one of the most popular affiliate networks, also providing credit-card processing services. ClickBank mainly deals in electronic delivery products such as electronic books and software, and, at the time of writing, commissions can run as high as 70% for these products (ClickBank claims commissions can be 75%, but they take a 7.5% + $1 cut, and the remaining money is shared between the vendor and affiliate according to the vendor's chosen commission percentage).

Another affiliate network is ValueClick's Commission Junction, one of the largest, which administers affiliate programmes for a lot of household brand names such as eBay. There are many smaller affiliate networks, and there are also affiliate programmes that are independent of any network, where the merchant runs the tracking software.

What most of these affiliate networks and programmes have in common is that you can sign up as an affiliate for free, and the networks or merchants will send you money when your commission reaches a certain level; in some cases this is done electronically, in other cases through the issue of cheques. Some people treat affiliate marketing as a hobby; for others, it's a lucrative full-time business. Earnings can literally be uncapped, and your success depends on how dedicated you are to the business, and, to a certain extent, luck.Source: Free Articles

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7 Tips To Choosing The Domain Name That Will Catapult Your Business Into An Empire

Autor: Mokj

Your domain name is your business name on the Internet. This is a decision that will affect search engine optimization as well as your return customer traffic. Your domain name will also affect anchor text of inbound links and your search engine rankings.

Some companies have chosen to brand themselves with names that have nothing to do with their business i.e. Yahoo, Google, Amazon, and eBay. It's not that they don't understand search engine rankings but that they have deep pockets for advertising to help their customers remember their name.

Here are 7 tips to help you choose a domain name making you more memorable to your customers and search engines alike.

1. Keep your name as short as possible. People remember names of their favorite websites. If your domain name is short and memorable you have a better chance of return traffic. Advertising your name offline becomes easier when it's something people can remember without writing down.

2. Be clear about the direction of your web business. When you start your business you may have an idea to sell widgets but as your business grows you may find that widgets, wickets and wonkets all sell well. Your domain name should be able to grow with your business.

3. Try to include 2 keywords in your domain name. When you design your domain name you should include at least one, if not two, keywords in the name. This helps to improve your search engine ranking and organic search traffic. Search engines will place a higher value to a site that sells widgets, has widgets in the name and has content that is optimized for widgets. The assumption is widgets will be the focus of your site and therefore provide valuable content to the searcher.

4. Include the location in the name if you are marketing and selling in only one specific location. Are you a realtor selling exclusively in Chicago? ChicagoExampleRealEstate.com, XYZExampleRealEstate-Chicago.com, YourExampleXYZRealEstateInChicago.com all have the keyword Real Estate and the location. However, if you sell widgets in Chicago but ship around the world you won't put Chicago in the domain name. People searching for widgets will pass over your site if they believe, from your name, that you sell only in Chicago.

5. Avoid trademarked names. You've heard the stories of the little guy who buys a name the big company wants. He sells the name and spends the rest of his days retired on a private island. Those days are gone. Now the big companies are calling their lawyers. TheBestOnEbay.com or MicrosoftRox.com are just not good ideas.

6. Look legitimate and buy the variations. Avoid purchasing .biz, .tv, or .ws as your main site. The most respect is given to sites on .com, .net, and .org. On the other hand once you have a .com that you intend to grow you should also buy the other extensions and potentially even the .biz, .tv and .ws. Redirect those sites to your primary site. This way if a customer can't remember the extension he'll get to your site anyway. The new kid on the block is .mobi. This is the extension used for mobile devices and sites providing services on the mobile web. Opened for general registration on September 26, 2006 and sponsored by a consortium of companies including Microsoft, Google and Nokia this extension has already sparked criticism.

7. Ask for advice. You'd be surprised at how many times a domain names sounds absolutely brilliant at 1 am when you purchase it. However, in the light of day, when you've asked some of your friends, it makes no sense at all. Ask your friends, relatives and head over to a webmaster forum. You'll get great advice, learn a few things you didn't know and see your business from a new set of eyes.

These simple tips will help you establish a solid foundation for your Internet business and send you targeted qualified customers.

Source: Free Articles

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5 Search Engine Optimization Strategies for Newbies

Autor: jjarrett

Search engine optimization is a lot easier than you think. Although you need to gather a certain amount of information about your site, preferably before you build your site, once you have the right information, you can quickly and easily build a search engine optimized website that will get you traffic.

Below are five tips for optimizing and submitting your site to the search engines:

1. Know your market.

This step is absolutely crucial. You need to know exactly who you are marketing your business to. If you don't, you can't drive targeted traffic to your site.

The difference between targeted and untargeted traffic is glaring. Targeted traffic comes from those who are looking for your products and services. If you know exactly who you are marketing to, you'll optimize your site for that market.

2. Target the right keywords.

Target the wrong keywords and no one will find you. That's why it is really useless to use marketing tools like doorway pages.

The first thing you need to do is understand what your visitors are searching for.

The keyword terms you may want to optimize for, and what your potential customers are actually searching for, can be different.

Tools like Good Keywords, http://www.goodkeywords.com, can help you find out what others are searching for. The more times that a keyword or keyword term is searched for the better. To determine if you have a lucrative term, do a search in the search engines for the term. Make sure that you search for the exact term.

The more times a term is searched for, and the fewer the sites in the search engines, the more lucrative the term.

3. Learn search engine optimization.

When I first started marketing online, I read all of the guru stuff about buying banners, advertising, etc. The problem was that I just starting out. I was trying to make money, not give away everything that I had.

After becoming a search engine optimization marketer, I felt betrayed. Most of these people didn't talk about search engine optimization because they didn't do it. They simply took offline marketing techniques and adapted them to the internet.

Search engine optimization is one of those rare marketing techniques that has no corresponding offline marketing technique.

It's an online technique. Period. If you want to be successful at it, then you need to learn how to do it. It's not that hard.

One tool that can help you is Web CEO, http://www.webceo.com. This free software works for both PC and Mac. It includes all of the tools you need to optimize your site, and it's free. It even includes step by step documentation to teach you search engine optimization: what works, what you need to know, and steps you can take to improve your rankings.

Read the documentation for this software, and you'll know the most important things you need to know about optimizing your site for the search engines.

4. Optimize your site for the search engines.

Once you've learned the basics of search engine optimization, then it's time to optimize your site for the search engines.

Start by selecting your keywords. You can use the Good Keywords software to help you.

You should optimize for no more than three keyword terms per page.

Once you have your keywords, plug your site into Web CEO. Remember, you are optimizing pages, not your site.

Analyze your site and see what changes you need to make. Once you've done that, you can edit and reload or upload your site to the internet.

5. Submit your site to the search engines.

There's some disagreement on whether or not you should submit your site to the search engines, or whether you should just wait for the search engine spiders to find you.

I stand in the camp that says submit. The reason is that these search engines don't always update the way they should, and although they claim that they will find your site, they may not.

I know this because I had one site that had never been found by MSN eventhough it was linked to all of my other sites and all of my other sites were fully included in MSN.

There are only five places that I recommend you submit, and you should do this manually. Although Web CEO has a submission tool, it's better to submit your site manually.

Below is my list of where to submit your site:

Google - http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
MSN/Inktomi - http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm (Includes Inktomi)
MSN - http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
Yahoo - http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
Alexa - http://pages.alexa.com/help/webmasters/index.html
Exactseek - http://www.exactseek.com/add.html

These sites cover most of the internet. Before you submit, there are a few things you should know:

1. Alexa is part of Google search. You will get better results submitting here first. This site also allows you to include a thumbnail of your site. You will also get indexed faster.

2. Read the information on each site for getting included. The best way to learn how to market in any search engine is to read the information offered by the site. You'll pick up valuable free tips directly from the source.

3. Once you've submitted your site, forget about it. Concentrate on building quality content and links to your site.

Once you've built a site of around 100 pages, start another one on a topic you are passionate about. Continue adding content to the site or sites you've already built. Keep repeating this process, and you'll achieve success in the search engines: targeted traffic, more sales, and a reputation for providing quality content.

Source: Free Articles

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4 Key Strategies to Reach the Top of the Search Engine Rankings

Autor: shakil

Have you ever had a friend call you and say, "Hey, I googled myself today and actually found me!" Cool, you think. You go to your computer and try to google your friend as well. Nothing comes up. You tell her. "Oh, well, you have to click "next" at the bottom of the page. Keep clicking that until you're on like, the forth-seventh page-do you see me yet?!" Of course, just keep clicking "next," why didn't you think of that?

You didn't think of it for the same reasons millions of other people searching the Internet don't think of it. They're either in too much of a hurry to pay attention to anything after the first results page, or they've come to believe that anything after the first results page isn't as interesting or helpful.

Getting your website and business on search engines is a good way to help promote yourself, but getting to the top of the search engines is where you want to be. After all, people aren't going to keep clicking until they find your site on the forty-seventh page. People don't even know they're looking for your site. It's your job to put it out there so it's easy for them to find, and one way you can do this is by getting to the top of the search engines.

Before you submit your website to a search engine you want to first make sure your site is rich in content and that you are avoiding all spam and html tricks. Then, once you're listed, keep these keep points in mind:

1. The higher your number of inbound links, the better. One of the best ways to get inbound links is by writing articles on your niche. The absolute best thing about using this approach is that it is absolutely free so if you are on a tight budget this is a sure fire way to get great rankings with the search engines without burning a hole in your wallet.

2. Pay loving attention to each page of your site, use keywords that relate to your niche in the titles of your pages if possible and frequently throughout the text, as long as it does not affect the quality of the content you are delivering to your visitors.

3. Keeping keywords at the top of your page is the best place; matching search phrases is more effective than matching single words

4. Elaborate graphics are not helpful, they take forever to load and do not contribute to your rankings with the search engines. Remember, your goal is to generate highly targeted traffic that produces a profit not to win the prettiest site award. There are tons of 'ugly' sites making very handsome amounts of money.

Once you've been successful in getting to the top of the search engines, you must keep working to keep yourself there. It is crucial to monitor your status on a regular basis, and pick up the step if your position on search engine result pages starts to slip.

Source: Free Articles

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