Monday, June 16, 2008

The Power of Pay per Click and Search Advertising

Did you know that 85% of Internet users use a search engine to find what they are looking for? Now, if 85% of over 100 million Internet users in North America use a search engine to find information, it makes a lot of sense to make sure that your website appears when people are searching.



Getting Your Business in Prime Search Real Estate



Often times when we do a search using a search engine, we are returned an abundance of results to sort through in the tens of millions. How can you ensure your website is among those results? One method is through Search Engine Optimization which is a process of defining keywords and organizing a site to be as relevant as possible to a search term. As Search Engine Optimization is a process that requires time to see results, businesses often want something that will work at a moments notice. The answer to this is through Pay per Click (PPC) advertising.



What Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising Can Do For You



With Pay per Click, your ad is shown among the top on the first page of a search engine's results listing when search engine users are actively searching for your products or services. Searchers will read your ad and then decide if your product or service meets their needs.



The Power of Your Ad in Pay per Click Advertising:


  • You bid on search terms that are relevant to your products and services.

  • Your ad is then displayed when Internet users search for your search terms.

  • You can decide which geographical area your advertisements are served to.

  • You pay ONLY when searchers click through to your website.



The Control You Have with Online Campaigns:


  • You determine your overall online advertising budget.

  • You decide how much to spend each month or each day.

  • You bid on how much you want to spend per click.



Now this sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Let's put a little more butter on the bread and give an example.



Pay per Click is Not Expensive



Let's say a company sets out a sales goal whereby they would like to sell 100 units of a product this month and it has been calculated that they need at least 10 leads to close one sale. For each sale, the company's net income will be $100.



Through our research we can see that 100,000 searches are performed on a monthly basis for this company's product and that for $2.00 per click, the company can be listed in the 3rd listing for a Search Engines paid advertisements.



If we said that in order to sell 1 unit that we need 10 leads, then it is calculated that to sell our goal of 100 units in a month, we need to purchase 1000 clicks for our ad. At $2.00 per click, our monthly ad budget should be $2000. So, from our $2000 spent on our advertisements, we will therefore be making $10,000 this month (100 leads x $100 net income per unit). Not too bad, but let's see what our Return on Investment (ROI) is.



Amazing ROI with Pay per Click



For our ROI calculation, we'll need our Return (net income from our monthly sales), which in our example is $10,000 and our investment (ad spending for the month), which we have said is $2000. To calculate our return, we will divide our return by our investment and multiply by 100. For our example, our ROI for our PPC campaign is a whopping 500%! Now try and get that return from traditional advertising channels.



Get Started with PPC Advertising



Pay per Click advertising is a powerful means of obtaining sales for your business. Even if you are a business catering to your local community, it is known that 25% of every Web search performed is local in nature, so there is definitely a market our there for you.



Whether your business is just getting started with a website online or you would like to gain that extra step against your competitors, Pay per Click advertising is something every business with a website should consider and think about discussing with qualified Internet Marketing professionals.



Friday, June 13, 2008

How You Can Benefit from Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)



If Search Engine Optimization wasn't so beneficial, you would see the number of SEO Consultants that there are today. From the beginning of the Internet, the people that have used it have always started at one place - a Search Engine. And what do they do at a Search Engine? They search for the product, service, or information that they would like. After they've clicked on that Holy search button, they are pounded with an endless stream of results.



Sorting through this stream of results, known as Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), users will only tend to click through 3, maybe 4, pages with hopes of finding what they typed in. If they can't find what they were looking for within those first 4 pages, they'll usually go back to the search and try things again using a different phrase. If they have found what they are looking for, and your website didn't appear within those first few pages, you've lost out and will continue to do so.



What Search Engine Optimization does is boosts our site's relevancy juice. Meaning, it makes our Web site or Web page more relevant to what a user will type into the search engines. Hopefully, through Search Engine Optimization, our Web site or Web page will now show up within those first few pages, ready to accept all the visitors this real estate has to offer.



SEO Provides Targeted Traffic



Search Engine Optimization will benefit you through more targeted traffic. Through careful analysis of competition and user behaviours, we will be able to optimize your website to cater to those specific and niche search phrases and keywords. When all is said and done, your website is now appearing in those important pages and when a user reaches your website, you know right away that they are interested in what you have to offer. Magic!



Search Engine Optimization can Increase Your Sales



If we take the former benefit of SEO, we can add to that a possible increase in sales. If your website is receiving more targeted traffic it is easier for you to make your message more appealing to those users.



Appearing in Search Engines is like 24/7 Website Promotion



That's right. If your website is listed in the SERPs it is constantly appearing in front of your target audience. Every time a user has searched for a phrase that your website has been optimized for, it is like they have just driven by a billboard or seen an advertisement in a magazine; and constantly at that. This brings us to our next point.



SEO Expands Brand Visibility



Think of all of the possible Internet Users in the world. Now think of your website. If you do business on a national or even global level, appearing in the SERPs automatically expands your brand visibility. Users search, they get results, they see your website listed. Enough said.



Search Engine Optimization is Cost Effective



If you are new to the term Search Engine Optimization, you may first see some pricing that you think is scary. Trust me when I say this though, SEO is one of the lowest-cost forms of advertising. Our firm for example, provides packages that consist of a setup fee and a monthly management fee and others that include just a one time setup. For a setup fee you are actually getting a form of advertising that will constantly be appearing on the Internet, 24/7 and 365 days a year. Now that's cheap. Even with a monthly management fee, you are ensuring your place in the Search Engines is maintained and this is done at a very low cost.



SEO Provides the Highest ROI



With the low cost of Search Engine Optimization (as an advertising/marketing medium) the investment that you put in is rather minimal to what you get back. If you were to pay $1000 for SEO setup and let's say $500 per month to manage the SEO efforts, you need to make $1,500 your first month and $500 each month thereafter to break even. If there are 1000 searches in the world per day that returned your website and 30% of those visitors clicked on your Search Engine results listing, and then out of that, you converted 20% of those visitors, you have just received 60 new customers. So even if you sell a $10 product, you have just made $600 in one day, putting you on track for monthly sales totaling $18,600. Now the cost of SEO doesn't seem like that big of a deal, does it?




Search Engine Optimization Benefits for the Website



When optimizing a website for search engines, it will often times increase the speed of the website, make the website more accessible, and make the website more usable. This is because, as Search Engine Optimizers, we will often recommend changes to a website's structure to improve its spiderability (how the search engines crawl the website). These SEO enhancements will also benefit the user experience and make the website more appealing to those with certain disabilities - a win-win situation.



Take These Benefits of Search Engine Optimization and Run with Them



As you can see, Search Engine Optimization is not just a fad or an added bonus. We like to think of SEO as being the most beneficial aspect of making your business succeed on the Internet, which can even translate off of the Internet.



If you would like more information on SEO, feel free to contact our team of Search Engine Optimization Professionals, who will be more than happy to answer any of your questions and help set up a strategy that will work for you.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Top 5 SEO Tips to Boost Your Website's Rankings

So, here you are. You want to know how you can have a positive effect on your website's rankings in the Search Engines.


At the Interweb Marketing Group, we have taken our Top 5 SEO strategies that can have the most positive impact on rankings that will be easy enough for the average small business owner to use.


So without further hesitation, ladies and gentlemen; your Top 5:



SEO Tip #1 - Use Proper Headings! Using page headings for your website pages is not only great for a reader to understand what the topic of the page is about (think newspaper headings), but they are also very useful for Search Engines. Just like a person, search engines will determine the relevance of a page based on the page heading. Therefore it places more importance on words between HTML heading tags such as <h1>, <h2>, etc. Wherever possible, always use headings and sub-headings in your website's pages.


SEO Tip #2 - Start Optimizing Your META Tags: The HTML META tags have decreased in importance in some Search Engine's ranking factors, but not all of them. At the same time, your META description tag is used as a short description beneath the Title link shown in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Make sure that you optimize your description tag to contain your keyword of choice and a clear call-to-action.


SEO Tip #3 - Start Optimizing Your Page Title: Your page title (the HTML <title> tag should not only contain your keyword, but you should also clearly state a call-to-action. Again, your Title is displayed in the SERPs and is what the web search will click on to get to your page. Entice them!



SEO Tip #4 - Forget About Doorway Pages! Doorway pages are a thing of the past. They used to be used to show a company logo and maybe and Enter Website link before the user can get into the website. Not only are doorway pages annoying and harmful for your SEO, they are also annoying for your visitors.


and lastly...


SEO Tip #5 - Make Sure Your Website Has a Site Map: Sitemaps can go a long way for a website. They provide a ton of links for your website to make it easy for the search engine to crawl. Site Maps are also great for the end user. Just think about how many times you've gone to a website and couldn't find what you were looking for until you clicked on that Site Map link at the bottom of the page. Search Engines love links and so do user!


So there you have it, your Top 5. SEO is extremely important and should be added to every company's marketing strategy. If you are not sure why you need SEO, find out why you need to optimize your website.