That guy who thought up the technique of getting new people to post ads, aided of course by search engines themselves, and paying those people who got their posted ads clicked, must have laughed all the way to the bank. Simply, at that time when it was thought up, it was a great idea.
Today, it has become something of a millstone around the neck of the seller. Why did this idea go wrong? As a matter of principle, it is still alright a proposition. Getting many people to promote your product is one way sure fire way of getting more people to think (retain image in common advertising parlance) your product, and try it out. Remember that too much is also dangerous. It applies here. If the product is so damn good, why the hell is the owner employing so many people to advertise the product. Look left, right or center, you find an Adword which is promoting that product. That alienates a probable number of possible.
So what do you, as an advertiser who wants to make it on the internet have to do. First, have a fresh clean look, without prejudiced or jaundiced eyes on the ads that are being run by your associates who are PPCs. Are they writing in such a fashion that the reader who is attracted first goes away bored after the second sentence? Are the PPCs using the same first and second line? If so, have you dictated that? Just give it up. Would you look at such ads yourself? Put yourself in the shoes of the customer and look at the ads.
Then look at the PPCs routing to your website page where you have the chance to make or break the deal – known as the landing page. Does the PPCs take a longish route, or is your website so slow that it takes ages (in seconds terms please.. this is the internet, not a newspaper) and public memory is very short, and the memory of a web page on a computer that is dynamically changing all the time, it is simply SHORT, let us take the extreme, and say out of sight out of mind. That’s the appropriate phrase for internet ads.
If your website is loading too slowly, then you better take steps or it’s again out of sight out of mind. If your landing page contains superfluous data or is too long, and verbose, well you deserve it. On the internet, short and sweet, direct and to the point makes the buyer interested, and gets him closer to a purchase. Again, as a consumer yourself, count the number of websites you have seen full of hyperbole, and you are frantically scrolling down the pages trying and tiring of finding where to buy that d…nm thing? It applies to your site as well buster.. get it. So make it short, sweet, and fast. That’s a free tip.
If someone has been advising you on these lines, forget him. He is history. Get a few professionals in line, and LISTEN to them. The Internet world is changing very fast, every hour, every minute, and you are right in the middle of it. So take advice and use it properly. Make a deal. If you don’t get so many visits, you pay only this much. If it fulfills what they say over a period you can fix, pay them the full. They deserve it. And hire them again after three months. So do you TO ALSO. You have no choice buddy.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Marketing Your Ads
Affiliate Marketing, or your website or your product?
This is a free for all article. It’s free for the affiliate marketer, its free for the website owner, its free for the seller of a product on the internet marketplace. Open 24 hours, all days of the week, unmindful of the national holidays, everywhere, and working all the time 365 days a year, and 366 days in leap years!
For all the four groups the advice is the same. Are you earning revenue or not? Are you selling your products or not, or are you simply marketing your website, without making sales?
For the affiliate marketer on the web, it is a simple question of getting PPCs done, and for the website owners it is much less, and for the product seller, it is zero.
Even for the other users of other tools for marketing, does their job end with putting up ads with various tools that are provided? Are they receiving a limited income, or recurring income? For the marketer of the website, how many hits are being made on the website, and how many are getting translated into a sale, and thereby revenue?
Mining the hits, and the sales generated against the amounts spent is the right way to find out what exactly you are doing. If in affiliate marketing or other marketing of websites or products, you are getting recurring revenue, okay, you may be satisfied. But you can increase it manifold, if you were to get other methods of marketing also into your portfolio. Thereby, if one source of income dries up, or comes down, the others take over, evening out the odds of your having a reduced income.
In the case of website owners and sellers of products, what exactly are you achieving? Are you getting good hits on the website, and good sales? Is that enough? How many of your customers coming back? How many new customers? Do you have a system in your website which tries to find out from where the new customer was referred? Was it a affiliate program or another reseller, or a satisfied customer?
These details need to be determined by statistical data of your website and the profiles of your customers. Just as in the local market place where you would know a customer by name or at least by face, on the internet, it is important to mine that information, and get additional leads on how, where and why that customer came to you.
The basics of marketing still remain the same. So it does not matter whether you are the marketer or the owner of the product or the website. You need to know hard facts about whether you are establishing only a brand image (the website) or you are selling your product (the brand). Notice that in the last word the word ‘image’ has been dispensed with. It’s the key to your success. If you are having a great number of hits on your site, but low volume turnover on your products, then there is something wrong. You are marketing your website only, and not your products. Therefore, you need a closer harder look at your landing page to see why those customers are looking up your website, but are not getting enthused into buying from you. What prevents them? Is it that the landing page (the sale area) is not easily located, or is it that the writes leading up to the landing is diffuse and confusing or plain boring? What is it?
You have to find out to maximize your revenue, be you a marketer for another person, or the owner of website, or the seller of a product on the internet marketplace.
The rules of the game are still the same as in normal markets, apart from the internet. The only difference on the Internet is that you are against very heavy competition from around the globe, while in the local marketplace, you are probably competing against let’s say ten or a little more competitors.
Therefore you have to gear up and maximize your revenue, and not maximize the hits on your web page.
That’s a losing proposition. The web page was meant to drive revenue for you, and if it is not, well is it worth it?
This is a free for all article. It’s free for the affiliate marketer, its free for the website owner, its free for the seller of a product on the internet marketplace. Open 24 hours, all days of the week, unmindful of the national holidays, everywhere, and working all the time 365 days a year, and 366 days in leap years!
For all the four groups the advice is the same. Are you earning revenue or not? Are you selling your products or not, or are you simply marketing your website, without making sales?
For the affiliate marketer on the web, it is a simple question of getting PPCs done, and for the website owners it is much less, and for the product seller, it is zero.
Even for the other users of other tools for marketing, does their job end with putting up ads with various tools that are provided? Are they receiving a limited income, or recurring income? For the marketer of the website, how many hits are being made on the website, and how many are getting translated into a sale, and thereby revenue?
Mining the hits, and the sales generated against the amounts spent is the right way to find out what exactly you are doing. If in affiliate marketing or other marketing of websites or products, you are getting recurring revenue, okay, you may be satisfied. But you can increase it manifold, if you were to get other methods of marketing also into your portfolio. Thereby, if one source of income dries up, or comes down, the others take over, evening out the odds of your having a reduced income.
In the case of website owners and sellers of products, what exactly are you achieving? Are you getting good hits on the website, and good sales? Is that enough? How many of your customers coming back? How many new customers? Do you have a system in your website which tries to find out from where the new customer was referred? Was it a affiliate program or another reseller, or a satisfied customer?
These details need to be determined by statistical data of your website and the profiles of your customers. Just as in the local market place where you would know a customer by name or at least by face, on the internet, it is important to mine that information, and get additional leads on how, where and why that customer came to you.
The basics of marketing still remain the same. So it does not matter whether you are the marketer or the owner of the product or the website. You need to know hard facts about whether you are establishing only a brand image (the website) or you are selling your product (the brand). Notice that in the last word the word ‘image’ has been dispensed with. It’s the key to your success. If you are having a great number of hits on your site, but low volume turnover on your products, then there is something wrong. You are marketing your website only, and not your products. Therefore, you need a closer harder look at your landing page to see why those customers are looking up your website, but are not getting enthused into buying from you. What prevents them? Is it that the landing page (the sale area) is not easily located, or is it that the writes leading up to the landing is diffuse and confusing or plain boring? What is it?
You have to find out to maximize your revenue, be you a marketer for another person, or the owner of website, or the seller of a product on the internet marketplace.
The rules of the game are still the same as in normal markets, apart from the internet. The only difference on the Internet is that you are against very heavy competition from around the globe, while in the local marketplace, you are probably competing against let’s say ten or a little more competitors.
Therefore you have to gear up and maximize your revenue, and not maximize the hits on your web page.
That’s a losing proposition. The web page was meant to drive revenue for you, and if it is not, well is it worth it?
Thursday, April 10, 2008
New and Essential Facts about SEOs and the recent trends.
As the internet space expands, it is also getting increasingly crowded.
It is getting crowded not only because of the growing density of users from all over the world, and all types of enterprises, small, medium and tiny, but also because of the growing so-called search engines. But the Big Three of the SEOs still remain, the Yahoo!, Google and MSN, and not necessarily in that order.
As more and more customers of these Search engines grow, it is but obvious that the competition to get the first page ranking gets higher and higher and more and more competitive. Since the Search engines do not list the websites based on commercial considerations alone – read money like in placing ads in prominent spots in newspapers – obviously the game is based on keyword density, and usefulness of the website sought to be listed.
In earlier days, when the internet was not such a marketable commodity as it has now become, and because of its availability 24 hours a day, and 365 days a year, or 366 days in a leap year, keyword density occupied pride of place.
Today with the search engines themselves having to compete with each other to seek customers, paying customers, and the need for ranking felt by the websites, the rules of the game are changing. To get hits on their search engines, implies their popularity, and in turn popularity determines how much ad revenue can they garner to maintain their competitive position.
As has been warned by many SEO specialists and others who write copy for websites, the onus of getting into the number one to 50 positions lead on these search engines has shifted from repeat keywords density to appropriate keywords, quality content, and link building. These are to be read concurrently, and there is no operand as either or, and or, algorithms to use. In other words, search engines are now using software and other soft skills to test whether a particular website trying to be listed matches the three components mentioned above. If they don’t and some other website is better worded and contains better links and landing pages, then, the second gets the first place, while the others get downgraded.
How to avoid these new pitfalls, and how prepared are the website owners, the SEO writers and other communities which contribute to these sites? Well, first of all the website owners don’t have a clue. They only have a focus which they have heard time and again in the past, and it is keyword density, keyword density. Against this the SEO specialists have to content with their customers, namely the website owners and the rewritten rules of the game by the search engine operators. Obviously a bridge that has to be built and crossed quickly because rankings also slip on a 24 hour, 365/366 days a year (leap year included).
First and foremost search engine operators are now looking at website domains themselves. If they are of a particular type, for example, dot .cc dot. oc. or similar sounding end alphas, or such a variation, down goes the ranking straightaway, no matter what key words it has, what beautiful content it has and what fantastic links it has. It is considered as spam website. If the website gets through this first barricade, up comes the second, keyword density and relevance of the content to the keyword. This can’t be done by a machine alone. It requires computer logic and also some amount of human input which compares whether the content matches the keyword, whether it describes it fully and whether it is a play upon the ‘keyword’, and so forth. If it be so, again down the tube. If the links are not pointing to other seemingly genuine websites, or has a good landing page, and does not seem to point to the spam websites mentioned above, then it has the third barricade to cross, namely, the competitor who has also got through. Then it is a question of how well the content is worded, and how germane the other is to the subject matter on which it is being sought to be ranked.
So SEO specialists have their hands full, and copywriters have to wring their hands and heads to come up with solutions that would keep their clients happy, and their cash registers clanging, apart from drawing new clients to their drawing boards.
So beware, a revolution is taking place. This author is reminded of the fights that take place between clients and ad agencies in the good old fashioned newspaper ads, where you could buy the space for a premium but catching the attention of the reader was an entirely new cup of tea. Remember the ad which one of the car hire companies wrote: “We are second. That’s why we try harder”. Well, well, it’s coming to the internet marketplace sooner than later.
It is getting crowded not only because of the growing density of users from all over the world, and all types of enterprises, small, medium and tiny, but also because of the growing so-called search engines. But the Big Three of the SEOs still remain, the Yahoo!, Google and MSN, and not necessarily in that order.
As more and more customers of these Search engines grow, it is but obvious that the competition to get the first page ranking gets higher and higher and more and more competitive. Since the Search engines do not list the websites based on commercial considerations alone – read money like in placing ads in prominent spots in newspapers – obviously the game is based on keyword density, and usefulness of the website sought to be listed.
In earlier days, when the internet was not such a marketable commodity as it has now become, and because of its availability 24 hours a day, and 365 days a year, or 366 days in a leap year, keyword density occupied pride of place.
Today with the search engines themselves having to compete with each other to seek customers, paying customers, and the need for ranking felt by the websites, the rules of the game are changing. To get hits on their search engines, implies their popularity, and in turn popularity determines how much ad revenue can they garner to maintain their competitive position.
As has been warned by many SEO specialists and others who write copy for websites, the onus of getting into the number one to 50 positions lead on these search engines has shifted from repeat keywords density to appropriate keywords, quality content, and link building. These are to be read concurrently, and there is no operand as either or, and or, algorithms to use. In other words, search engines are now using software and other soft skills to test whether a particular website trying to be listed matches the three components mentioned above. If they don’t and some other website is better worded and contains better links and landing pages, then, the second gets the first place, while the others get downgraded.
How to avoid these new pitfalls, and how prepared are the website owners, the SEO writers and other communities which contribute to these sites? Well, first of all the website owners don’t have a clue. They only have a focus which they have heard time and again in the past, and it is keyword density, keyword density. Against this the SEO specialists have to content with their customers, namely the website owners and the rewritten rules of the game by the search engine operators. Obviously a bridge that has to be built and crossed quickly because rankings also slip on a 24 hour, 365/366 days a year (leap year included).
First and foremost search engine operators are now looking at website domains themselves. If they are of a particular type, for example, dot .cc dot. oc. or similar sounding end alphas, or such a variation, down goes the ranking straightaway, no matter what key words it has, what beautiful content it has and what fantastic links it has. It is considered as spam website. If the website gets through this first barricade, up comes the second, keyword density and relevance of the content to the keyword. This can’t be done by a machine alone. It requires computer logic and also some amount of human input which compares whether the content matches the keyword, whether it describes it fully and whether it is a play upon the ‘keyword’, and so forth. If it be so, again down the tube. If the links are not pointing to other seemingly genuine websites, or has a good landing page, and does not seem to point to the spam websites mentioned above, then it has the third barricade to cross, namely, the competitor who has also got through. Then it is a question of how well the content is worded, and how germane the other is to the subject matter on which it is being sought to be ranked.
So SEO specialists have their hands full, and copywriters have to wring their hands and heads to come up with solutions that would keep their clients happy, and their cash registers clanging, apart from drawing new clients to their drawing boards.
So beware, a revolution is taking place. This author is reminded of the fights that take place between clients and ad agencies in the good old fashioned newspaper ads, where you could buy the space for a premium but catching the attention of the reader was an entirely new cup of tea. Remember the ad which one of the car hire companies wrote: “We are second. That’s why we try harder”. Well, well, it’s coming to the internet marketplace sooner than later.
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