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Pay per click (PPC) advertising has fast become the most popular advertising medium on the internet, largely thanks to Google’s introduction of it’s programme, AdWords. While costly, it is the only way to ensure that your website is receiving targeted visitors from a reliable source.

Getting started with PPC advertising can be a difficult and confusing process. Here are the three essential steps to PPC advertising.

Step 1 - Identify your target market

It is crucial to identify exactly who is your target market before you inject any money into PPC advertising. You should conduct a considerable amount of research and decide whether the market is profitable. A market with very little existing websites and search volume is unlikely to convert into any decent amount of sales.

Step 2 - Choose your keywords

Using free keyword research tools are fantastic for identifying what keywords you want to place bids on. While the majority of them will only provide statistical information for a handful of keywords at a time, they allow you to make the most out of your selection and only target those that are profitable. It’s important to stick to long-tail keywords only as they generally have the lowest competition and ensure that you only receive targeted traffic.

Step 3 - Set a daily budget

All PPC advertising programmes allow you to set a daily budget restriction. This feature ensures that you never exceed a set amount per day — it is particularly useful if a search term suddenly receives a surge of traffic and your ad receives a load of unexpected clicks.

Did you know that proper keyword research can increase your sales while you save money? Find out more at Niche Research

The Google monthly update cycle has now grown to be known as the Google Dance. This is extremely unpredictable and sudden if which no one has been able to keep track. This has now reduced to become just a huge step in the open sky which, might land upon any website or webpage. Almost every web master eagerly awaits the update session that is going to take place in the form of Google Dance. The Google Dance is an essential aspect of Search Engine Optimisation.

The Google spiders begin crawling over billions of web pages, spread across the world in different locations. The technology leaves the Googlebot or the Deep bots to spider all the current websites that are listed in its database. It also figures out websites that are new and recently launched. In most cases the first crawl of the spiders is repeated by another crawl which normally occurs some two weeks later.

The Googlebot at all times, generally starts a second round of spidering of the all the existing websites in its current database including the newer ones that have been recently launched on the web. It is actually the duty of a good web master to study the Google Dance tendency before submitting his website to search engine listings for Search Engine Optimisation.

Most web masters wish to see their website included in its crawling list on both the updates that are carried out in a monthly cycle. But this is not the case always, there have been instances, when a website is crawled for the first time in the month but was not included in the second crawling that was followed immediately. But if a website is crawled in the second listing, there have been recorded repetition of the website in the second month’s list as well.

In order to see your website getting listed in Google dance for Search Engine Optimisation, more rapidly, the web masters need to first study the cycle and then accordingly update their site, so that the website is listed in the very first crawl that occurs after the update. If this is done, then there are brighter chances that the spider might crawl into the website in the next month’s crawling too.

The more frequent the search engines crawl into the website the higher is the chance of improving its Search Engine Optimisation process.

About the Author- Meenakshi Wali is an expert in Internet marketing solutions, presently working with Rupiz Media LTD., one of the leading internet marketing company, offering online marketing services, SEO services, affiliate marketing and search engine marketing over the globe.

If you are in a situation where you need to take advantage of what it is that search engine marketing has to offer, it’s time for you to take a look at pay per click advertising, also known as PPC marketing. There are many reasons to get involved with search engine marketing, but there is at least one that stands out. Search engine marketing is significant due to the fact that more 85% of all sales that occur on the internet are preceded by a search on Google or another search engine. You’ll realize that you’ve been noticing search engine marketing everywhere, and if you’ve noticed a competitor’s site that is utilizing pay per click advertising, then it’s time for you to figure out what this versatile form of search engine marketing can do for you! Make sure that you can answer all of the questions below, and you’ll be ready to come up with your own search engine marketing plan.

What is it?

Search engine marketing takes advantage of the fact that the internet is largely navigable by the search engines. If you want information on what is going on, or where there is a sale, you usually don’t check with a friend or a newspaper anymore. Instead, you find that you are heading to the computer to look this information up, usually on a search engine. You’ll find that pay per click advertising also takes advantage of this concept when your banner shows up above related searches.

Why do it?

Search engine marketing lets you tap into a market that is very important when it comes to the survival of small internet business. Unlike many other, larger companies, you might not have the means or the ability to push your link to the top of the search engines results; this can be quite tedious and take a lot of time. Instead, you can take the short cut offered by pay per click advertising and have your link sit up in the header and to the sidebar without needing to bother with keywords and link building.

When do you pay?

Many people are worried that search engine marketing will cost them an arm or a leg, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, when it comes to pay per click advertising, you will only need to pay a certain very small amount whenever anyone clicks on your link. You can set a budget and once a certain amount of people have clicked your link, exhausting your budget, you’ll find that the link no longer appears and that your budget for the day has been expended.

Can I do research?

The answer when it comes to search engine marketing is a resounding yes! With opportunities available like Google Adwords, you’ll find that you are in a great position to do research. You’ll find that the people who run Google are deeply invested in making sure that people know how to best run their business, so they will show what sort of numbers you have, and with the amount of hits that you have accrued are. You’ll find that by switching your keywords around, you can learn a lot about the people coming in to your site.

Where does my link go?

When it comes to search engine marketing, you should remember that the link that you put up needs to go somewhere. The most obvious answer is that the link should go to a general landing page, where your new prospective customers will be able to learn about your methods and your products and services. Some people take a more specific route by sending their customers to the places where they think they will find what they are looking for. Either of these ideas are good, so just think about what you want to implement.

What does pay per click advertising do in the long run?

The main issue when it comes to pay per click advertising is that you have to keep on making it fresh. Run tests on your favorite key phrases. What search strings should pull your site? Are you happy with the other links that show up next to your own? It is very important to figure out who is finding you. You might find that a trick of wording has introduced to an element of randomness to your search engine marketing. Pay close attention and make sure that you know what is going on!

To learn how to do this, visit http://www.moneyworkinghome.com/ where you will find everything you need to know about internet marketing and more. See author’s blog at http://www.andymichaelsblog.com

The Google Sandbox Effect has been discussed at length in our case study of a new website first crawled in May by Googlebot. We can now further the case study with indexing comparisons and discuss interesting Googlebot crawler behavior after release, at the 75 day mark, of the study website from that very confining Sandbox.

This case study is not for the faint of heart - those just launching a new web business on a new domain name with hopes of instant indexing and immediate traffic may find their website very lonely for two and a half months - if it is in a competitive market segment. You may as well plan to stay in the Google Sandbox for at least 45 days on average. If some early release stories are to be believed, search phrases nobody wants to play with are taken pity on by Google and sent home for early release.

Those non-competitive or obscure search phrases seem to be seen as good, quiet little children, playing by themselves in Sandbox playground and are sent home early on good behavior. Googlebot probably sees good behavior as playing well with others, like a good little baby domain and NOT being competitive as some young domains can be. Throwing sand in other childrens’ faces and insisting on having your site indexed, throwing sand out of the Sandbox with your bright plastic toy shovel and bucket will not be allowed.

Now that the site discussed in this study is out of the Sandbox, it still lingers on the playground, unable to escape the community park and leave for the business world to play with the big boys in the outside world. It does indeed take time to grow up and be the model citizen in this new search playground. Though on the first full day after this first week of being released from the sandbox, the site has gotten 68 visitors referred by searches done at Google, the first referred search traffic coming into the site. MSN has sent 8 visitors, Yahoo has sent 6, 4 came from AOL searches, 2 from Netscape and 1 from Dogpile.

The indexing behavior of Yahoo and MSN has been nothing short of bizarre with numbers of indexed pages increasing rapidly over the first two months to reflect 6,941 pages indexed until 8 weeks into this study and we outlined previously how numbers changed as you click through results pages first upward, then downward to about half the total of highest numbers listed along the top of the results pages.

It appears that Yahoo and MSN are playing on the ’slippery slide’ in this playground, climbing to the top of the ladder of results at about 10 week mark showing 8,210 and 6,941 pages respectively indexed, then sliding down again to 3,510 for Yahoo and 373 for MSN, as of this writing two weeks later on August 6. Still, Yahoo will show you only 1,000 (100 pages) of those results and MSN will show you only 250 results, or 25 pages, no matter how many they claim to index. MSNbot is crawling the site faster and more consistently than any of the engines, yet shows by far fewer pages indexed than the others.

One of the interesting comparisons between Google and MSN in our Sandbox study is that Google will show you most of what they claim to have indexed after you click that link at the bottom of the first page showing only 3 or 4 results when you use the “site:Publish101.com” query operator then go to the bottom of the page and click the link under the line reading, “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 3 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.”

Go ahead and click that link, then you’ll be presented with the claimed total of indexed pages. That number has very steadily increased since Sandbox release after 75 days from first crawling of this Sandbox study site. The timing and numbers of indexed pages at Google goes upward, and ONLY upward with VERY distinct patterns noted from raw log files. Crawling schedules seem to have been established for this site by Google and indexing changes occur on a very regular schedule.

The first observation of Sandbox release was at noon on Thursday July 28, seventy-five days from first crawling by Googlebot when a search turned up 379 pages indexed with a “site:Publish101.com” query. That number increased later the same evening to 3,660 pages at a search done around the dinner hour Pacific time. Oddly, the next day, Friday July 29, the number took a slight hop upward to 3,700 pages and on the following Monday, showed 3,770 pages indexed.

That schedule and pattern have repeated on the second week of Sandbox release when a “site:Publish101.com” query produced 5,660 results from from Google for the site on Thursday August 4 at just after noon and then nearly doubled at around the dinner hour to 10,700 pages on that same query. A final check just now on Saturday shows it at 12,100 pages indexed by Google. It should be pointed out to those who wonder about the total number of pages that this is a dynamic site with a very large archive of articles that increases daily as new submissions are contributed by member authors at the site.

Those articles are added through a content management system on a daily basis by an editor who reviews submissions and processes them for approvals or rejections. Those approved are made live from the home page nightly. We’ve started doing this on the crawler’s schedules as we’ve noted very regular visits by Yahoo’s Slurp crawler to the site home page just once daily at around 5pm each evening and Googlebot visiting the home page only once, at near 11pm nightly, so we’ve instituted a midnight activation of each day’s new article submissions on the home page of the site so that none of the new pages are missed by those crawlers. MSNbot seems to hit the home page multiple times through the day, so timing is less important for MSN.

Crawler activity has been heated, with Yahoo crawling the least and the slowest, barely seeming to attempt any updates and the total of indexed pages has not changed for over three weeks since it peaked at 8,210 pages indexed and then dropped to it’s current level of 3,510. As previously stated, Slurp seems to be unhindered by any form of consistency in indexing or crawling behavior. MSNbot has crawled extensively and fairly regularly for weeks, but that odd indexing behavior is a serious flaw in their utility as a search tool.

It should be mentioned here that AskJeeves had been noted to crawl the site extensively early in this case study and displayed a very regular and consistent crawl, but stopped abruptly three weeks ago on july 13, after hitting most of the pages then available on the site. Teoma, their spider, has been absent ever since and they have not indexed this domain at all since first crawling on May 23, over 10 weeks ago. Clearly, Teoma appears to have the longest Sandbox of all the search engines.

Much has been learned in this Sandbox case study about crawler behavior, indexing delays, robots.txt requirements and index updates at each of the top three search engines. Where that knowledge leads will, of course, change as algorithms and crawling schedules are adjusted by MSN, Yahoo and Google. But valuable information has been shared that may help other webmasters to better understand each of the factors that determine the success of any website.

“Further findings in follow-up articles at the 3, 6 and 9 month marks, explore search referrals gained as Google adds more pages and rankings fluctuations begin to level. Meanwhile, we’d like to encourage others to publicly review their crawler traffic through logs to compare behavior on new domains to verify findings and disclose indexing behavior and timing for new domains and further document SE indexing as well as crawling behavior.

Copyright © August 6, 2005

Previous Sandbox Case Study Articles:

http://Publish101.com/Sandbox2 http://Publish101.com/Sandbox3 http://Publish101.com/Sandbox4

Mike Banks Valentine is a search engine optimization specialist

Search engine optimisation, SEO, is one of the vital aspects of any website, but it is often overlooked or neglected. A website may look beautiful, the systems may be flawless, but with no visitors, it is a waste. SEO is the process of getting visitors, traffic and ultimately business to your website, primarily through achieving high rankings for your web site on search terms with high volume.

Studies have shown that Internet searchers are a notoriously impatient bunch. Almost 82% of all searchers do not go beyond the first 30 results. More than 60% don’t go beyond the first 10 results. If your website is not in the top ten, you are missing out on over 60% of your potential clients. This can prove to be a very costly exercise. Even if you are happy with the traffic you get to your website, and let’s say it’s 40%. You can get an extra one and a half times that quantity of visitors and business or more as the result of an effective SEO campaign.

There is always advertising available as an option, but that is substantially less effective and more costly. On Google, 70% of searchers prefer the natural results to advertisements. Say the term your site is optimised for has 100 searches a day, and you are in position 12. You’ll only get 40% of your potential visitors. If you’re in position 21, you’ll get about 25%. Position 31 and you’ll get less than 19%. If you are number 1, you’ll get 100 of them. If you buy an advertisement, you’ll get 30% and you pay for each visitor. The moment you stop paying, you stop getting visitors. An SEO campaign on the other hand lasts for years. Once you are at the top, it takes a lot to move you down the results. As such, SEO is the most cost-effective and efficient method of marketing your website.

You also need your site to rank well for the correct keyword or search phrase. One of my favourite examples comes from research I have conducted into the job industry as part of an SEO campaign. The term “search jobs” has 21 searches a day. The term “job search” has over 6000. Number 1 for “search jobs” will give you 21 visitors. Number 1 for “job search” though will give you 6000. Choosing the right keywords is an important part of any SEO campaign.

How do you target the site towards a specific search phrase or keyword? By having the keyword in the title tag, the description and in the content. It should also be in the anchor text of links pointing to that site. If you are in a reciprocal link exchange, and the link to your job site is the name of your company, that is far less effective at promoting your website than a link saying “job search - company name.” It’s a simple step and seemingly obvious, but many website owners do not do that and their site suffers in it’s ranking as a result.

With the right proportion of the key word in relation to your content and sufficient inbound links with the right anchor text, your website can become the number 1 site for that term. There is more to SEO than just that, but those are the 2 essential factors. Without good content, or links, your website will never rank well and will never bring in all the business it could. For more info, check out SEO - Sigil Online

Russell Qually is a practicing SEO specialist in South Africa. SEO - Sigil Online

Gone are the days when well chosen title tags and META tags were enough to give your website a good search engine ranking. Today, the search engines use much more complex algorithms when ranking your website, and so the search engine optimization process has become more complicated.

One of the chief things the search engines look at when ranking your website is its link popularity. Basically, link popularity depends on the number and the quality of websites linking to your site.

Having good links to your website has two chief advantages. The first is that these links will drive traffic directly to your website. Second, links to your website will boost the popularity of your site with search engines.

So when you think about search engine optimization, one of the first things you should do is check how many websites are linking to your site, and determine the quality of the links. A link from a popular website will be much more valuable than a link from one with little traffic.

You can perform this check yourself by typing ‘link:www.yourdomainname.com’ into any of the search engines. Of course, you use the url of your own website. This should return a list of all the websites that link to your site. If you get poor results, it may be time to start thinking about a link building campaign.

There are a number of ways in which you can get links to your website included on other websites. By far the most valuable are natural links, where other sites link to you by choice because they like your content and/or the product you sell.

You could also consider having your website listed on some of the popular directories. This is an ongoing process, as your website will usually disappear from the directory after a couple of days.

You could also try submitting articles that are relevant to your website to article directories. Other websites can use these articles for free, but must also publish a short description of your service and a link to your website at the bottom of the article. If you can write good content that people will want to publish, this can be a good way of creating one-way links to your website.

Reciprocal links are another option, where you and another website owner agree to publish links to each other’s sites. This can increase link popularity, but also may drive traffic away from your website.

These are just some of the ways to increase link popularity. You could also consider pay per click ads, social media marketing or some other method.

For more information about starting a freelance business, visit FreelanceSprout.com.

Email Marketing Consulting comes easy if you know the right strategy to funnel profits into any entrepreneur business bank account. To enhance this process requires a system that will collect hundreds & thousands of emails from potential customers who are interested in our products & services.

• The best program provides the best training materials such as Banners, sample emails, and sales letters that will have a high conversion rate.

• Knowing a niche market to promote your products through email marketing requires a lot of research but the time pays off tenfold when we can consistently put ourselves in front of the competition or if the competition is too great, there is plenty of customers on the sidelines who have there credit cards already waiting at there finger tips to purchase. There are many Email Marketing Consulting Firms or mentors who can entice customers to encourage and build confidence in what you have to offer. This requires the perfect know how. Once we have mastered the art of searching for profitable niches, we can put this strength to practice on auto pilot by using an auto responder.

• If we want to find out about sporting programs, hobby clubs etc. The best place is forums where people talk about the subject matter 24/7. There are hundreds of forums on the internet to pursue. Just type in our interest and wait.

• Having the best mentor to follow our email strategy through from start to finish builds our confidence that we can only put ourselves in a win, win situation for example do we need the right format segmentation or an analyses report to improve our campaigns? Are we marketing & targeting our efforts in the right direction? If we choose mentors with Email Marketing Consulting knowledge our efforts can only double or triple results.

• Continuous traffic rolling onto our website from the search engines into our squeeze page is another strategy of implementation that is not to difficult to enhance our profile as a business person. Company Directors will trust our expertise and follow our advice with exactness.

Email Marketing Consulting requires experts who have proven and made all the above happen and many more easy strategies.

I have only touched on the surface in relation to email marketing however to find the best Email Marketing Consulting mentor to create the best strategies to boost your business and help establish your business profile in the Marketplace just go to my website and watch the video to claim your 100% free training at http://therichjerk-knowshow.blogspot.com/ Richard Taputoro is a Marketing Entrepreneur who values honesty and Integrity as the foundation to build any business online or offline.

Many times mortgage broker marketing materials fail because of some simple mistakes. The most common errors found in materials include:

Feature-Focused �?” The content of the message is focused on you, not the prospect. For example, companies often promote their years of experience in their literature, �??We have over 25 years of experience.�?� This doesn�??t do anything for the reader. Your messages must answer the reader�??s question, �??What�??s in it for me?�?�

Use of jargon �?” Realtors are inundated with flyers from mortgage professionals promoting products. Realtors don�??t necessarily understand what the terms mean or how it impacts them. Their job is to help people buy or sell a home, not sell mortgages.

Poor graphic layout �?” Most people, including realtors, are visual processors. They process information best through pictures. Most mortgage flyers look like mini rate sheets. Don�??t you remember how confusing a rate sheet looked the first time you read one?

Insufficient content �?” Your flyers don�??t include strong persuasion for a reader to take action. Many times the content barely covers any quality information leaving the reader dazed and confused.

Using materials as part of your relationship building strategy

Your goal after meeting a prospect is to maintain top-of-mind-awareness. And as you�??re doing this �?” educating them about your services. Realtors want to feel secure that they�??re dealing with a true mortgage professional who can do the job. Your materials should position you in their mind as a trusted advisor. Someone that they should seek out anytime they have a problem.

You�??ll be able to use your materials to campaign in several ways:

1. To follow up with a prospect after your initial in-person contact.
2. To introduce you to a new referred prospect (i.e. listing agent, financial planner, etc.).
3. If you have a website, a place for prospects to learn more about you.
4. For loyal clients to promote your services to other prospects.

What materials should you create?

You want to build an entire campaign that informs, educates and promotes your services. Each piece needs to answer the reader�??s question, �??What�??s in it for me?�?� Your pieces should include, but not be limited to:

• Introductory Statement
• Description of your target audience
• How you work with clients
• List of services
• A team profile
• Probing questionnaires
• Case studies
• Testimonies
• Background information about you
• Articles, educational pieces

There is a lot of material you�??re creating, but for good reason. People absorb information differently. Agents who are skeptical appreciate case studies. Agents who are expressive and talkative like the questionnaires. And agents who work with urgency and make quick decisions will appreciate your list of services and description of your targeted audience.

Jeff Nelson helps loan officers increase loan originations by attracting quality relationships with real estate agents from the development of customized relationship-building strategies.

Click here to get a free copy of the Marketing Planning Guide, a 20-page workbook designed to help you outline a strategy to become an Agent Magnet.

Visit us at http://www.loan-officer-marketing.com

SEO is a big topic that comes up all the time with my clients. Everyone wants to be the number one website on Google, but don�??t know how to achieve this. This article is NOT saying you are going to be able to get to number one, but it will give you some guide lines on how to increase your chances greatly.

The most important item relating to SEO is to remember that CONTENT IS KING. Without endless amounts of fresh and interesting content you will never get to the top. But it isn�??t just the quality of content that counts; it is how the content is written. For example if you are selling cell phones you want to make sure your keywords appear in your text over and over again. It may seem repetitive but this is the best way to get Google, MSN and Yahoo! to notice you.

The next tips are in no particular order because they all play a similar small role, but together make all the difference.

• Use meta tags and descriptions �?” This is an older html technology that is considered dead by some but is still being used. Your meta description is often the description that a search engine will use when displaying your website.

• Wrap text in paragraph and headline tags. Using the proper tags will tell a search engine that your text is indeed content. Headline tags are given a higher priority by search engines.

• No Frames �?” stay away from frames, it makes it impossible for a search engine to appropriately link to your site. In-turn a user may find your site but it may not have all the page elements attached to it.

• Links �?” Using your keywords in your links is a great way to emphasize those words to a search engine. Never use �??Click here�?� it is a wasted link.

• Backlinks �?” Backlinks are links from other sites that point to your site. Backlinks are one of the primary things that Google looks for in determining rank. The best way to build backlinks is with your content. You can syndicate your content over blogs, rss feeds and general article submissions. Each time you submit an article make sure it has your link on it. Joining forums and social networks are also great ways of building backlinks but many of them frown on blatant advertisements so you have to do this wisely.

• Use Text �?” It may sound simple, but actually using text instead of images allows a google bot or yahoo crawler to read you site.

• No Flash �?” Flash sites are bad for SEO plain and simple. Even newer Flash techniques that allow crawlers to read the site still won�??t end up at the number one spot simply because of lack of perceived content since your website is only one page.

• Web maps �?” Creating and submitting a web map notifies the search engines of which pages are the most important and how often they change.Time �?” SEO is slow, be patient.

There are many other things you can do to increase you rank naturally, just remember do not cheat and pay for a service to do this for you.

Josh Collins is a multimedia designer in the Kansas City area. He has designed user interfaces and websites ranging from small business sites to large social network websites. His recent sites include:

• Wondersurvey.com an online based survey software
• Logicbright.com an online based small business CRM software
• Filmcrave.com a social network for movie lovers

Restarting my business this year meant looking again at my marketing, which if I’m honest, was pretty abysmal before.

Having decided to really go for it I have been putting together email campaigns, blogging, and networking online, and have started going to offline networking events too.

If only all these things produced instant results, but as you probably know, you need to be in it for the long haul. It’s not all doom and gloom though as meetings I had months ago are beginning to bear fruit.

So what’s working best at the moment?

Offline networking is probably working the best, but the emails and blogs have also generated either interest from people I know, more traffic to my website, which is good as I’m selling online programmes, and general enquiries about my blog. All good stuff.

One of my goals since starting, is to collaborate with others to strengthen my services, and networking has definitely helped with this. Not just being at events but following up after. And don’t worry if you don’t like making phone calls either as I’ve found emails have worked really well.

So, the things that I have learnt so far are

ONE - You need to be in marketing for the long haul.

TWO - Going to networking events and following up is really important and pays dividends.

THREE - Collaboration can bring a new dimension to your business.

FOUR �?” Using technology as part of your marketing campaign is really useful and is becoming more and more important, but it can�??t do everything to promote you if you�??re selling an intangible product, which is why networking is so valuable when you�??re selling yourself.

FIVE - it might be good to forget about being a Coach and run a marketing business instead!!!! ……………Only kidding�?��?��?�Really!

Pam Stokes is a Business & Personal Development Coach. Besides coaching, she provides interactive online programmes for busy people, supervises newly qualified and trainee coaches, runs workshops in stress management and a Diploma Course in NLP. Free downloads http://www.pamstokesassociates.co.uk