Pay Per Click Advertising

Its a new service that my company is now starting to offer. So i thought since we are now offering it I should dive into the world of Pay Per Click advertising to explain the pros and cons.

First of all Pay Per Click advertising is as the name suggest you pay per click. For example you bid for a position on a search engine. Say for instance you bid 0.30 cents for the keyword "web design perth" if your keyword is the highest bidding you will recieve top position for the search. If someone clicks and only when someone clicks on your link then your account is deducted of the bidding price, which in this case is 0.30 cents.

So already you should be noticing one major benefit. For those that haven't worked it out yet, you could basically have top positions for all your keywords with out having to pay for search engine optimisation services. Also the time in which it takes to get to top position would be drastically cut. Where some search engine marketing companies say it could take 3 - 4 months before you see any type of movement in your listings pay per click advertising can happen almost instantly.

Now with reading just that you might be thinking this sounds terrific, how could there possibly be any downsides to such an advertising plan. Well I am sure their are I just need to look abit harder.

Finding the downside to Pay Per Click marketing is extremly difficult. When you look at all the positives such as:

• Limit your monthly budget
• Change your website with out worrying about the effects on the position
• Almost immediate results
• You can guarantee top placement
• You can change keywords/ad copy to suite whenever
• People that are looking specifically for a product will click on paid adverts first

I am still looking for a negative or downside to pay per click advertising.

One question i get asked alot is "Can i run my own pay per click campaign" the answer is of course you can however. Finding the right keywords, writing the correct advertisment copy and taking advantage of bid gaps and other little technical aspects of running your own campaign can start to get complicated.

If you get a professional to run the campaign for you not only will it not cost that much it will also increase the results of our campaign. The professional can make changes and study the stats to work out what is working and what isn't and make the required changes almost instantly. Providing the highest quality advertisements of internet surfers and your company.

For instance our management package includes:

• Analysing your business and identifying your online advertising goals
• Establishing a monthly budget
• Setting up an account for your business for Google Adwords and/or Overture
• Identifying which keywords your customers are really using
• Writing effective ad copy
• Bid management and optimisation
• Modifying the campaign (keywords & ad copy) as needed to improve your click through rate (i.e. the number of clicks received per display of the ad)
• Regular reporting of results

Is that some thing you would really want to have to work out and run through by yourself. Of course you could always get a professional to set up the campaign and then just use him/her as a consultant but i can tell you now it would end up alot more expensive using the professional as a consultant to throw ideas at etc... then just hiring them to run the campaign for you.

If you have a website and you are currently not marketing it at all online then I strongly suggest your contact us so we can start making your website work for you.

Tags: Computers and Internet Marketing Advertising

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The power of blogging

First and formost what is a Blog? A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger."

The growth of blog usage over the last year has been incrediable. Blog readership increased from 17% of internet users to 27% in just 9 months. The number of blog authors has increased from 3% in July 2002, 5% at the beginning of 2004, and 7% by late November 2004.

A quick search on the net for blogs and you find that not only are the general public using them as a way of electronically noteing their feelings and thoughts but also businesses are using them as an informal way of updating their clients of products and services.

It seems that when it comes to blogging big businesses and small businesses are on the same playing field. A blog offers any business the opportunity to communicate with employees, and customers, sharing knowledge and expertise.

As you may or may not have realised is that blogging is a big plus and if used correctly can provide an interesting and effective way to increase brand identity and awareness.

My personal web design company (Able Net Design) has seen an increase in interest of blogs and its use with our own customers. It seems that everyone is jumping on this new system, as a cheap and effective way to spread the word.

A quick google search for the term "business blogging" returns 11,200,000 results. There are even companies poping up everywhere as blog consultants, which can help set up a blog that you will get the most out of.

Is blogging really as good as everyone thinks, well i am certainly having some fun with it and am sure if it didn't work it would have died by now.

But what are people blogging about? Well people are blogging about everything and anything and there are some reports that people are making a nice little income from it aswell.

Income off a blog how can that be? That is the same question i asked when i first heard about it. I would have thought that the process to making money of a blog would have been quite involved however I have discovered that it is quite the opposite.

It seems that with the use of strategicly placed advertisements and a large amount of traffic bloggers are utilising the paid to click type of advertisements, to earn profits.

Now i thought this has to be tested, so i impletemented a few different paid to click advertisements on my blogs to see how they go. It took me little over 10 minutes to change my blog templates and implement these advertisements.

So with the ads up and running i decided to continue posting as usual to see what happens. Well i can say that im not going to get rich quick. However i assume that the more traffic you have the more clicks you will get, and since my blogs are relatively new i didn't have high hopes. But all in all it is a fun way to keep the bloging interesting.

The blogging revolution just seems to keep on getting bigger and bigger with Google and Yahoo releasing its on Blog search engine and others like Technorati which would be the most well known blog search engine. Technorati claims to be tracking 20.1 million sites, and if you view their top 100 blogs you will see that the topics which are being blogged about are endless and unique in every category you could think of.

For more information on blogs and how you can get one check out our site (ablenetdesign.com) or read my online marketing blog (ablenetdesign.blogspot.com) there will be more information on blogs posted in their as time goes on im sure of it.

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Using New Content to Build Links

Sometimes, link building is more than just searching out sites to request links from. Sometimes you have to get creative in how you build links.

In this article, we look at another way of building links that doesn't really require you to go out and search for relevant sites to request links from.

The web is growing at a phenomenal rate.

Technorati, a popular blog search and syndication site estimates that the blogosphere alone doubles in size every 5 months. As of the end of July 2005, Technorati was tracking over 14.2 million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links.

Who knows how much the rest of the web grows? I would bet that while it doesn't double every 5 months its rate of growth is pretty impressive.

It is because of this growth in the web that other forms of link building become somewhat easier. I am talking about building links through content creation and publishing.

Sometimes, link building is more than just searching out sites to request links from. Sometimes you have to get creative in how you build links.

In this article, we look at another way of building links that doesn't really require you to go out and search for relevant sites to request links from.

The web is growing at a phenomenal rate.

Technorati, a popular blog search and syndication site estimates that the blogosphere alone doubles in size every 5 months. As of the end of July 2005, Technorati was tracking over 14.2 million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links.

Who knows how much the rest of the web grows? I would bet that while it doesn't double every 5 months its rate of growth is pretty impressive.

It is because of this growth in the web that other forms of link building become somewhat easier. I am talking about building links through content creation and publishing.

Normally, for me to build 2 dozen high quality links for one of my clients I'd have to start with a list of about 500 somewhat related sites, filtering out those that are lower quality and submitting to 50 to 100 sites in hopes of achieving those 20 or so links.

And it has been my experience that I would be lucky to achieve 5 to 10 links from that initial list of 500 sites.

All this would have taken me about 5 or 6 hours ? even longer if I hadn't used a few tools to help gather those links.

Yet here I am with much less effort, able to achieve almost the same number of links.

That's the nice thing about content, it can do so many things for your site: -A growing site helps encourage search engine crawlers to visit repeatedly. -A growing site has more pages which have the potential to rank for other phrases. -A growing site offers more entry points to searchers. -A growing site offers more opportunities for others to link to it. -A growing site can help positively influence link popularity (if internal navigation is coded properly -And More...

There are many other great reasons for starting an ongoing content development program. Aside from the link building opportunities, you can also begin to develop your online reputation as an expert in your field.

Further, as visitors do searches on search engines, there is a greater opportunity for your content to appear for those searches, helping to build your brand.

If you take you content development program a step further and syndicate your content to a wider audience (via blog pings and so on) you can reach even more people, potentially building even more links and allowing your name (and brand) to reach beyond the ?traditional? web.

For example, when I do a search for my name, I find myself in traditional organic SERPs but also on sites like Google News, as well as most of the main blog search engines.

This is because this site, and others I write for, are syndicated. Plus those sites that I mentioned earlier ? the syndication partners ? are also syndicated.

So my articles appear numerous times for the same search. This helps build my reputation online.

Not only does my name appear throughout the web, but articles like these also get picked up by even more sources. Ones that perhaps didn't read this blog, or one of the syndication partners, but they may have found it on Bloglines, Technorati or any of the other large blog search engines.

Then, the article gets picked up by even more sources, in its entirety, with links and all.

So, the number of new links I've created has now jumped from the original two on this article, to a couple dozen on our syndication partners to ????

It's interesting to see where articles get picked up. I've found myself quoted in PDFs belonging to Universities, on foreign sites where I've been translated into Korean, Chinese and even Russian. And, you guessed it, the links remain intact.

That's because these articles aren't like news ? they last much longer than a press release which, while gaining huge exposure for 2 or 3 days, quickly disappears.

The articles last "forever" because they continue to be circulated by various sites who find them in searches, and either copy them or link to them. Then their sites get syndicated and found by others who then also link or copy the article.

You may begin to see that this type of linking can go on almost forever, because what I'm writing here isn't necessarily newsworthy, but it is an article that people will find useful for months and years to come (I hope). As it becomes more and more established on the web (and more entrenched, because of the number of high quality related links already pointing to it) it begins to take on a life of its own.

And the more articles which I write for this site which appear like this, the better it is for the site.

So, what is the downside to this plan?

The only one, really, is that you have to be able to write. And not just scribble your ideas down, but make them intelligible and easy to read.

This is what takes the practice. But I can tell you that while you may (and likely will) labor for hours over your first few articles, over time they do get easier.

So much so that you will begin composing them in your sleep, or while you are waiting for your bus, or any place else where you have "down time".

So if you are concerned that a massive and costly link building campaign is your only option to increasing your online visibility think again. Sometimes something as simple as an "I was thinking" article can drive dozens of new relevant links to your site.

With such value in your search listings, it’s wise to extend your branding efforts through SEM campaigns. The coordination of SEM and advertising expertise ensures that all critical ad elements work together for both conversions and the elevation of your brand.
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About the Author: Rob Sullivan - http://www.textlinkbrokers.com
Rob Sullivan - SEO Specialist and Internet Marketing Consultant.

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Create a Web Epidemic in 3 Easy Steps

Whoever said "knowledge is power" was a liar (sorry, Mr. Bacon).

Knowledge isn't power - action is. Well, appropriate action is. More on that in a second.

Anyway, the actions required for success are usually pretty simple. The question is, will you do them?

The answer is usually "no." Why?

It's usually one of two things:

A. You are afraid that the action won't work.

Yes, there is a lot of bad advice out there and you've probably been bitten more than a few times by following bad advice.

B. You go into an "I already know that" trance.

Have you ever heard someone give you some great advice and your immediate reaction is, "Oh, I already know that."

What's the next thing you do? You hit the "off" switch for your brain and slip into a little trance of non-action.

I hope the following information will prevent you from doing that with this short action plan:

• I've created and promoted websites that have been ranked in the Top 100 of all websites in the world (yes, including pörn and Yahoo). One of my sites reached #36 in the world 6 weeks after its release.

• I've sold millïons and millïons of dollars over the Internet - most of it on a zero-dollar ad budget.

• I wrote what some credït as "the first ebook" which was downloaded over 1,000,000 times (when I stopped counting).

Why am I telling you all this? Well, my ego doesn't need any additional stroking today, so there must be another reason.

See, I want you to realize that I know what I'm talking about when I tell you ...

Simple effective plans executed with enthusiasm lead to great success.

And here's a simple and effective plan that gives me and my clients fantastic results every time I use it.

Step 1. Create a Linear Path

Have you ever put two bones in front of a dog? What does it do?

Well, if you've done this before you'll know that the dog goes crazy. He sniffs back and forth between the two bones in utter confusion.

If you give a dog one bone what does he do?

He plays with it and then he buries it.

Humans are just like dogs.

If you give them too many bones to play with, they won't play with any of them.

If your website has too many options, your surfers may clïck on a few things, but each clïck will lack commitment. Why? Well, my theory is that your surfer is wondering in the back of his mind what those other clicks are all about. So, he's in a hurry to get back to your main page and find out.

So, he clicks on a few links and then he leaves.

Get rid of it all. Strip each of your pages down to one thing and one thing only.

Create a linear path to the result you want.

I know – you're about to say, "But what if my visitor doesn't want that 'one thing?'"

Well, you have to ask yourself - would you rather have some people do one thing, or all of them do nothing?

Test this out for yourself. Time and time again I have seen singularly focused linear web pages "out-pull" hodge-podge-links-going-everywhere sites on the order of 100 to 1.

What is that "one thing" your visitors should do? Well, it could be ...

"Purchase my product," or ...

"Sign up for my newsletter," or ...

(If you want to turn your site into an epidemic) it could be...

Step 2. Use Turbo-Charged Tell-a-Friend

It's fairly common for people to have a "tell a friend" scrïpt on their sites, but most are going about it the wrong way.

Turbo-Charging your tell-a-friend action is simple. First, you create a linear path to it. You make it the raison d'etre for the page. Give them some great information and then ask them to tell friends.

Next, change the way you're asking people to tell friends. Don't just put it there on your site as a mild suggestion. Create a compelling reason for them to do so.

It could be a reward of some sort of freebie, or ...

It could be access to a private members-only area, or ...

It could be nothing at all.

Huh? Ponder this for a while ...

Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer once conducted an experiment where she asked her students to cut in line at a copy machine.

First she compared the following two approaches:

Case A: "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?"

Case B: "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I'm in a rush."

It should surprise no one that 60% of those asked in Case A said "yes" and 94% of those in Case B said yes.

In Case B, we have a more compelling reason. Case A is not very convincing at all.

Here's where it gets interesting ...

Case C: "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies."

A shocking 93% of those asked in Case C said "yes."

" ... because I have to make some copies" is not a very compelling argument, but notice the response.

The conclusion hëre was that simply using the word "because" induced those asked to comply.

Try using this same approach on your Tell-a-Friend förm and see what happens.

A worthy test might be:

"Tell a friend about this website because it's Tuesday."

Or ...

"Tell a friend about this website because they will thank you for it."

Write to me and tell me the results.

Step 3. Embody Buzzworthiness

Is that a word? My spellchecker and dictionary both say "no." Please allow me to enter it into our lexicon.

I think it's a useful word to describe the most important factor of all in viral marketing.

Why do people buzz about a website?

In some cases people tell friends about websites because they will get paid to do so. Affïliate programs, MLMs, etc. all bribe people to tell others their message. The problem is that people can smell a bribed disingenuous referral a mile away. This is why you rarely see mega-buzz success based on bribery.

Sometimes companies will offer other incentives like freebies, etc. to incentivize referrals and again the result is much the same.

The greatest viral marketing successes employed no such heavy-handed tactics. They were just buzzworthy.

Take Napster for example. Napster is one of the most downloaded pieces of software in the world (millïons upon millïons of downloads) and they nevër bribed anyone to tell others. They were just ... Well, buzzworthy.

Here's another example. How long do you think it took the average citizen of Planet Earth to find out about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center?

I would venture to say that within the first 24 hours anyone living in an industrialized nation knew of this event.

Why did people tell others about that?

It, too, was buzzworthy.

The nature of buzzworthiness is an elusive thing, but you get the idea ... Below are some hints:

Be very cool.

Be very new.

Be very newsworthy.

Be very important.

Be very useful ...

Just be very.

The more very you are, the more buzz you will get, and that will serve as the trump card that will beat any other hand in the viral marketing deck.

About The Author
Mark Joyner is a Number One best-selling author, one of the first online marketing pioneers, and has sold millïons of dollars in products and services over the Internet on a zero dollar ad budget. His clients pay him $2,000 an hour for his consulting services and he recently distilled his consulting lessons into an easy and fun 36 day course you can start right nöw for frëe at: Simpleology.com.

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