SEM is no easy task. It requires a thoroughly planned execution strategy and a flawless process to be successful. Depending on the competitiveness of the industry, it might take 6 months to years to achieve substantial results. There are no tricks or magic involved here, just hard work and dedication. There are a lot of roads to take and strategies to implement. However, marketers should not forget the fundamentals of SEM.
The most important aspect of a website is to deliver a message to visitors and get then to fill out a form, buy a product, service, or make a phone call.
The 2nd most important aspect is to keep your visitors coming back for informative articles, images, videos, and news – otherwise known as content.
The 3rd most important aspect is for search engines to be able to crawl your website so they can send you traffic. The reason this is the 3rd most important is that without the first 2, what’s the point of sending traffic to your site?
There are many small businesses that have difficulties in marketing, specifically attracting local customers. There are many market challenges for small business. Many mom and pop shops don’t have large enough budgets for marketing. For most small businesses, print advertising becomes their medium of choice whether they post an ad in local Newspaper or pass out flyers made on a home PC. TV advertising isn’t even an option for small businesses. Another challenge is that many small business owners do not have the experience in advertising. Very few small businesses are going to know how to calculate brand equity, opportunities-to-see, and day-parting. These are all terms only marketers understand. Another challenge to small businesses is time. Many mom and pop shops are working double the hours in this economy which leaves little time for implementation and tracking of marketing initiatives with various techniques such as pay per click marketing. Most Small business owners spend their time at the business, not sweating over statistics.
By Arthur Cooper
We are in the midst of a frightening and deepening financial and economic crisis worldwide. The world is making huge adjustments to correct many flawed policies, processes and practices including the use of real estate equity to fuel a worldwide buying binge, highly leveraged global gambling casino-style betting on the success of highly risky credit in the name of Credit Default Swaps. The process is called “deleveraging” but really what this is the process of liquidating hard and soft assets to pay off what can be paid off in the face of never-before-seen lost bets on incredibly risky investments. As someone first said, “This too shall pass.” But what will the world look like? In this writing I will focus on marketing and the lessons we can learn.
By Adelard Gasana
Recently I wrote an article about how the next president of the United States Barack Obama was about to determine whether his website needs a redesign. In my opinion his website put him over the top.
The hardest part of a redesign is convincing the site owner to “change”. Change is very difficult, and even if you have a site you have a love/hate relationship with, you grow attached. Sometimes the best thing is to delete everything and start over from scratch.
The good thing about the Internet is that redesigning a website is a lot easier than a complete redo of a brick and mortar operation.
by Duran Inci
How can we differentiate ourselves from the competition? Many companies are using the same methods and procedures to create results for their clients. I have been hearing al lot of this recently at events and conferences. It seems to be a huge concern for companies who feel they cannot sustain growth or who feel they have hit a ceiling in their markets.
by Adelard Gasana
There is a lot of back and forth about the topic of static versus dynamic URLs and it’s implication to search engine optimization. Early on, Google told us to use URL rewrites whenever possible, and now they are saying you don’t have to do any rewrites.
Here is the most recent article concerning rewrites.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
by Duran Inci
Competition is fierce in Pay Per Click Advertising on both Google Adwords and Yahoo Sponsor Search, aka Overture. There’s nothing more attractive than displaying your products and services to targeted audiences who are only looking for the specific products and services that you offer.
Advertisers have become smarter about how they spend their advertising dollars on Google Adwords; however there are still many misconceptions. Increasing conversion rates in a PPC Campaign requires an aggressive and time-consuming approach. There are 4 steps;
by Adelard Gasana
I have been trying to figure out why recently I’ve been able hit a home run with new projects, when in the past it was difficult to find the “creative” juice I need. I think I’ve figured out what motivates me into digging down into myself and connecting with the universe (life-stream, God, or whatever you believe in that gives you power and motivation), and channeling the energy that fills that blank canvas I am looking at.
by Arthur Cooper
If you are looking for a Search Engine Marketing Company, you must know by now that there are many to choose from. However, if you think through your goals and objectives, your “Search” for an SEM Company will become focused very quickly. Consider what your goals are; asked yourself the following key questions:
by Arthur Cooper
Search Engine Advertising is a term that is inherently confusing. Some use this term interchangeably with Sponsored Search or Pay Per Click Advertising as in Google Adwords. Of course, these are actual advertisements that are tied to specific keyword phrases. As such they are targeted advertisements because they are only viewed based on the keyword itself. Others use this term to mean Organic Search Engine Optimization or SEO which in fact are not advertisements. Rather, these are listings based strictly on relevance as rated by the search engines themselves. These listings are not purchased or bid upon like PPC; they are earned through highly sophisticated optimization techniques. Successful Organic Optimization results in highly visible listings with no cost to the website owner no matter how many times the listing is displayed or clicked.
by Arthur Cooper
At the time of this writing, the country is facing real and growing fear … on Wall Street and on Main Street. The Congress, without shame, has passed the bailout plan along with a whole bunch of pork. In other words to get enough votes, individual members of Congress traded their “conviction” for their pet projects designed to do what … get more votes and insure their own political longevity. This is Democracy?
Including the effects of inflation, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is at least 20% below where it was 10 years ago! We will see layoffs in the 6 figures for many months now and we’ll probably see unemployment rates north of 7%.