Internet Marketing

Search Engine Optimization

In the early days of the Internet it is easy. You bought a domain name (and there were plenty available), put up a decent website, search engines found you and you had lots of traffic. Internet Marketing hadn't come about and wasn't necessary like it is today.

Fast forward a few years and it's just not that easy. The current estimate for a new site to be indexed by Google is 6 to 9 months. (There are a few tricks to get that to happen quicker that a lot of Internet Marketers still haven't discovered).

Since I'm in computers by default I'm frequently asked questions regarding someone's site. My wife is the expert in that area so I've included some articles on Internet Marketing here by her.

Internet marketing articles:

Better results by spending less money on your PPC campaign  

Finding the right keywords to choose for your pay-per-click campaign sounds easy, doesn't it? My site sells hiking boots I'll buy the phrase hiking boots or my site focuses on computer repair I'll buy the term computer repair.

Well, those are two very popular search terms. You could be competing for thousands of searches per day. What does that mean to you? That means those phrases are going to be expensive.

And because these phrases are so broad you may get visitors to your site but your conversion may not be good. A conversion is a purchase, click, subscription to your newsletter or some positive action by your site visitor.

Now let's say you define it further. And look at Merrell hiking boots, comfortable hiking boots, computer repair in Denver, Colorado, or spyware removal as your search terms. These terms will be cheaper and much more defined.

If your term is hiking boots and someone goes to your site looking for Nike and you don't sell it - you've just paid for a wasted click. However, if you buy Merrell hiking boots someone coming to your site is specifically looking for that brand.

The same holds true for the computer example. If you offer spyware removal the person who clicks on your PPC campaign link to spyware removal will get exactly what they are looking for.

Google and Yahoo offer suggestions for search terms and wordtracker.com also offers help with selecting search terms. This site, http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/, will also help you select key words for your PPC campaign.

You may get fewer clicks in to our site this way but they will be more targeted. And more targeted clicks convert better.

Get listed in Google in 24 hours  

So, you launched your new site. And you are waiting for the traffic to come. An waiting, and waiting, and waiting,…

It currently takes Google 6 to 9 months to index any new site. Yes, 6 to 9 months and that is not to rank that is just to be indexed. As a site owner you can't wait that long. You can pay for search engine submissions but there is no guarantee where you will rank and they can still take day sor even weeks. What if there was a FREE way to accomplish the same thing. And to have it take affect quickly.

Yes, there is a FREE way and it doesn't involve any complicated programming or massive amounts of your time.

Find websites in your category and at least one that is a Page Rank of 5 or higher and get them to exchange links with you. It is that simple. I've found this also works well with sites that have been live for a while but aren't indexed.

(Google has a system to give every site a Page Rank. You can download the toolbar here, http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/index.html.)

How do you find sites in your category? It's easy. Go to Google and type in one of your search terms. Select some suitable sites and ask them to exchange links. You can also use a link directory. There are several good free ones available, linkmetro.com and linkmarket.net, for example.

Are you still wondering does this really work? Go to Google and enter Parker Computer Guy. As of this writing the site, http://www.ParkerComputerGuy.com appears as listing number 1 of 2,040,000. This is a brand new site and it is 1 out of 2,040,000!

Bigger results from smaller search engines  

Advertising on Google and Yahoo, if done properly, can be very successful. However, most small websites or businesses can't afford to advertise there effectively. If you have a limited advertising budget it won't help you to be up on Google or Yahoo for 3 days out of the month. What to do then?

Try starting small and working your way up. Enhance.com has a PPC (pay-per-click) service that utilizes the smaller and some tier-2 search engines, exactseek.com has an offer available right now for a PPC campaign that is $36 for one year for one search term on 50 smaller search engines, and redzee.com is a tier-2 search engine that is offering keywords as low as .10 per word.

Start advertising on these smaller and less expensive sites and you might just be pleasantly surprised by the results.

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