Posts Tagged ‘Advertising’

SEO is Not an Advertising Model Like PPC

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Search Engine optimization is a technique and series of services that best helps when there are quality contents around. PPC is pay-per-click advertising, one of the marketing techniques. There is always a misconception among people of the online world where there is clashes of Search Engine Optimization with PPC campaigns. The scenario now is that pay -per-click advertisements and the prices starts to rise and shrinking is happening in the margins. This has demanded the corporations and the website owners to start the investments in organic SEO quite larger. But these investments may prove frustrating are what experienced people feels. The following article will emphasize on the subject.

SEO is known for the incapability in estimating the results and the time consumed to feel the success always leaves the SEO investments hard to pin down. This adds more to the elusiveness when the misconception about PPC and SEO arises. People do think that they are one and the same. The essential difference that the people have on these two concepts is the rapidity. But this is a myth. PPC is faster but different in the terms of results. SEO id slower indeed, but is different of PPC. To understand the SEO results, it is essential to know hoe SEO techniques were implemented. Profound impacts can be drawn with optimized SEO techniques.

With this background, let us understand that Pay Per Click is a campaign of marketing. This model in which advertisement is paid is obviously an advertising model. But it is to be noted that Search Engine Optimization is not advertising. Thus this small difference can essentially define the difference between PPC and SEO.

Now it becomes important to know how PPC and Search Engine Optimization are connected with each other. Consider the following argument and decide the relationship between Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click Advertising.

We all know how online world has influenced people around the world. The consumers all around the world have told that the information from the sites helps in choosing a product. People visit websites even before going for a movie. They visit a website before going for shopping. Thus the information in the web pages affects the customers greatly. Now you may understand how contents are important for online world. These contents are used only as a SEO tool and it is the integral part of Search Engine Optimization. But PPC is not.

PPC Basics

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

PPC advertising (Pay Per Click) is similar to search engine optimization in that it revolves around targeting consumers based on the search queries they are using to find products and services through search engines. Despite that, pay per click advertising is much different because it involves paying for each click you receive to your website rather than attempting to manipulate editorial results. Pay per click advertising is much more complex than it may appear to be based on your initial understanding; not only do you need the expertise and tools to develop a list of thousands of keywords, you also have to understand the processes involved in ensuring you both measure they effectiveness of your PPC advertising and also pay the least amount per click that you have to.

When contacting a PPC or internet marketing company to enquire about their services, you should initially look for a provider who appears to understand both your business model and the complications and challenges that surround PPC advertising. A great indicator of the likely skill of a provider is to speak to a past customer of theirs and find out if they are happy with the results they have attained from working with the company and if they would be happy to recommend them to you.

The 20 Most Common Mistakes in Website Design

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

These twenty mistakes are the difference between a very poor website and a very good website. You may know some of these mistakes already, but if you have avoided or corrected all of them you are almost certain to keep visitors coming in and coming back.

This list is especially important for new designers, amateurs or the experienced but sloppy who need a list to work from for a website spot check.

1. Bad Layout and Design - Yes, there are some ugly, unbalanced or overloaded webpages out there. Make your page a pleasant viewing experience. If you are not sure about the looks of you design, then let some people see a screenshot of your webpage.

2. Non-Standard Links - Why confuse your visitors with links that are different colors or fonts that vary from page to page. Don’t frustrate your visitors, it shouldn’t be a guessing game.

3. Iffy Navigation - Take it easy on the moving objects, trailing images and other stuff you see on kids websites. It’s just not that entertaining and it can get in the way and distract your visitors. Keep it stable easy to find and read.

4. Slow Pages - Who wants to watch your dumb load meter rack up the percents of loaded kilobytes or megabytes? Keep your pages lean and fast, under 50k if possible. Do not bore your visitors.

5. Wild and Crazy Color Schemes - Some pages look idiotic with overly bright colors, maybe even revolting. Your texts must be easy to read, not a sensational nightmare.

6. Spelling and Grammar - Errors in spelling and grammar make your page look amateurish or childish - always spell check.

7. Page Text - Keep your pages easy to read. Break texts into paragraphs or blocks. People scan pages more than they read them, make it easy on them.

8. Font Style and Size - Choose easy to read fonts and use the right size - not micro reading or headlines on every line.

9. Dumb, Out of Control Music - select background music that fits the subject matter and make sure it can be turned off easily.

10. Under Construction - Avoid having a visitor coming to you closed or not yet opened website. What’s the point? Give them a single page of content with a notice as to when the whole site will be available.

11. Untested Web Site - Always look at your website in multiple browsers and make changes accordingly before uploading your site to the web.

12. Sloppy Texts - Make sure all the right words are in all the right places - “Content is King” for readers and search engines.

13. Old Content - Updating your website is important, visitors need to see something new once in a while.

14. Too Many Clicks - Why should a visitor have to jump through page after page to find anything on your website. Make sure everything is only 3 clicks or less from the homepage.

15. No Contact Information - Keep your contact information easy to find and easy to read.

16. Free Hosting Service - When you see a webpage that has a name so long that it has at least one period in the middle of it you know it’s a free hosting situation. Everyone knows the limitations of free hosts and the limitations that they place on a webpage. Don’t use a free web host if you want to be taken seriously.

17. Advertising - Do not overload you page with ads, especially the big grotesque banners. Well placed, well designed ads are okay if you don’t overload the page.

18. Bad Images - Don’t make a visitor suffer missing graphics file or badly shaped or cropped images. Optimize your images and use the best heights and widths, and keep your files in the best formats - jpeg for Photographs and gif for artwork.

19. Website Best Viewed - Don’t say this on your website, it looks like a beginner’s website.

20. No Prices - If you sell something don’t waste your time hoping you will get email inquiries on your prices - just include a price with the item description.

That should do it. Follow these directions to correct the 20 most common mistakes in website design to make sure your webpage is in good shape.

Link Popularity

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

Link building is a targeted way of building a web sites link popularity. You may ask why is link popularity important and why does my site need it? Good Question. And the answer is because search engines like Google put a lot of emphasis on inbound links that come into a web site. The anchor text that is used to point to that inbound web page should also match the optimized phrase for the page, but that’s a different topic. Link building will over time get you to place better with the major search engines.

You can start your link building efforts by doing a search for your desired keyword or keyphrase on Google for example and contact some of the top results to see if they would be interested in exchanging links with your site. Have the code that you would like them to use to point to your web site ready to give to them when you contact them. Make sure that you have an area of your web site that is devoted to posting your relevant link exchanges. That’s right you want to exchange links with sites that have relevancy to what they will be pointing to.

Building inbound links to your web site is very powerful and if done correctly it will:

Increase web traffic to your site

Save you advertising money and time

Make you more of an authority on your subject matter

Increase your visibility in the search engines

Advertising

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

I hate AdSense on blogs. Usually, I ignore it, but I also cast a sharp eye towards the quality of the posts and professionalism of the content when I see AdSense. That’s not to say that contextual advertising can’t work well in some blogs, but it needs to be well integrated into the design and layout to help defer criticism. Don’t get me wrong - it’s unfair to judge a blog by its cover (or, in this case, its ads), but spend a lot of time surfing blogs and you’ll have the same impression - low quality blogs run AdSense and many high quality ones don’t. I always recommend that whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising. Ads, whether they’re sponsorships, banners, contextual or other, tend to have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link - you definitely don’t want that limitation while you’re still trying to get established.