:Article Marketing At Its Best

As you surf the web take a look around at many of the sites you see. Do you notice anything that seems strange? Well, let me point it out to you. There are hundreds of thousands of web sites that just don’t get much traffic. Some of these sites house hundreds of articles, reviews, tutorials, tools, products, forums to mention a few things, yet still they do not receive large amounts of traffic. What is their problem? They have the content. What is left?

The problem is these sites aren’t optimized for the search engines. SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SE Friendliness, however you refer to it doesn’t matter, the fact is it works and I’m going to tell you what’s involved.

Before we continue let me familiarize you with some relevant terminology in my own words.

**Search Engine Optimization**

Search engine optimization can be referred to as the addition and modification of all variables and extended variables of a web site in hopes of achieving a better position in the search engines. By variables I mean components of a website such as META tags and content. By extended variable I mean things such as links from other sites.

Different SEOs, search engine optimizers, may have different opinions on this but alas this is only my own.

**What is a Search Engine Optimization Company? **

A search engine optimization company is a company that offers the service of creating and adjusting all the variables involved in search engine optimization in order to get your web site the best ranking they can achieve, during the designated project period, for all the major search engines.

**Search Engine Optimization Hurdles**

Back to the question of why these sites rich with content aren’t bringing in the numbers. There are several reasons why sites small and large aren’t optimized for the search engines, fortunately these can be remedied.

1. Many webmasters/site owners believe in “If You Build It They Will Come”. This attitude will get your web site no where fast. Sure if you build it you will get users maybe even a decent amount of users but you will not be unleashing the real potential of your web site.

2. Not feeling that your site can do better than it is. Websites can always be further optimized. Search engines change their algorithms all the time so what worked 2 months ago may not work as well or at all in present times. For any of you that fee you can get your site optimized better, think of the story of the Little Engine and don’t think you can, KNOW YOU CAN.

3. Laziness is also a major contributing factor. Many webmasters feel it is just too hard or too time consuming to do search engine optimization.

This is partially true. Search engine optimization is not easy but then again, anyone can do it. It does take time though and time is a precious commodity. In situations where you just can’t devote the time to search engine optimize your site I would recommend seeking the services of a professional search engine optimization company. You can choose one here http://www.lilengine.com/seo-companies.php

4. Time + cost = a deterrent. For a situation like this I would recommend optimizing little by little on your own. Eventually you will become better and better at it and be able to accomplish more in less time.

5. Another problem is many people think “Well my site is only a small site, there is no way I will be able to compete with the larger sites that have top spots in the search engines”. If you think like this I’d like to say this to you. It is possible that that if you optimize your web site you may not be able to compete with the larger sites and may not be able to get a page 1 or 2 ranking in any of the search engines, BUT, what if you did. Always shoot for the stars so if you fall short you will at least hit the sky.

Now for those of you who plan to better your websites via Search Engine Optimization here are the stages you need to follow in order to have an efficient and effective SEO campaign.

**Planning Your Search Engine Optimization Campaign**

Planning is an essential factor in your SEO campaign. Knowing exactly what steps you are going to make and in what order and how you are going to go about achieving each of those steps will save you not only time but it will save you frustration as well. Planning is essential.

**Researching the Most Effective SEO Strategies**

What works and what does not. You will need to learn as many optimization strategies as you can that are currently effective with the search engines. This will be one of the most time consuming steps in your SEO campaign as you will have to sift through information as well as participate in SEO related forums to get additional information from professional. You can take this process in stages and apply your newly gained knowledge as you get it. There is also some useful software available both free and paid that will greatly help with this effort. WebPosition Gold is one of the more popular ones.

**Search Engine Optimize Your Site**

This should be done in stages so you can see the effectiveness of the applied strategies you are using. Don’t change your entire site all at once, instead, change a few areas at a time and see what results they produce. If you are satisfied with this then move on and optimize another section.

Search engine optimization does not only deal with your site it also deals with the relationship other sites have with yours and yours with theirs. Keep this in mind when utilizing your link building strategies.

**Monitor Your SEO Progress**

There are many ways to do this you will have to find the best method for you. You will need to monitor your search engine ranking for the keywords you are targeting after each update. Changes should be recorded and used as references to monitor progress and for strategy adjustments. There are many tools for this process as well. I recommend SEOCount.com for monitoring your progress on the Google search engine as it is very easy to use and you can monitor several domains and keywords all from within the same account. It also gives you the option of viewing the number of backlinks.

These steps follow the Plan Do Review methodology which is a proven strategy for engaging in any task. It is again unfortunate that there are so many webmasters who overlook this entire process; hopefully this article will stop you from making this same mistake. For more information on search engine optimization visit http://www.lilengine.com

Copyright © LilEngine.com 2003

About The Author

Alec Duncan is the founder of Li’l Engine a search engine optimization site. Get more great SEO tips at http://www.lilengine.com and visit their new Web Hosting Resource at http://webhosting.lilengine.com as well as http://www.grindinggears.com for Open Source Development information.

ald@lilengine.com

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As costs of PPC campaigns are increasing, internet marketers are
more than even under the pressure to deliver positive results.
The performance of PPC campaigns is dependent on following
factors:

- The impression rate

- Your ad position

- Click thru rate (CTR)

- Conversion rate

Finding the right balance between impression rate, ad position
and clicks is the starting point to successful PPC advertising.
Before exploring tips to help your campaign perform better,
let’s quickly sum-up the concept how Google displays your ads in
its sponsored results:

* Daily budget controls frequency of your ad display

The frequency is expressed by number of impressions. If your
daily budget is not high enough, your ad may not show all the
time (meaning you don’t have enough impressions per day).

* Ad position depends on the Rank Number

The higher the rank number, the higher is your ad’s position on
the page. The rank number is calculated based on the following
formula:

Rank Number = CPC (Cost Per click) x CTR (click through rate) x
(Ad quality)

Now we’re ready to explore what practices are more likely to
help us improve PPC campaigns performance:

1/ Improve Ad Delivery

If your ad does not show up every time when searches are
performed under your keyword, it may be a sign that your daily
budget is not high enough. As you now know, how frequent of your
ad display is controled by the daily budget. If you would like
your ad to be shown more frequently, please consider to increase
your daily budget in order to receive a maximum exposure for
your ad.

Normally, you have 50% margin for your daily budget. For
example, if your desired daily budget is $10.00 per day, you can
set your actual daily budget on Google to $15.00 per day,
because your actual spending is based on your click thru rate,
by setting the daily budget higher will allow your ad to get
more exposure, but your actual spending may still be in your
desired daily budget range.

However, be sure to monitor your daily advertising costs and if
they are rising too high, decrease the budget on the safe level.

2/ Improve Ad Delivery per Keyword

Each campaign can have one or more adroups. An AdGroup is a
group of keywords and ads that will display when those keywords
are searched for on Google. You may have experienced a situation
when only few keywords out of the whole AdGroup trigger your ad.
The explanation lies again behind the daily budget that controls
a number of impressions for your campaign. These impressions are
distributed between individual AdGroups and further between
individual keywords. So it may happen that some keywords in a
particular Adgroup have more impressions than the others,
meaning some keywords trigger your ad more frequently than
others.

If you want to improve the ad delivery for your targeted
keywords, you can consider splitting your keywords and creating
a new campaign for keywords with low impressions. This should
improve the frequency with which they will trigger your ad.

3/ Optimize your Adgroups

As mentioned above, each campaign has one or more adroups that
all share campaign’s impressions. Often, the impressions are not
divided evenly between adgroups. So it may happen that some
adgroups have more impressions and show their ad(s) more
frequently than others. It is a very similar scenario as with
keywords we just described above.

To improve results of your low-performing adgroups, you can
consider to create a new campaign for them in order to increase
the frequency with witch they show your ad on Google.

4/ Analyse your Clicks

Make sure the clicks are made for specific, targeted keywords.
If you’re getting lots of clicks on non-targeted keywords,
consider reducing Max CPC and/or your ad position in order to
improve your ROI. Similarly, you can raise bids for targeted
keywords that are performing well.

5/ Optimize your Ads

Make sure you bid on targeted keywords, create compelling ads
and link them to relevant content on your website. The keywords
you chose will segment the market and target your desired
audience. If you won’t chose wisely, you’ll finish targeting the
wrong market and wasting your advertising budget. The ad you
create needs to attract attention of your prospects. It needs to
communicate your unique selling feature - in other words, what
makes your product/service different from others and why a
visitor should visit your website. Be specific about your offer
and include call to action. Lastly, guide visitors to the
content on your website where they can access more information
about the offer advertised. The landing page should also clearly
state what is the next natural step to make - buy your product,
download the white paper, sign up for a free trial, etc.

PPC management requires lots of work and testing but if you
stick to the basics you can make money instead of losing them.
Remember, the only measure that matters on the Internet is the
profit you make.

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Let’s talk a little more about using Text Links for better SEO placement becuase it’s a
very relevant tool that you have at your disposal and something
that you should consider exploring.

Working with text links to help with your SEO rankings is going
to involve a good solid chunk of time. So, don’t think that this
is an easy solution because it’s not, but it is solid … at
least it is for now. Here’s some search term improvement
techniques for you to take into account:

1. Link Exchanges

Used to be everyone was exchanging links with anyone else who
give them a link. Then Google danced and bamm … doing that
will get you lower placement. So, you have to be smart and ONLY
exchange links with other domains that are relevant to your
site’s topics. Do that and you will see your domain move up the
ranks.

2. Billboards

This is something kind of new and is working for now until
Google bans the companies offering this service. I’d say use it
while it works my friend!

Sites using Billboards
are noticing significant rank increases. One site recorded the
following…

Over the last 3 months, we have added about 20 unique billboards … We
did about 2 per week, and every week we would see position moves
of 1 - 2 positions. This is an extremely effective tool because
it gives you relevant backlink content on different IP’s. Take
the time to write good article/news stories and plug your
company or product. This technique will pay off. Don’t believe
me? pick an obscure term without competition, and put up 2 - 5
billboards using the term as anchor text through-out your BB’s
and you will see position moves within 4 weeks.

The use of Billboards is
currently a very good way to get your website relevant
positioning in a shorter period of time and you can do so for
reasonable fees. You only need to pay for Billboard space on
another’s IP for 30 days, by then the search engine will have
found you. Make sure the IP is spidered by all the major search
engines regularly. After 30 days, you can remove your page and
go on to the next IP. Keep doing this and you will build a
repository of text rich backlinks to your own domain. Very yummy
search engine food!

3. Text Link Advertising

Text link
ads are very affordable for those not wanting to
dedicate all the time it takes to getting relevant backlinks.
Okay, here’s what I think is the best strategy with regards to
buying text links. Most likely that PR8 website isn’t going to
get you any higher placement than the PR4-PR6 will. That’s my
opinion, others will disagree. My own testing is showing Google
really doesn’t pay much attention to their own PR system … who
knew?!

So, buy links that are PR4-6 and don’t pay over $25 for them …
unless of course they happen to be mine … lol. Here again, I’d
recommend you use Linkworth and
use their set of tools to determine the worth of any link you
might be considering … those tools will even help you with
domains that aren’t in the Linkworth repository
… hint, hint!

These types of one-way links will
really help your placement. If you can get one-way links from
other sources for free, go for it and make sure they have better
PR than you do!

4. Content Development

Well now here’s a novel idea, the more content you ad to your
website, then better your rankings will be … and go one step
further, you must do so on a consistant basis … like every two
weeks ad a new page.

Ad pages with 250-500 words of relevant content and relevant
links.

And, this is really important … make sure all your webpages
have different content by at least 40%. Google is so smart it
actually knows if you’ve got the same page up on the domain …
and it knows if you’ve got the same domain mirrored on other
domains. You have to do the work!

5. Menu Structure

Make sure the search engines can easily spider every page on
your website. I prefer to hard code all my links … including
the domain name info. Taking short-cuts only hurts you.

Make sure you use keywords in your menu links and make sure the
search engines can easily follow your links from the top level
to the second their third levels.

6. Website SEO

Use the H1, H2 tages and relevant keywords through out the site.
Keep keyword density around 2-5% … going over will cause you
to drop in the ranks. I speak from experience on that one.

7. Schedule Regular Updates

Like I said, you must consistently add new content to your
website to keep the search engines well feed and happy. You
must get down and dirty and do this part, if you don’t … those
purchased links aren’t going to help you get all the way
there.

8. Hurry Up and Wait

It takes time to make all these things happen and with each step
you have to sit back and see what result it had, if good then
you step again. It’s like a chess game … really think about
your next move and you can get to the top.

And while you’re waiting, put up a page that offers your viewers
text links and graphical links back to your website … create a
“link to us” page. It’s free! And, if your website is
interesting, you’d be surprised how many people will link to you
as a result.

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