Hayward Blog|Your Blog About Hayward
Dec
24
Filed Under (Ecommerce) by
John Hayward asked:
If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.
However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.
To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for.
For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25/2000 x 100).
If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.
You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.
Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.
Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.
TAFOYA
If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.
However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.
To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for.
For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25/2000 x 100).
If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.
You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.
Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.
Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.
TAFOYA
Comments Off
Dec
20
Filed Under (Ecommerce) by
John Hayward asked:
What do I write about?
Select a subject that you are familiar with, or one that relates to your website. If it is a subject that you are interested in, then it is normally quite easy to write about it. Keep your article to between 500- 600 words. You may have already written something similar, that you have included in your website.
What do I do then?
The next step is to submit your Article to Free Article Directories, like www.Add-Articles.Com, who will then publish your article on their websites. The more of these free sites that you submit to, then the more times your article is “initially” published.
What happens next?
Each time you submit your article; there are two very important sections. The first is the “Resource Section”. This is where you add your details, as the Author of the Article. So you may put something like this: “John Smith, an established Crocodile expert, has been working at Australia Zoo for over 10 years, and has gained a wealth of experience about Crocodiles during this time. If you would like more information on Crocodiles then please visit his website at: www.johnsmith.com “
The second is the “Keywords Section.” Where you would enter say “Crocodile, Crocodiles, Australia Zoo, Animals etc.,” which the search engines will later pick up. The “Resource Section” stays with your article every time it is published, as it is your article, you will always own the copyright.
How does this bring me traffic?
1/. With your article, and website details, listed in the Article Directories. People interested in Crocodiles will read your article, and to learn more, will visit also your website. These Article Directories are getting enormous traffic from visitors that are searching for new articles of interest.
2/. These articles are then picked up by other website owners that are desperate for new content to add to their websites. They publish your article on their sites, leaving your site details in place, which brings you yet more visitors.
3/. Each time your article is published, you have another link back to your website. The whole process starts to snowball, and all from just one article.
The final piece of the good news, in a win, win situation, is the major Search Engines. They are also very eager for new content to add. So once they pick up on your new article…… you suddenly have a very busy website with lots of the traffic, all of which, you got for Free!
SALLEY
What do I write about?
Select a subject that you are familiar with, or one that relates to your website. If it is a subject that you are interested in, then it is normally quite easy to write about it. Keep your article to between 500- 600 words. You may have already written something similar, that you have included in your website.
What do I do then?
The next step is to submit your Article to Free Article Directories, like www.Add-Articles.Com, who will then publish your article on their websites. The more of these free sites that you submit to, then the more times your article is “initially” published.
What happens next?
Each time you submit your article; there are two very important sections. The first is the “Resource Section”. This is where you add your details, as the Author of the Article. So you may put something like this: “John Smith, an established Crocodile expert, has been working at Australia Zoo for over 10 years, and has gained a wealth of experience about Crocodiles during this time. If you would like more information on Crocodiles then please visit his website at: www.johnsmith.com “
The second is the “Keywords Section.” Where you would enter say “Crocodile, Crocodiles, Australia Zoo, Animals etc.,” which the search engines will later pick up. The “Resource Section” stays with your article every time it is published, as it is your article, you will always own the copyright.
How does this bring me traffic?
1/. With your article, and website details, listed in the Article Directories. People interested in Crocodiles will read your article, and to learn more, will visit also your website. These Article Directories are getting enormous traffic from visitors that are searching for new articles of interest.
2/. These articles are then picked up by other website owners that are desperate for new content to add to their websites. They publish your article on their sites, leaving your site details in place, which brings you yet more visitors.
3/. Each time your article is published, you have another link back to your website. The whole process starts to snowball, and all from just one article.
The final piece of the good news, in a win, win situation, is the major Search Engines. They are also very eager for new content to add. So once they pick up on your new article…… you suddenly have a very busy website with lots of the traffic, all of which, you got for Free!
SALLEY
Comments Off
Dec
04
Filed Under (Ecommerce) by
John Hayward asked:
The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which offer what is known as “paid inclusion.” This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.
Of course, every search engine already has an automated program commonly called a “spider” that indexes all the web pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So
whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.
A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra spider that is programmed to index the particular pages that have been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages for free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed. If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search engine spider will index your page immediately.
The debate over paid URL inclusion centres around the annual fee. Since the regular spider of these search engines would eventually get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the search engine’s index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines, your page will be removed from their index for a certain amount of time.
It’s easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine will eventually index your page without the additional cost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.
The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will be indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short time after you have paid the fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index your pages, and when the paid spider will, is a matter of months. The spider for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the regular spider will never locate them at all.
Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you can update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in which they appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matter of days.
First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to pay each engine their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend on your company.
Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That means that the search engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis.
Google usually updates its index every month, and there is no way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be aware that it is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show up in Google, or AOL results.
One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal for your company is to consider some common factors. First, find out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. This is because your pages have already been indexed and ranked by the regular spider. If this is the case, your money would be better spent by updating your pages to improve your ranking in search results. Once you accomplish this, you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit your pages.
The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL inclusion is to decide if it’s a good investment. To figure this out, you have to look at the overall picture:
what kind of product or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?
If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best investment for you; the biggest search engines do not offer it, and they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if you have a business that offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain quality of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.
Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion will insure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The new content is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new relevant keywords are entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion in this case will guarantee that your pages are being indexed in a timely manner.
You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are dynamically generated. These types of pages are often difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically generated website will insure that the paid spider will index them.
Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search engine, although these pages usually reappear in a few months. There are a number of reasons why this can happen, but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to locate them immediately.
As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your business goals.
YESKE
The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which offer what is known as “paid inclusion.” This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.
Of course, every search engine already has an automated program commonly called a “spider” that indexes all the web pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So
whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.
A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra spider that is programmed to index the particular pages that have been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages for free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed. If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search engine spider will index your page immediately.
The debate over paid URL inclusion centres around the annual fee. Since the regular spider of these search engines would eventually get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the search engine’s index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines, your page will be removed from their index for a certain amount of time.
It’s easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine will eventually index your page without the additional cost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.
The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will be indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short time after you have paid the fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index your pages, and when the paid spider will, is a matter of months. The spider for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the regular spider will never locate them at all.
Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you can update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in which they appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matter of days.
First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to pay each engine their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend on your company.
Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That means that the search engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis.
Google usually updates its index every month, and there is no way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be aware that it is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show up in Google, or AOL results.
One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal for your company is to consider some common factors. First, find out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. This is because your pages have already been indexed and ranked by the regular spider. If this is the case, your money would be better spent by updating your pages to improve your ranking in search results. Once you accomplish this, you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit your pages.
The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL inclusion is to decide if it’s a good investment. To figure this out, you have to look at the overall picture:
what kind of product or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?
If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best investment for you; the biggest search engines do not offer it, and they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if you have a business that offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain quality of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.
Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion will insure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The new content is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new relevant keywords are entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion in this case will guarantee that your pages are being indexed in a timely manner.
You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are dynamically generated. These types of pages are often difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically generated website will insure that the paid spider will index them.
Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search engine, although these pages usually reappear in a few months. There are a number of reasons why this can happen, but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to locate them immediately.
As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your business goals.
YESKE
Comments Off
Nov
12
Filed Under (Ecommerce) by
John Hayward asked:
You may think that all Garden Furniture is built to last, but unfortunately that is NOT the case. Buying cheap Garden Furniture is very often the most expensive choice! It will need to be replaced often! The old adage is also true, “you get what you pay for”.
Having established that we are now NOT going to buy the cheapest that we can find, what should we do next? The first step is to decide what type of Garden Furniture that you like. This you can basically separate into two categories:
Metal Garden Furniture or Hardwood Garden Furniture.
Metal Garden Furniture:
If you want Metal Garden Furniture, and you want it to last, then you should select Metal Garden Furniture that is ONLY made of Aluminum. The reason for this is that Aluminum does not rust, so will last in all weather conditions. Having decided on Aluminum, you then must look at whether to go for “Cast Aluminum”, which is often solid and is made from Aluminum that has been Cast into a mould, or “Framed Aluminum”, which although lighter, is normally equally as durable. So if your preference is to have Metal Garden Furniture, selecting any type of quality Aluminum Garden Furniture, you will be sure of getting many years of use from your purchase.
Hardwood Garden Furniture:
This is my favorite! No two pieces are “exactly” the same and subtle differences in the grain, makes each piece unique. It would take a whole book to completely cover “Hardwood Garden Furniture”, because there are literally thousands of different options. However after the last ten years of selling “all types” of wooden garden furniture, my choice has narrowed right down to only one type of wooden garden furniture to buy, and that is one made of Teak!
The reason for this is very simple; it is the BEST there is to withstand most types of weather, including the often cold and rainy UK climate. Although it is certainly more expensive that most other types of wood, it is VERY hard wearing and will last for many years, with or without, any treatment, so really does justifies the higher price.
Teak is a natural product that is from a slow growing hard wood tree. So when you look to buy make sure that you select from a supplier that has Teak Garden Furniture that has ONLY been made from “Plantation Grown” Teak, which is a renewable resource, and not from a forest that is being destroyed by de-forestation.
Quality Teak Garden Furniture should last for 20 -25 years, so when you compare the life of it to the cost, it is extremely good value for money.
KOCHER
You may think that all Garden Furniture is built to last, but unfortunately that is NOT the case. Buying cheap Garden Furniture is very often the most expensive choice! It will need to be replaced often! The old adage is also true, “you get what you pay for”.
Having established that we are now NOT going to buy the cheapest that we can find, what should we do next? The first step is to decide what type of Garden Furniture that you like. This you can basically separate into two categories:
Metal Garden Furniture or Hardwood Garden Furniture.
Metal Garden Furniture:
If you want Metal Garden Furniture, and you want it to last, then you should select Metal Garden Furniture that is ONLY made of Aluminum. The reason for this is that Aluminum does not rust, so will last in all weather conditions. Having decided on Aluminum, you then must look at whether to go for “Cast Aluminum”, which is often solid and is made from Aluminum that has been Cast into a mould, or “Framed Aluminum”, which although lighter, is normally equally as durable. So if your preference is to have Metal Garden Furniture, selecting any type of quality Aluminum Garden Furniture, you will be sure of getting many years of use from your purchase.
Hardwood Garden Furniture:
This is my favorite! No two pieces are “exactly” the same and subtle differences in the grain, makes each piece unique. It would take a whole book to completely cover “Hardwood Garden Furniture”, because there are literally thousands of different options. However after the last ten years of selling “all types” of wooden garden furniture, my choice has narrowed right down to only one type of wooden garden furniture to buy, and that is one made of Teak!
The reason for this is very simple; it is the BEST there is to withstand most types of weather, including the often cold and rainy UK climate. Although it is certainly more expensive that most other types of wood, it is VERY hard wearing and will last for many years, with or without, any treatment, so really does justifies the higher price.
Teak is a natural product that is from a slow growing hard wood tree. So when you look to buy make sure that you select from a supplier that has Teak Garden Furniture that has ONLY been made from “Plantation Grown” Teak, which is a renewable resource, and not from a forest that is being destroyed by de-forestation.
Quality Teak Garden Furniture should last for 20 -25 years, so when you compare the life of it to the cost, it is extremely good value for money.
KOCHER
Comments Off
Apr
27
Filed Under (Ecommerce) by
John Hayward asked:
Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. One of the differences is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign versus months for a good SEO campaign.
Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires a bid for a “per-click” basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site. There is the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results of other prevalent search engines.
As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective. One of the greatest advantages is that you never have to tweak your web pages to change your position in search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click campaign is pay a fee.
Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you’re up and running. It doesn’t demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier - and more effective - the process will be.
The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain your position - which can obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.
In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site is worth. You can compute this value by dividing the profit you make on your website over a given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same time period. For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were 2,5000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50 cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.
The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click.
Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual hit.
The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can about search engine keyword research. The good news is there isn’t a limit to the amount of keywords you can add to your bid because additional keywords do not add additional cost. This translates into a lot less hassle for you because there is no need to optimize your site to index a particular set of keywords.
Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than others are, but they will not cost you anything except time to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid. Of the popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one called Overture provides an online tool that will give you the data on how often particular keywords are entered into their search engine. They also offer suggestions for keywords after you enter a description of your site.
In pay-per-click, this written description is crucial. You must understand that the object of your description is not to generally attract visitors, but to be as specific as possible so that only those visitors who are likely to buy your service or product go to your site. You must use expert marketing copy to guarantee that your description is both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal candidates to your site. This description is your most powerful tool to insure that your bid is profitable.
Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you constantly monitor your bid. It is very important that you bear in mind that the results of the top search engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are Overture and Adwords Select, usually appear on other popular search engines. Because of this, the competition for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click to yield a profit.
If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on that particular keyword and try another one. Remember: when you pay too much per click to make a profit, you are in essence losing the bidding war.
Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a monthly basis.
Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis of visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and will also insure that your pay-per-click campaign is a success.
MAYNE
Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. One of the differences is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign versus months for a good SEO campaign.
Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires a bid for a “per-click” basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site. There is the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results of other prevalent search engines.
As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective. One of the greatest advantages is that you never have to tweak your web pages to change your position in search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click campaign is pay a fee.
Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you’re up and running. It doesn’t demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier - and more effective - the process will be.
The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain your position - which can obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.
In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site is worth. You can compute this value by dividing the profit you make on your website over a given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same time period. For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were 2,5000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50 cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.
The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click.
Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual hit.
The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can about search engine keyword research. The good news is there isn’t a limit to the amount of keywords you can add to your bid because additional keywords do not add additional cost. This translates into a lot less hassle for you because there is no need to optimize your site to index a particular set of keywords.
Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than others are, but they will not cost you anything except time to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid. Of the popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one called Overture provides an online tool that will give you the data on how often particular keywords are entered into their search engine. They also offer suggestions for keywords after you enter a description of your site.
In pay-per-click, this written description is crucial. You must understand that the object of your description is not to generally attract visitors, but to be as specific as possible so that only those visitors who are likely to buy your service or product go to your site. You must use expert marketing copy to guarantee that your description is both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal candidates to your site. This description is your most powerful tool to insure that your bid is profitable.
Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you constantly monitor your bid. It is very important that you bear in mind that the results of the top search engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are Overture and Adwords Select, usually appear on other popular search engines. Because of this, the competition for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click to yield a profit.
If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on that particular keyword and try another one. Remember: when you pay too much per click to make a profit, you are in essence losing the bidding war.
Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a monthly basis.
Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis of visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and will also insure that your pay-per-click campaign is a success.
MAYNE
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Apr
24
Filed Under (Ecommerce) by
John Hayward asked:
When you make searches, you are looking for something, which is something that we all do everyday. Well how about every time you make a Search, you get paid for it??
What a great way to earn money, but like me you are probably thinking, where is the catch?
Before we go any further, I am NOT talking about Google’s and their Adsense program. Which is very good, but it requires other people to make the “clicks”, and then it has to be on the advertisements that Google has placed on your web site. What Google does NOT do, it to pay you to make a Search! The Search Engine I am talking about DOES!!
How it works, is like this. This new Search Engine pays you, EVERY TIME you make a Search using your very own Search Engine Portal. So imagine, instead of using Google, MSN or Yahoo, or whoever you are currently using to make Searches, you use this new Search Engine. No real hardship, providing you get good results in your Search, it does not really matter.
It gets even better, it is not restricted to just you. They will ALSO pay you every time someone else searches on your personal Search Portal. So the more people that you can get to use YOUR search portal the better.
As editor of a large Article Directory, that currently has over 20,000 Articles, we receive hundreds of new ideas that arrive daily….but in this past week I have received two new articles, that have both made me sit up and take notice. This is the first of those, the other I will leave for a second article.
Every day many millions of searches are performed, admittedly over 80% of those searches are currently made by internet users that go through either Google, MSN or Yahoo, but none of them will pay you when you search, this new Search Engine does! Don’t forget that it was only a few years ago when Google started, and the big guys said that they would not last…..but now look at how big they are.
This is how the new Search Engine works:
You have your own Search Portal, in the same way that you would Search though any of the big three. Although instead of using say Google, you Search via your own personal Search Portal. The results that they supply, are both quick, and also very good, and supplied in the same way that they would be with any other Search Engine, but here is the difference!
1/. They will give you $50 just for joining, no catch, your account is credit as soon as you join up with them.
2/. You then get the personal link to your very own Search Portal when you join, which you then use whenever you want to make a Search of the internet.
3/. They CREDIT your account every time you make a Search, using your own Search Portal.
Now the potential!
The Search Portal link is specific to YOU, so the idea is for you to get your friends, and maybe even business colleagues to also use YOUR Search Portal, after all it will cost them nothing, and they will get good results. The more people you can get to use your Search Portal the better….BECAUSE every time that it is used to make a Search by anyone using YOUR Search Engine Portal link, the Search company pays YOU!!
It progresses even further, it is completely Free to you, and you get the $50 sign up bonus mentioned above, but if your friends also sign up, they get the $50 bonus too, as do their friends, and their friend’s friends!
So there must be a catch?
I have NOT found one, and I have looked at it VERY closely. In fact I think it is a great idea, I have actually tried it, and as promised my account credit increased as they said it would. I believe that it is a very novel idea and one that could really take off. It is totally free to use, it does not cost the users anything, and so as far as I can see it really is a win win situation.
The Search Engine I am talking about, is also a Pay Per Click Search Engine, so they DO want you to use the money you earn to buy Pay Per Click listings, but then if you have your own website, and you are accumulating money for Free just by making Searches, then it also means that you are getting your “clicks” for Free too. They also have paid Membership, which I understand allows you to take the money you earn in the form of Cash Commissions, paid twice monthly via PayPal.
From my point of view, it looks like a new way of getting free traffic to my website.
So finally if you do have a web site, or maybe plan to have one in the future, would like to promote it for Free, then this is something that you should really take a look at.
After all they could be the internet’s next big player, and you are getting in on the ground floor!
BEACH
When you make searches, you are looking for something, which is something that we all do everyday. Well how about every time you make a Search, you get paid for it??
What a great way to earn money, but like me you are probably thinking, where is the catch?
Before we go any further, I am NOT talking about Google’s and their Adsense program. Which is very good, but it requires other people to make the “clicks”, and then it has to be on the advertisements that Google has placed on your web site. What Google does NOT do, it to pay you to make a Search! The Search Engine I am talking about DOES!!
How it works, is like this. This new Search Engine pays you, EVERY TIME you make a Search using your very own Search Engine Portal. So imagine, instead of using Google, MSN or Yahoo, or whoever you are currently using to make Searches, you use this new Search Engine. No real hardship, providing you get good results in your Search, it does not really matter.
It gets even better, it is not restricted to just you. They will ALSO pay you every time someone else searches on your personal Search Portal. So the more people that you can get to use YOUR search portal the better.
As editor of a large Article Directory, that currently has over 20,000 Articles, we receive hundreds of new ideas that arrive daily….but in this past week I have received two new articles, that have both made me sit up and take notice. This is the first of those, the other I will leave for a second article.
Every day many millions of searches are performed, admittedly over 80% of those searches are currently made by internet users that go through either Google, MSN or Yahoo, but none of them will pay you when you search, this new Search Engine does! Don’t forget that it was only a few years ago when Google started, and the big guys said that they would not last…..but now look at how big they are.
This is how the new Search Engine works:
You have your own Search Portal, in the same way that you would Search though any of the big three. Although instead of using say Google, you Search via your own personal Search Portal. The results that they supply, are both quick, and also very good, and supplied in the same way that they would be with any other Search Engine, but here is the difference!
1/. They will give you $50 just for joining, no catch, your account is credit as soon as you join up with them.
2/. You then get the personal link to your very own Search Portal when you join, which you then use whenever you want to make a Search of the internet.
3/. They CREDIT your account every time you make a Search, using your own Search Portal.
Now the potential!
The Search Portal link is specific to YOU, so the idea is for you to get your friends, and maybe even business colleagues to also use YOUR Search Portal, after all it will cost them nothing, and they will get good results. The more people you can get to use your Search Portal the better….BECAUSE every time that it is used to make a Search by anyone using YOUR Search Engine Portal link, the Search company pays YOU!!
It progresses even further, it is completely Free to you, and you get the $50 sign up bonus mentioned above, but if your friends also sign up, they get the $50 bonus too, as do their friends, and their friend’s friends!
So there must be a catch?
I have NOT found one, and I have looked at it VERY closely. In fact I think it is a great idea, I have actually tried it, and as promised my account credit increased as they said it would. I believe that it is a very novel idea and one that could really take off. It is totally free to use, it does not cost the users anything, and so as far as I can see it really is a win win situation.
The Search Engine I am talking about, is also a Pay Per Click Search Engine, so they DO want you to use the money you earn to buy Pay Per Click listings, but then if you have your own website, and you are accumulating money for Free just by making Searches, then it also means that you are getting your “clicks” for Free too. They also have paid Membership, which I understand allows you to take the money you earn in the form of Cash Commissions, paid twice monthly via PayPal.
From my point of view, it looks like a new way of getting free traffic to my website.
So finally if you do have a web site, or maybe plan to have one in the future, would like to promote it for Free, then this is something that you should really take a look at.
After all they could be the internet’s next big player, and you are getting in on the ground floor!
BEACH
Comments Off
