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Focus On Quality Traffic Not Quantity

By Westly Lager in Featured

Now, going up the list in terms of quality, you will have PPC traffic generation (this isn’t really next long-term, but if you don’t know what you are doing, you can lose your shirt in a hurry with these, so be careful).

There is also ezine advertising, and article marketing, which, when done correctly, can be very profitable.

These are two forms of traffic generation that generally produce a much higher quality visitor than the ones mentioned earlier. Ezine advertising is more costly per visitor, and article marketing, although it can be done on a budget, is time consuming.

Now, everything is relative. You see, you will be spending more per visitor for these visitors, but when they come to your site they already have an interest in your type of product. They are a much more targeted visitor, and as such, are much more likely to purchase from you.

There is not much to say here about ezine advertising, except to try it out and experiment with various ads in various ezines. Again, it is important to track all your traffic and the source of your sales. You see, if you advertise in 10 ezines and receive 10 sales, it is very unlikely that each ezine produced one sale each. One ezine producing 8 sales, and another producing 2 sales, with the other 8 ezines producing nothing is probably much more realistic. For this reason, you must track, and it is also advisable to advertise in several at one time. For example, with the case just mentioned, if you had only advertised in some of the ones that didn’t produce, you would have a bad feeling for ezine advertising, and if you had gotten lucky and advertised in the one that produced the most sales, you would have become over-zealous regarding ezine advertising. But by purchasing several ads and tracking your results, you have a much more realistic picture of what ezine advertising can do.

Article marketing. This has recently become a very popular area of advertising, although it has probably always been effective.

What it entails is writing short, informative articles on the same topic as your book and including a link to your website at the end of the article. You then submit the articles to the various article submission directories. When they publish the articles, ezine directories pick up your article and use it as content for their ezine or newsletter. So, in a sense, it reaches the same market as the ezine advertising, but with a different cost. I say different, because although you are not paying for the article to appear, you also have no control over where it appears. The idea is that if you write a good article, the ezine editors will include it because they feel it is good information for their readers. It is also time consuming to write articles and submit them to the various article directories.

Now, just like everything on the web, there is an answer to that, but now you are spending money again. There are several article submission services out there that can submit your article to the various directories, for a reasonable fee. The advantage here is that you aren’t spending a ridiculous amount of time submitting the articles, but keep in mind that some of the better article directories won’t accept the automated submissions. The key here is to track what you, and check up on your articles to be sure they appear with all your links intact. This goes for whether you submit them yourself, or you have a submission service do it for you.

Ok, now for PPC click campaigns. These are pay-per-click campaigns that work exactly as the name implies. You pay when someone clicks on your website. They also have their good points and their drawbacks. They are wonderful for testing aspects of your web site, because in some campaigns you can have every other visitor go to a different version of your site, and track the conversion rate of different qualities of your page. They are good at simply bringing targeted visitors to your site. The drawbacks, however, are many, and I am not going to cover them here.

As you can see here, there are many different methods for generating traffic, and in some sense they can probably all fit into your strategy for generating sales. It is important, though, that you tailor each sales page or sales letter or squeeze page to the type of advertising you are running. You can have a great source of traffic but if you are ineffective at capturing either email information or the sale, you will not be productive. And each form of traffic requires a little different approach.

Another point here. Since there are so many different ways to generate traffic, which should you try, and should you try all of them? I suggest you choose a couple or three that you might feel comfortable with, or at least understand how they work. Also, do not try to use 25 different types of traffic the first month or two into this project. It is far better to choose two or three and focus on getting good at selling to that customer. It is so easy to get caught up in trying something new every single week, and never really making any money. Stick with a few, and master them.

Westly Lager is a success mentor and coach helping teach people how to work online. With Westly’s experience and expertise you can’t go wrong. See how Westly can help you today by visiting My Internet Business also checkout this My Internet Business Review article

Adopting a Local Search Strategy for Multi National Clients

By Jennifer Osborne in Featured

When you say “Local Market Strategy”, most people think of local as at the city level. In search that means Google Local, using Geographic delimiters in keywords, Local Directories, etc.

But for large enterprise sized clients, a local strategy is one for a particular country. Multi nationals typically are faced with the decision:

Are they going to have one overriding strategy for all markets

or

Are they going to have a local strategy (including different products, pricing, etc) for each market (country) that they play in.

and how this question is answered has a HUGE impact on your Search Strategy (at least it should).

Why is a Local Search Strategy Important?

Google gives preference towards local websites within the search results. Canadian companies get special treatment on .ca; Brit’s on .co.uk and recently American’s on .com.

As the search engine algorithms change, it is very likely that more weight will be given to local factors. Although it is currently very common to see a handful of large powerful sites dominating the results on a multitude of extensions, in the future it will become more difficult to rank in another country.

How does Google determines a websites nationality?

There are many factors that help the search engines to determine the nationality of a website:

1. the extension - is it a (.ca); (.co.uk); (.com.au); (.com); ect, etc.

2. Hosting - where is the site hosted?

The best way to be considered local to a particular extension is to either use that extension in your url or be hosted in that country.

Ask.com Search Engine - A Brief History

By Scott Buresh in Featured

As of this writing, there are five top Internet search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com, and while Google and Yahoo! get a lot of the press (particularly lately), the Ask.com search engine is a rather interesting engine that deserves a closer look. This article will cover some of the highlights in its 12-year history, from its start as Ask Jeeves to its innovations, as well as the most recent developments behind the scenes.

The Beginning

In 1996, “Ask Jeeves” was founded by David Warthen, who had founded EyeGames - a children’s video game company, and Garrett Gruener, a venture capitalist. At its start, the concept of the Ask.com search engine was to allow searchers to type questions in natural language in order to get results, rather than to type in a random string of keywords (although that would work as well). The Jeeves character, based on the butler in the Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse, was designed as the company’s main identifier. (However, the company did not ask Wodehouse’s estate for permission to use this character and legal action was threatened, though the issue was later settled for an undisclosed amount.[1]) Jeeves was phased out in 2006[2] in a humorous manner, with the engine saying he was retiring,[3] and the company was renamed simply Ask.com and the search engine was reborn.

Ask3D and New Innovations

In June 2007, Ask, still one of the top Internet search engines, launched “Ask3D.” Part of this new direction was to allow users to add “skins” - or customized images - to the Ask.com search engine home page. The 3D offering also meant that results would be customized based on the user’s search. This meant that, in a similar manner as Google’s Universal Search concept, a user’s search for a location would get not only pages about that location but also maps and details about it. If the user searched for music, he might also be able to listen to song clips or read news stories about the artist. In addition, the Ask.com search engine included a preview feature for its search results. When available, users can click on an icon of binoculars next to a result and see a small screen capture of that page. Plus, a new toolbar was added to the left-hand side of the page, giving searchers options for narrowing down a search.

Missteps

Ask isn’t shy about going after its main competitors - Google and Yahoo!, two of the top Internet search engines. In early 2007, the company ran a series of ads, primarily in England, without identifying itself as the entity behind those ads. The ads touted an “Information Revolution” and declared that Internet users needed more choices - for a short time, users searching on the Ask.com search engine for Google were given a link to information-revolution.org - an anti-Google site sponsored by Ask.[4] This initiative was not well received,[5]^,[6] as it was seen as attacking the very users it sought to attract.

Also, in mid-2007, the Ask.com search engine introduced “Ask Eraser.”[7] This was Ask.com’s response to searchers’ concerns about privacy and security breaches - a simple way to opt in and have one’s searches erased automatically. The site explains it by saying, “When AskEraser is enabled, your search activity will ordinarily be deleted from the Ask.com search engine servers within a number of hours.”[8] The concept is sound, but many bloggers[9] are not impressed.[10]

What’s Going On Today

Today, Ask is searching - pun intended - for a new direction as it tries to keep its small piece of the search engine pie or regain its state of being at least one of the top Internet search engines. Layoffs are happening, although the company is holding onto Teoma, the technology that powers the engine,[11] and the company is looking to focus on a specific subsection of searchers (women, although the company isn’t specifically saying this[12]) rather than to try to serve as a competitor to the other top Internet search engines, like Google and Yahoo!.

It remains to be seen whether or not the Ask.com search engine can hold onto its existing niche and/or expand its search engine market share. The company seems to be working on finding a direction and a focus, but it just hasn’t yet. I will update you in future articles as to what the status of Ask.com is and whether or not it has managed to remain a key player in the industry.

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Brown, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue has local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

[3] http://sp.ask.com/en/docs/about/jeeveshasretired.html

[4] http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-03-18-n76.html

[5] http://virtualeconomics.typepad.com/virtualeconomics/2007/03/asks_mistargete.html

[6] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/29/william_davies_ask_vs_google/

[7] http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/askeraser.shtml

[8] Ibid

[9] http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/10/ask-lets-you-delete-your-search-history-yawn/

[10] http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-12-11-n81.html

[11] http://www.searchenginejournal.com/future-of-askcom-layoffs-but-keeping-teoma/6447/

[12] http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2008/03/06/askcom-shifts-their-focus