Friday, May 14, 2010

Google Adwords Bidding Process Explained

Way back in the early days of the Internet around 1998-2000, you would just simply setup a Pay Per Click Account at Overture, manually load your keywords or use a Spreadsheet and start a bidding war. You could start bidding as low as a penny per click, and you would actually show up close to the top on a lot of keywords. Those were the days of the Wild Wild West and anyone back then could make a small fortune.

When Google came on the scene in 2003, it was sort of like this at first. Then over time the costs per click started rising, then other factors came into play like the Google Quality Score. Most amateurs wanting to enter the Pay Per Click Game are doing it all wrong.
 

2 of the Biggest Google Adwords Misconceptions:

1.) Google AdWords is not an auction where the person who pays the most per click automatically wins. This game is much more complicated than this.

2.) The person holding the #1 Position does get the most clicks, however, this is hardly the most profitable position to be in. Right now it's paramount to understand the balance between the best positioning, the number of clicks you want to receive and the price you are willing to pay for each click to ensure maximum profitability.

Google Quality Score Explained

It's possible for someone to bid $.75 per click and get their ad showing higher than someone who is paying $7.50 per click. And if you are just starting out with Google Adwords and don't have some serious mentoring, as well as the ability to understand somewhat abstract concepts, it will be next to impossible for the average person to figure all of this out by themselves.

What Determines Your Google Quality Score?

Your Quality Score is defined by 3 main factors.

1.) Click Through Rate - This is how often people click on your ad. This is defined as a percentage of number of total impressions verses ad clicks. The higher your Click Through Rate or CTR the better your ad is and the better score Google assigns it. This dynamic alone makes up 60 Percent of your Google Quality Score.

2.) Ad Relevancy - Google will look at your ad, and their Search Engine Spiders will follow the URL at the bottom of your ad to your Landing Page or Squeeze Page. They will check the relevancy of this page, by determining if your target keyword is placed on your landing page, how often it is placed and if it is placed in all of the right places. This dynamic accounts for 20 Percent of your Google Quality Score.

3.) Landing Page or Squeeze Page Quality - This process is done not only through the Google Search Engine Spiders but by a manual review as well. The automated part of this process is when the Google Spiders check certain elements of your destination page such as the Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions and Contact Us page to see if they are present

These pages define a quality website someone would like to visit. 

Checking For Bouncebacks 

The Google Spiders also check for Bouncebacks. Bouncebacks are basically when a visitor lands on your page and leaves instantly or within a few seconds. Sometimes this is known as the "Bounce Rate". They usually leave by hitting the back button on their browser or just closing their browser. This usually happens because they think your websites stinks or it is not relevant to the Ad Keyword the visitor just clicked on.

When developing your Squeeze Page or Website its imperative that it be totally relevant to the keyword you are bidding on. This will keep them on the site, in addition to capturing leads and making sales for your business. Landing Page and Squeeze Page Quality count for the final 20 Percent of your Google Quality Score.

How to Determine Exactly Where Google Places Your Ad

Yes there is an actual process Google has for doing this. They do this by a process of calculating Ad Rank. Ad Rank is your Quality Score x your Bid Price. The higher your Ad Rank the higher your placement. So as you can see a higher Quality Score will largely determine how high your ad will show up.

How Your Cost Per Click is Determined

Your Cost Per Click is measured by the Ad Rank of the person below you divided by your Quality Score. This is done for all the advertisers on the page except the advertiser in the bottom position. They bid one penny less than the advertiser directly above them.

This explanation might be too technical for many people to grasp at first, however if you follow the logic it makes perfect sense. But the good thing is that you don't really need to understand this. All you really need to understand are two things to get started.

1.) As your Quality Score rises, your ad position will rise and your cost will go down.

2.) Since Optimizing your Google AdWords Ads counts for 60 Percent of your Quality Score, this method is by far the best single action you can take to move your Pay Per Click Ads higher up in the Search Listings. This can only be done by split testing ads and seeing which ones pull the best. And you can't just look at an ad and tell this. What's not obvious at a glance is definitive upon real testing.

The process of Optimizing Google AdWords Ads can take from a couple weeks to a few months depending on the niche you're in, how much traffic you can get to those ads, etc..

Increasing Website Traffic With The Help Of Seo

The procedures applied on a website to help it get good quality traffic in the internet is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Helping a website get huge amount of good quality traffic is the primary objective of any SEO company. But, they cannot directly influence the increase in website traffic. A SEO company can only help a website get superior ranks in the search engines like Google, Yahoo! or MSN. When any website gets superior rank in the search engines they get noticeable to the worldwide net users. Hence, more people visit the website and the traffic of the website increases. With increased traffic, the sale of the website also increases.  From this you can easily understand that SEO forms the backbone of a website, without SEO no website can get success in the internet world.

Millions of websites get published every year on the internet. Most of these websites get optimized by the well known Search Engine Optimization companies to get superior ranks; as a result a tough competition exists among all these websites. Among these millions of websites, only those websites succeed in making mark in the search engines which are optimized perfectly by any Search Engine Optimization company. The Search Engine Optimization or SEO companies take various steps to optimize a website; the two main procedures undertaken by them are the on-site optimization and the off-site optimization. Both of these optimization processes are extremely important for a well being of a website. The on-site optimization is done on the website itself by adding certain texts like keywords, key phrases, Meta descriptions and HTML tags to it. And the off-site optimization is done by link building. Link building is a very effective process and increases the website traffic to a large extent. In this process, the link of the website is posted in hundreds of other websites.<


When you search for some particular topic in the search engines using a particular keyword, you will see that thousands of websites get displayed. The websites which are shown in the first page of the search engines get the most web site traffic. The later ones are not even visited by the users.  Those high ranked websites get such ranks because they are optimized by the efficient professional SEO companies. Out of thousands of those websites, most of them get optimized, but only those websites succeed which are perfectly optimized. Many website owners think that Search Engine Optimization is scam and of no work. They neglect the services of the SEO companies and as a result they cannot succeed in the online business that the website owner aimed for.

Thousands of SEO companies have grown up all over the world and most of them are expert in optimizing a website perfectly. If you are willing to publish a website for your company, consult an experienced SEO company. Only an experienced SEO company can help your website get superior rank in the search engines and get huge amount of good quality website traffic.

Internet Based Home Business - Is This The Right Time To Start?

Would you be mad to consider starting an internet based home business now?
Some people would say "you would have to be nuts to start an online business now!"
A small but powerful group of people with inside information would say "now is the best time to start an internet based home business".
Why? Here's a little secret I'd like to share with you.
One and a half billion people (yes seriously) are online right now as you are reading this, as a potential market for your business on the internet.
And get this - 79 million Americans will start their own business within the next three years...Isn't that remarkable?
Do they know something you don't know? Yes...they do
Here are the three major reasons why people want to start an internet based home business.
1. Unemployment is at an all time high and rising. The United States is now 6% higher in unemployment than it was before the recession of 2001.
2. There is no recession on the internet. Technology is advancing so quickly that the dream of us ordinary folk working for ourselves is now a reality.
3. Two industries still shedding jobs are the Manufacturers with job losses of over 212,000 and the Financial Services industry with 79,000 in 2009 and these are the start!
So the proof is right there - there has never been a better time to pursue a home based business than now.
Here's another thing to bear in mind...
If you are still relying on a 'JOB' for your family's security - maybe it's time to re-think your life plan.
And the greatest thing of all is - you can live anywhere in the world and work from home in your internet based home business and have a life others only dream about.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Developing a Social Media Marketing game plan


Developing a Social Media Marketing game plan
by: Michael Buczek

As consumers move to social media networks to connect with people and brands they purchase, the  industry needs to adapt and move with these customers. When the social media space is entered, there is a difference between just creating profiles and actively engaging in effective Social Media Marketing (SMM) campaigns.
Step one is establishing goals and a game plan for your company’s social media presence. Which channels will you participate in and what will be the purpose of each channel? Start with the most popular channels to get the most interaction.
Step two is determining how you will execute and manage the strategy in order to ensure it meets your goals.
Create an organizational chart clearly detailing who will be responsible for task and channel management. One person or multiple people can make up a team responsible for social media deployment. You will also need to set a timeframe for posting to each channel, as stagnation can lead to lost interaction and engagement.
One-person manager
A one-person workflow should be organized, based on the amount of time you want to dedicate to each channel, and demonstrate correlations between channels.
For example, blog posts can be fed into Twitter® and Facebook®. Press releases should be posted to the website and Tweeted about. YouTube® video uploads should be embedded in on-site content as well as in blog posts where it’s relevant to do so.
This cross-pollination of materials allows your collateral and promotions to reach a wider audience and serve multiple duties toward engaging prospective customers. Therefore, the workflow should also include regular brainstorming sessions of the marketing campaigns or topics and items not to be repurposed across channels, but rather to be unique to each.
Finally, the schedule should be fluid enough and the point person savvy enough to understand how to vary postings, appear natural and not regimented, and be able to jump on time-sensitive news, updates and the like and present them effectively within the relevant channels.
The pro of having just one person responsible for all the SMM efforts is that it facilitates consistent messaging across channels. The cons center around time and imagination limitations, which may or may not be rectified by removing other job responsibilities.
Multi-person team
With two or more people, the secret to success is to divide and conquer by clearly delineating tasks with constant communication. Unlike with one person, the larger your team, the more likely there will be some disconnect between channels and there will be a need for more frequent and elaborate strategizing to avoid breaks in the marketing message.
Whether each channel is managed by one team member, or a group, the one constant is that the needs of each channel are addressed individually — Twitter® is not the same as Facebook®.
In addition, the parameters and technical options for each channel also vary, and having individuals focus on unique channels allows them to be utilized to their fullest. In the one-person-running-all-SMM scenario, it’s far more difficult to learn all the nuances and opportunities for each channel, but when people can really focus and specialize in just one channel, there’s more potential for forward-thinking growth and innovation. A multi-person team should also have more time to interact.
Probably the most important areas to consider with a larger SMM team are: Planning regular meetings to discuss the topics being promoted for the main organizational marketing calendar; sharing materials across channels and/or encouraging all the marketers to read each others’ posts to ensure that everyone is on the same page and capitalizing on all the collateral available to them for the company’s efforts; and being very clear as to who is responsible for what and what the desired time commitment for each is to ensure channels remain up-to-date and relevant to the marketing schedule.
Measuring results
Within the channels, results and success can be monitored, tracked and assessed based on the numbers of fans/followers you attract as well as how those people engage.
In addition, your analytics suite is a good place to learn about how social media engagement transfers from external channels to performance and outcomes on your site. While many businesses have already learned over the past year and a half or so that direct sales are not a regular result of SMM, the value of SMM-inspired referral traffic can be quite high.
Finally, one not-to-be-neglected byproduct of well-managed and optimized SMM is that active, keyword-rich presence and participation in social media channels can lead to your company having more content that appears in the Search Engines’ Natural Search Results Pages (SERPs), thus garnering you more organic presence.
Whether you are participating in daily maintenance or coordinated campaign efforts, you will want to use the various tools discussed herein to track users’ reactions and adjust your messaging accordingly.
With such a variety of channels to select from and so much possible time that could be spent with SMM versus the amount of time that’s actually feasible for your team to spend, your SMM effectiveness will, in large part, depend on your ability to adjust or edit your team’s action plan over time.
If certain content “pulls” with your audience, post more of it. If other types don’t seem to get a response, try different tactics. Continue to test and adjust. In other words, give your content and campaigns sufficient time to be noticed and received, but if they don’t garner the acceptance or attention you deem necessary to warrant the output and resources allocated, then you will need to be open to changing direction.
Ineffective SMM is generally the result of not enough advance strategic planning or insufficient management of the execution. You can’t just “set and forget,” nor can you assume that everyone on your marketing team is on the same page.
Develop a SMM calendar and organizational workflow and be sure that all members of your SMM team understand your expectations and objectives for delivering on it. Finally, keep a secure master list of your activities, channels you are participating in, passwords, tools that are being used, etc. Without easy access to such critical data, a seemingly minor change or oversight can impair the flow of your day-to-day SMM activities.

Michael Buczek is a Social Media and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialist at MoreVisibility, a full service interactive marketing and design firm in Boca Raton, Florida. Mike earned his bachelor’s degree in public relations with a minor in communications from Northern Michigan University.

make money online, Fast.

3 websites to make money online.

1. Associated Content.
2. Cash Crate.
3. Content Current.

Let's begin with associated content. Associated content should be the number one stop for those people who frequently ask themselves, how I could make money fast. Associated Content requires you to write content, which in other words for those who aren't familiar with the online language, content means articles.
Write articles and get paid for Your knowledge, typical from $10 to $40 per article depending on the niche, sometimes even more.
Experienced writers can easily produce 3 articles per hour, and $40 per article can become quite a lucrative source of income.
Writing articles is a great way of income and very often you simply reproduce new articles based on one article, that way you can really boost your income
Cash Crate is another great way of making money online. Cash Crate are sites that pays you money to take a survey. Payment is typically from a few dollars up to hundreds of dollars.
The reason for these high payouts are, that many companies are looking for vital information on their niches consumers so they can target their products even better.
If you find these two options boring or you do not have a writer inside you or are curious enough to complete a survey? Then Content Current might be the right choice for you, Content Current pays you money for delivering forum posts. If you are a fast forum post writer imagine how much money you could be making by writing posts on your favorite subjects.