SEO Company and DIY Web Marketing – Differences, Pitfalls and Benefits

admin    Website Marketing Companies     Benefits, company, Differences, marketing, Pitfalls

There are two ways of cementing success in internet marketing: hiring an SEO company or doing everything yourself. If you have extensive experience in online marketing, choosing to optimize your website and to perform all the rigorous techniques yourself may be the best and cost-effective alternative. On the other hand, first-timers will certainly benefit from the experience of a professional. But hiring professionals or doing it on your own are not always beneficial. There are certain disadvantages that you should know about and reduce in order to gain success.On starting When you are a newcomer in internet marketing, hiring an SEO company may be an obvious choice; but not for everyone. Many starting internet marketers prefer to learn and do things their way. The only downside to DIY SEO is the time it will take for you to get to know every technique and master them altogether. If you have enough marketing funds for trial-and-error, which can be exhaustive when doing SEO yourself, teaching yourself the ropes of web marketing may pay off in the end. The only problem is you can still learn online marketing even if you hire an SEO company. Although you need to pay for a specific fee, it will be tremendously time-saving to collaborate with SEO professionals. On expenses Hiring a company that specializes in SEO can definitely be expensive. You have to think about your starting marketing funds and make sure that you have enough to cover and maintain your marketing campaigns. Although there are certainly techniques that can provide substantial results at bare-minimum costs, these are not enough to propel you to your goal. Web marketing on your own, however, can prove to be a financial boon in the long run. While it certainly takes time to see and gain results, you can certainly perform SEO on your own terms. This means that you can control the budget of your campaigns and be able to lessen expenses. On risks There are several risks involved both in hiring a professionals and doing marketing on your own. For starters, DIY marketing and SEO opens a wider window for failure, since it heavily relies on trial and error. And if you don’t know where you’re making a mistake, you might end up flushing precious marketing funds down the drain. Hiring an SEO company to do the job for you isn’t a walk in the park either. You have to make sure that the company you hire is reliable and has an exceptional track record with its clients. This makes research crucially important. Mark Michael Ferrer SEO Company

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Pitfalls of a Newbie – What about Google Adsense?

admin    Google Optimization     About, Adsense, google, Newbie, Pitfalls

Last month I submitted an application to Google to be considered for their AdSense program. After confirming my e-mail address, almost immediately I was invited to place ads on my website.
Within hours I began to accumulate some data on pageviews and click-throughs and could see what my month-to-date total was. I was impressed.

The JavaScript Code
When your website is approved, you’ll receive your own publisher number and the appropriate JavaScript code to paste onto your webpages.
When your page is displayed, here’s the process that Google probably goes through in showing the ads:

1. A visitor’s web browser requests a page on your site.
2. This activates the JavaScript code on the page, sending the URL of the requested webpage to Google’s database.
3. Google looks up in its database the most prominent keywords or keyphrases for that webpage.
4. Then Google searches for the highest paying ads that match these keywords
5. Google places the appropriate ads on your webpage for your visitor to see — all in seconds. Pretty nifty.

How Much Does Google AdSense Pay?
As a publisher, you share in the revenue that Google receives from its PPC ads. Google, however, hasn’t announced a formula for sharing revenue with publishers in its Terms and Conditions document. Google’s audacity to ask publishers to enter into a blind agreement is one measure of publishers’ hunger for advertising dollars — whatever dollars — and an indication of the trust Google experiences in today’s marketplace.

So what is the revenue split? We aren’t told, though the actual amounts are proportional to the market value of keywords that describe your content.

This gives me some idea of possible gross revenue for my site. I am not at liberty to disclose the average click-through rate and average PPC payment per click on my site, though that information is made available to me daily and cumulatively.

In talking to well-known marketers, I hear guesses of a publisher’s share ranging from 25% to 60%. For all we know Google could be striking different deals with different sites, especially those over 20 million pageviews per month that have greater clout in the marketplace. I would guess the publisher’s share to be as much as 50% of the gross PPC revenue — though I could be way off. None of us has enough information to make an accurate judgment and Google isn’t talking.

What the Godfather gives, we bow and accept gratefully without any questions for fear he might put out a contract on our websites.
Here are the factors that contribute to the amount of money you can make on your site:

1. PPC value of the predominant keywords on your website. “Life insurance” for example, would be high. “Fish tank filters” would be low.
2. Amount of traffic you generate to your web pages.
3. Prominence of the Google ads
4. Click-through rate for the ads that appear.
5. The unknown revenue share that Google is paying.

Business-focused sites will do very well with Google AdSense, but information sites that don’t contain high-paying keywords won’t receive nearly as much.

Will They Accept My Site?
Google AdSense tells us that the following sites are not acceptable: sites with excessive profanity; hate, violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organization; hacking/cracking content; drugs and drug paraphernalia; pornography; gambling or casino-related; content; incentives of any kind for users to click on ads; excessive advertising; other content-targeted and/or text-based ads on the pages displaying AdWords ads; pop-ups that interfere with site navigation or are for downloads; and ads that mimic AdWords ads or appear to be associated with AdWords ads on your site. Google says it will monitor sites that are showing their ads and suspend sites that don’t abide by their rules.

Does a person from Google look at a site before deciding to accept it into the program?
If it’s a new site with little traffic, a human surely views the site. Don’t submit a site that isn’t ready for prime time, has “under construction” signs, or looks tacky. It’s a lot easier to get your site ready first, than try to convince Google to re-examine a rejected site. On the other hand, if your site has lots of incoming links and is generously spidered by Google already, you might receive approval within minutes after confirming your e-mail address.
Once you are approved, you can login and get HTML to paste into your webpages.

The Automatic Ad Agency
If you’ve ever worked with ad agencies or tried to solicit individual advertisers to place ads on your site, then Google AdSense will feel like a breath of fresh air. Google handles the entire relationship with advertisers. There are no run dates for publishers to schedule, no banners to install, no invoicing, no reporting. Just apply, paste in the JavaScript code, and Google’s “automatic advertising agency” works for you day and night finding willing advertisers, taking orders, and matching appropriate advertisers with your site.

Problems for Publishers
That doesn’t mean, however, that Google AdSense is problem-free. As I mentioned above, Google’s unwillingness to specify revenue share percentages doesn’t bode well. Sure, Google is just feeling its way in uncharted territory and has to stay profitable when the inevitable competition arises. I don’t think publishers should get too confident in Google’s current largesse. What Google gives, Google can take away — either as a result of economic squeezes or greed.

A more mundane problem is finding inappropriate ads appearing on your webpages. Fortunately, this is much easier to fix. You can filter out any ads you find from competitors or that you find distasteful. (I had to exclude some ads for cheapo e-mail addresses to spam with.) Just list the advertiser’s domain name under Advanced Options | Site Filter List.

What do you do when the ad just doesn’t seem to correspond to the content on your webpage?
Adding the appropriate keywords or keyphrases to the title tag, Meta description tag, and headlines should help Google do a better job of matching ads with your content.

Problems for Advertisers
Advertisers who use Google AdWords have the choice of limiting their ad to show only on the Google search engine, but you can choose whether campaigns also appear on the network of search sites, the network of content sites, or both.

Google AdSense on content sites gives advertisers a new opportunity. Previously, their revenues were limited by the click-throughs that could be generated on Google’s search engine and search partner sites. Now the pool of appropriate content sites is greatly widened, offering greater traffic and more sales. But their is a price for this greatly increased ad coverage — potentially lower responsiveness for the same cost per click.

When people use a search engine, they are looking for answers or solutions to click on. But when they are reading the text of a content site, they aren’t in the same searching, clicking mode. They’ve already found what they were searching for and are now trying to absorb it. This will affect the click-through rate, but also the likelihood that these users will complete a transaction.

Publishers are rejoicing today. But what if three months from now advertisers come to the conclusion that content sites are less responsive and routinely exclude them from their advertising coverage? Or refuse to pay the same prices for content sites that they do for search engine exposure? It’s too soon to tell.

Implications of Google AdSense
One thing is certain: Google AdSense is changing the way websites are being monetized.
AdSense “rewards you for creating sites rich in high-quality, focused content … the sort of sites that make the Net a better place.” Google is going to grab a whole lot of business away from those who try to ‘make crime pay’ — no need for nasty tricks, useless marketing gambits, in-your-face ads, etc.

Instead, Google is rewarding those who ‘make grime pay’” — that is, those willing to do the hard work to produce quality, focused content.

Thought for today:
Should you apply to put Google AdSense on your website? If your site seems appropriate, yes, by all means do so. Google AdSense represents a significant opportunity for content publishers to monetize their content. And so long as this partnership benefits both publishers and advertisers who pay the bills, this could be the start of a new and brighter future for both.

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Four Pitfalls Associated with any Social Media Marketing Campaign

admin    Social Media Marketing     Associated, Campaign, Four, marketing, Media, Pitfalls, Social

The most recent phenomenon to hit the Internet Marketing scene in recent years is another form of Internet Marketing in its own right called Social Media Marketing. While Social Media Marketing has the capability to drive hordes of targeted traffic to your website there are still some pitfalls involved which you should try to avoid, at all costs, if you want to be successful with your Social Media Marketing campaign.

First of all one of the major targets of Social Media Marketers are the social media websites themselves, for example, MySpace and Facebook. In order to target and market to these sites you have to join and attract friends to your profile page. The first thing to avoid after joining is becoming involved with any of the software available which allows you to send mass invitations to certain groups you may have targeted inviting them to be your friends.

Everyone in the group receives a generic message inviting them to be your friend. If the site owner or webmaster discovers you are using this software you could be banned for life or, at the very least, have your membership suspended for a period of time. This can result in giving you a bad reputation within this community and make it very difficult to build any type of trusting relationship you need to establish for your future marketing activities on this site.

Another pitfall to be avoided is related somewhat to the first demonstrating how any type of news, good or bad, travels fast within these social media networks. When you approach your Social Media Marketing campaign and any of these social media websites you have to do so with the right attitude. By saying this I mean you have to be open and honest about your intentions. You have to be Transparent.

If you try to deceive any of your social networks it will usually come back to haunt you which can, again, result in a tarnished if not trashed reputation within these internet communities. A wise Internet Marketer once told me, when it comes to Internet Marketing the more you give, the more you receive. This brings us to a third pitfall which, if not avoided, can stall your Social Media Marketing campaign as if it were mired in quicksand. And this is, always be available and eager to offer help and advice.

But don’t offer advice if it’s not requested. If you are available to answer a Blog or forum question for someone who is stuck in a particular situation and needs help then by all means try to help. This will pay big dividends later on when needed because your reputation will precede you which, in this case, will be a good thing.

A fourth and final pitfall has to do with knowing who you are approaching. In other words you wouldn’t take a trip to Singapore without doing a little preparation and study about the culture and practices of these particular people. You should take the same approach when planning your social media campaign. If you’re approaching communities such as Facebook or MySpace, learn the proper etiquette and above all try not to offend anyone.

Especially try not to offend anyone who wields any kind of influence or power over the other members of the community. This too can result in a quick death for your Social Media Marketing campaign. If you approach your promotion with these four pitfalls in mind and put in the necessary planning and preparation as you would with any marketing campaign then you will be much more likely to encounter success with your social media strategy.

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