Thursday, April 20, 2006
SEO
SEO, SEM,
CPC,PPC:The New Acronyms For ROICompanies were spending millions of dollars in online advertising and e-commerce campaigns with initially no concept of return on investment.Acronyms such as CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) became the standard term. Impressions were the number of times a client's advertising banner, button or text link was shown on a page. If you refreshed a page twice and had one ad placement on that page, you just exhausted two impressions.Basically, adbanners were big ticket items drawing over 1-2% click-thru and were a primary tool online for advertisers.
Impressions were a way for companies to get branding while being able to drive traffic through the use of banners and other interesting (and often annoying) ad products on the "Lycos Network."But then the tide began to turn and industry click rates began to tumble from 1% to 1/4 of 1%. (Yes that is 0.25% or 0.0025 for those mathematically inclined.) A new term emerged - CPC (cost per click).Obviously, clients were beginning to get smarter in realizing that spending a lot of money on inventory placement was virtually useless, unless users clicked. Lycos's general position was to avoid all CPC campaign guarantees for the very reason that its own site inventory and self-worth would become devalued through trying to achieve contracted clicks.Soon after, in 2000 when the internet bubble exploded, a new online model came into the limelight - PPC (pay per click). This type of online advertising was most evident on the portals, Overture.com and Google.com.PPC campaigns were similar to CPC deals, but offered users a chance to achieve a top "sponsored" listing on the Overture network and on Google.com.
Overture presented a chance for advertisers to get listed on a variety of portals in its web (including Lycos.com). Google offered users the opportunity to get top sponsored listing on its site, a rising giant that was gaining popularity by the millions. Google, to uphold its high standards of content, reviewed each site and copy before allowing advertisers to be accepted into its PPC program. Still, even while more targeted to relevancy, sponsored PPC links showed better performance than CPC deals and some CPM deals, but did not deliver the results comparable to a true search results listing.All along this time, an important term that was not well-known at the start of the internet revolution became suddenly very common amidst slashing corporate marketing budgets. The concept was known as SEO (search engine optimization). Alternatively known as SEP (search engine positioning) or SEMSEM (search engine marketing), the goal of SEO in a nutshell is to modify a website to get better natural listings on the search engines. This is entirely separate from the PPC sponsorships in which cost is linked directly to the demand of particular queries.Additionally, PPC sponsorships are short term and your online existence ends once your funding runs out. SEO, however, achieves true search result listings that the search engines themselves think are important. It is worth noting that getting a top natural listing, or at least in the top few pages on a major search engine can have an amazing impact on your online marketing campaign - often several factors better than your PPC campaigns. At a cost that can often be far less to the client, the bottom line is that SEO provides the best ROI. This is not only the new acronym to add to your vocabulary, but one to add to your online marketing war chest (and budget) as well.
Achieving Success with Search Engine WorkshopsFive Common Misconceptions to Achieving Success with your Online Business
How successful is your online business? Are you achieving the monetary rewards that you'd hoped to achieve when you set up your Web site?
If not, you may have fallen prey to one of five common misconceptions to achieving success with an online business.
Misconception #1: If you put up a Web site, people will come.
Regretfully, this is far from the truth. Competition is fierce on the Internet, and you must learn how to compete in order to have a successful online business. Putting up a Web site is the first step, but doing nothing more will ensure your site's failure.
Misconception #2: Amateur promotion will render professional results.
Many people believe that they can purchase a handy dandy software program that will submit their sites to 999 search engines and directories, and their promotion efforts are over.
The truth of the matter is, the majority of the traffic to most Web sites comes from the major search engines and directories, so submitting to 990 other ones is simply a waste of time and won't bring you any success.
Misconception #3: Submitting your site to the major search engines and directories is all you need to do. Wrong.
Think of it this way: there are 10 search results per page for most of the engines. Most people won't go through any more than three pages of search results before giving up and trying another search. So, only the top 30 rankings really matter. If your site is #3,429 out of two million results, how much traffic do you think you'll get?
Misconception #4: META tags are the key to success with the search engines.
Truthfully, very few of the major engines even look at META tags any more. So, sticking META tags on your pages won't bring you traffic and sales.
Misconception #5: The key to success on the Web is achieving top 10 rankings for keywords that are important to your business.
This way of thinking is outdated. Instead, the key to success on the Web is bringing in extremely targeted traffic that converts to sales. You can have all the #1 rankings in the world, but if the rankings don't convert to traffic that ultimately converts to sales, your Web site will never be a success.
CPC,PPC:The New Acronyms For ROICompanies were spending millions of dollars in online advertising and e-commerce campaigns with initially no concept of return on investment.Acronyms such as CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) became the standard term. Impressions were the number of times a client's advertising banner, button or text link was shown on a page. If you refreshed a page twice and had one ad placement on that page, you just exhausted two impressions.Basically, adbanners were big ticket items drawing over 1-2% click-thru and were a primary tool online for advertisers.
Impressions were a way for companies to get branding while being able to drive traffic through the use of banners and other interesting (and often annoying) ad products on the "Lycos Network."But then the tide began to turn and industry click rates began to tumble from 1% to 1/4 of 1%. (Yes that is 0.25% or 0.0025 for those mathematically inclined.) A new term emerged - CPC (cost per click).Obviously, clients were beginning to get smarter in realizing that spending a lot of money on inventory placement was virtually useless, unless users clicked. Lycos's general position was to avoid all CPC campaign guarantees for the very reason that its own site inventory and self-worth would become devalued through trying to achieve contracted clicks.Soon after, in 2000 when the internet bubble exploded, a new online model came into the limelight - PPC (pay per click). This type of online advertising was most evident on the portals, Overture.com and Google.com.PPC campaigns were similar to CPC deals, but offered users a chance to achieve a top "sponsored" listing on the Overture network and on Google.com.
Overture presented a chance for advertisers to get listed on a variety of portals in its web (including Lycos.com). Google offered users the opportunity to get top sponsored listing on its site, a rising giant that was gaining popularity by the millions. Google, to uphold its high standards of content, reviewed each site and copy before allowing advertisers to be accepted into its PPC program. Still, even while more targeted to relevancy, sponsored PPC links showed better performance than CPC deals and some CPM deals, but did not deliver the results comparable to a true search results listing.All along this time, an important term that was not well-known at the start of the internet revolution became suddenly very common amidst slashing corporate marketing budgets. The concept was known as SEO (search engine optimization). Alternatively known as SEP (search engine positioning) or SEMSEM (search engine marketing), the goal of SEO in a nutshell is to modify a website to get better natural listings on the search engines. This is entirely separate from the PPC sponsorships in which cost is linked directly to the demand of particular queries.Additionally, PPC sponsorships are short term and your online existence ends once your funding runs out. SEO, however, achieves true search result listings that the search engines themselves think are important. It is worth noting that getting a top natural listing, or at least in the top few pages on a major search engine can have an amazing impact on your online marketing campaign - often several factors better than your PPC campaigns. At a cost that can often be far less to the client, the bottom line is that SEO provides the best ROI. This is not only the new acronym to add to your vocabulary, but one to add to your online marketing war chest (and budget) as well.
Achieving Success with Search Engine WorkshopsFive Common Misconceptions to Achieving Success with your Online Business
How successful is your online business? Are you achieving the monetary rewards that you'd hoped to achieve when you set up your Web site?
If not, you may have fallen prey to one of five common misconceptions to achieving success with an online business.
Misconception #1: If you put up a Web site, people will come.
Regretfully, this is far from the truth. Competition is fierce on the Internet, and you must learn how to compete in order to have a successful online business. Putting up a Web site is the first step, but doing nothing more will ensure your site's failure.
Misconception #2: Amateur promotion will render professional results.
Many people believe that they can purchase a handy dandy software program that will submit their sites to 999 search engines and directories, and their promotion efforts are over.
The truth of the matter is, the majority of the traffic to most Web sites comes from the major search engines and directories, so submitting to 990 other ones is simply a waste of time and won't bring you any success.
Misconception #3: Submitting your site to the major search engines and directories is all you need to do. Wrong.
Think of it this way: there are 10 search results per page for most of the engines. Most people won't go through any more than three pages of search results before giving up and trying another search. So, only the top 30 rankings really matter. If your site is #3,429 out of two million results, how much traffic do you think you'll get?
Misconception #4: META tags are the key to success with the search engines.
Truthfully, very few of the major engines even look at META tags any more. So, sticking META tags on your pages won't bring you traffic and sales.
Misconception #5: The key to success on the Web is achieving top 10 rankings for keywords that are important to your business.
This way of thinking is outdated. Instead, the key to success on the Web is bringing in extremely targeted traffic that converts to sales. You can have all the #1 rankings in the world, but if the rankings don't convert to traffic that ultimately converts to sales, your Web site will never be a success.
