What is “search engine optimisation”?

Quite simply “search engine optimisation” is the sum of all techniques used to increase the chances that any search engine will rank your website at the top of its listings.

What’s the difference between search engine optimisation and web marketing?
Web marketing is all based on advertising for humans, this can include many things such as banner advertising, pay per click advertising, directory listings. Web advertising is very powerful just like regular advertising but just like regular advertising it costs money to keep it running.
Search engine optimisation is instead aimed towards machines that are the “search bots” that constantly crawl the Internet in search of all information. The idea is if the search engine (like Goggle) knows everything about your website it will automatically display it when people search for relevant terms. Search engine optimisation is the name for anything that will help the search engines understand your website better. You can successfully combine different web marketing tactics to achieve maximum visibility and traffic results.

Yahoo’s “10 Year” Google Paid Search Deal

The renewable 10-year deal goes beyond paid search results on Yahoo and includes contextual advertising on the Yahoo network and, potentially, on Yahoo partner sites.

Yahoo sees an $800 million annual revenue opportunity, based on search queries where it’s not currently monetizing them well or efficiently.

Yahoo retains control over when it shows Google ads and when it doesn’t . It basically makes Google “backfill” for Yahoo. Yahoo will show its own ads when it has them and Decker repeatedly reaffirmed the company’s commitment to its own paid search ad platform, which will eventually be folded into AMP (to begin its “friends and family” implementation next week).

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said that the two companies didn’t need regulatory approval for this deal because it’s open and non-exclusive but that they would voluntarily delay implementation for three months to allow the US Department of Justice to review it. Here’s the rationale laid out in the Google blog post for why the agreement doesn’t implicate anti-trust considerations:

It is important to say what this agreement is not:* This is not a merger. Rather, we are merely providing access to our advertising technology to Yahoo! through our AdSense program.

* This does not remove a competitor from the playing field. Yahoo! will remain in the business of search and content advertising, which gives the company a continued incentive to keep improving and innovating. Even during this agreement, Yahoo! can use our technology as much or as little as it chooses.

* This does not prevent Yahoo! from making similar arrangements with others. This arrangement is not exclusive, meaning that Yahoo! could enter into similar arrangements with other companies.

* This does not increase Google’s share of search traffic. Yahoo! will continue to run its own search engine and advertising programs, and the agreement will not increase Google’s share of search traffic.

* This does not let Google raise prices for advertisers. Google does not set the prices manually for ads; rather, advertisers themselves determine prices through an ongoing competitive auction. We have found over years of research that an auction is by far the most efficient way to price search advertising and have no intention of changing that.

The deal will apparently extend to Yahoo publisher partners who can elect to participate (no details provided). New partners would get access only to Panama, however, Decker explained.

Decker also dangled the idea that there could be a reciprocal element to this deal in the future, with Yahoo providing ads to Google – presumably display.

Questions after the formal part of the call were largely addressed to the ongoing viability of Panama: “Why would advertisers still want to advertise with Yahoo?” Decker and Yang repeated that Yahoo still had control over what ads to show when and implied that it would be favoring its own ads.

Yang said, however, that the Google deal still leaves open the possibility of other future transactions. He added that other third parties could well participate in this new more open search marketplace that the company was creating. (But the only company with any scale beyond Google and Yahoo is Microsoft somewhat ironically.) Indeed, Yahoo said that this deal with Google was entirely consistent with its new “open” strategy.

Are Your PPC Landing Pages Optimized for Google’s Quality Score?

Here is a great article on landing page quality by Kevin gold, from the website www.searchmarketingstandard.com

Google’s Quality Score

This was posted last Month but i never had time to let anyone know about it.

Happy reading.

Facebook Marketing: “Best Practices”

Facebook Marketing: “Best Practices”

• Be clear with your objectives
• Test spending money on Facebook marketing even if you aren’t sure about the return. Hey, 1,000,000 visits can’t be wrong!
• Understanding the ROI of Facebook requires a new kind of mindset
• Don’t take away the social features of Facebook from users
• Facebook marketing is not about driving traffic to your web site. Keep Facebook users on Facebook
• 70 million active users
• Facebook is the 6th most-trafficked website in the world (comScore)
• Facebook is the 2nd most-trafficked social media site in the world (comScore)
• Over 55,000 regional, work-related, collegiate, and high school networks
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older

The neat thing about Facebook is that they have a platform that allows 3rd parties to develop widgets and other applications. There are over 20,000 applications, mostly junk. 140 new apps are added per day.

Forrester data: Researched to find out how people use social networks. Primarily, they use Facebook to self express and also to communicate with peers. Nowhere does it say they look for products or look at advertisements.

Read the Terms of Service (TOS)

The next step before starting your campaign is to read the TOS. Read them carefully! You will be surprised how many restrictions you can find there! Make sure that you are eligible to apply for an account with Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing and that you don’t (and won’t) violate their TOS. If you violate their TOS, you can expect to be kicked. Google is especially strict about it and there are advertisers who have been banned for violating the TOS.

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Content is King

The text content on a website is crucial to the success of any business. Your web content is one of the major aspects that attracts customers and has the ability to keep them on your website, since it is the first thing a new customer reads. Your web content is what search engine spiders read and use to determine your ranking in their search engine.

Search Engines Prefer Quality & Original Content

It is a known fact that search engine spiders give a higher rank to original and relevant content. Bad / duplicate content invariably gets caught and the repercussions can be disastrous for a site. While there are several other ways to get a high search ranking, none of them can ever be complete without
quality written word.

Quality Content for Better Results!

Good content and great content can be the difference between making 1 sale a day to multiple sales each day. The better quality your content is, the more customers and revenue you will generate.

Marketing is the key aspect to the success of any business, and it is crucial that all business owners learn and analyze what other people are doing, what products and services are hot commodities, how people are making money and generating business – every piece of information and tactic you use, will make your business more successful. It is truly astounding just how many large and fancy companies have websites that are losing money because the consumers are not able to find what they are actually selling on their website.

Get your message across!

The content on a website should always be clear and concise and present the information attractively about your products or services. You want it to be inviting to all types of people, regardless
of gender, age, or ethnicity, and the more obvious your site is about what you are selling, the more money your website will generate. A poorly written, poorly laid out website can sink at a faster rate than the Titanic. Most web visitors spend an average of only a couple minutes on a website.
If they haven’t located what they were looking for in that amount of time they
will move on to the next website.

This is why it is dire that you give great importance and put serious consideration into the content you have on your website, and make sure that you take all of the necessary steps and do everything that
you can in terms of promoting your
web business.

Hire a Professional Writer.

Because the quality of the textual content on your website is so important, you may want to hire a professional to do the work for you. However, if you really want accuracy and the highest level of quality then you should hire a professional writer to do it for you. Make sure that this person has SEM/SEO copy writing experience, because this is the most important part when it comes to content writing for websites.

Consider Alternatives

If you are not getting enough clicks, maybe you should change the network. Try some other CPC (Cost Per Click) networks. There are many of them and some of the smaller ones could turn to be a more viable alternative. If this doesn’t work either, maybe CPC is simply not working for you, so you may try CPA (Cost Per Action) and see if its ROI (Return On Investment) will be better.

See If Google Adwords/Yahoo! Search Marketing Works for You

After you open an account with either Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, do not rush to spend a lot of money right away. Start moderately, just to test how it works for you. The fact that everybody praises Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing does not mean that it will work for you as well.
Most often it is your niche, not the advertising network that makes or breaks your campaign. There are niches, which are tougher and no matter what you do, your CTR (Click-Through Rate) will be low. Technology is one of the niches, which is notorious with low CTR (as low as 1%!) and even the best ad network can’t make users click on your ads.

Google Adwords vs. Yahoo!

If you are new to the world of Cost Per Click (CPC) and internet marketing as a whole, deciding where to spend your advertising money is tough. Maybe the first two ideas that come to your mind are Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. Not a bad choice – these two networks are the largest and (presumably) the best.