Online Marketing

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DOS AND DON'TS IN YOUR SEARCH-ENGINE MARKETING

2008-01-01T10:48:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, search-engine marketing was a limited if promising way to turn up a few sales or leads. How times have changed.

In recent years, search-engine marketing has seen triple-digit growth, gaining both more efficient opportunities for marketers as well as serious steam from millions of users.

The online search industry is expected to reach nearly $7 billion in worldwide revenues by 2007, according to Safa Rashtchy, senior research analyst for U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray. She sees "search as the most efficient way to find products and information, and simultaneously the rise of search as the best way for advertisers to find and acquire customers."

Even so, getting results remains complicated, demanding close monitoring and measuring. To make the most of marketing through search engines, here are options to consider as well as five common mistakes to avoid.

Search engine power

The idea, of course, is that you figure out which keywords your customers use to search for the products or services you market and then submit those keywords to search engines such as MSN Search or Google. When customers input the keywords, your site is prominently displayed in the results, leading to better sales or exposure.

One step up from free or organic search-engine marketing is search-engine optimization. That can include paying to influence the outcome. The more you bid per keyword, the higher the engine guarantees to place your site on the results page.

Typically, engines bill on a pay-per-click or cost-per-click basis. You're charged only if and when a customer clicks on your link. Pricing varies, depending on keywords and categories. "Paid search is an incredibly efficient way to bring in sales leads -- it's the Yellow Pages, classifieds and direct mail rolled into a single just-in-time pitch," wrote John Battelle, a business journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley, in Business 2.0 magazine.

But you must efficiently outbid your competitors, who also pay for ranking, or you're throwing away money. The goal is to pull only customers who want what you sell.

Targeting the results

A recent phenomenon in search-engine optimization is an innovation variously called relevant paid search, or contextual advertising or content-targeted advertising. It moves the sponsored link off the results page and onto sites themselves.

Instead of paying for placement on a results list, you pay engines to place your listing on pages of content related to your products. For example, if a user is checking weather in Miami Beach, he might also see a listing for Miami hotels or car rentals.

You can now target customers at the very moment they're interested in learning about the wares and services you market.

Judging success

A judicious combination of these search-engine marketing tactics can build business in a number of ways. First, figure out what you're after.

Search-engine marketing can:

Boost brand profile or gain industry exposure

Acquire new customers

Increase traffic, which builds advertising or affiliate revenue

Generate leads for follow-up calls

Advertise offers or sales

Generate publicity

Market offline products or events

Increase or launch online sales

Avoid engine trouble

Next, gear up your search-engine marketing campaign, but avoid these common mistakes.

1. Killing it with your keywords. "The worst mistake marketers make is slicing and dicing their keywords too finely beginning on Day One," says Bob London, whose marketing consultancy is based in the Washington, D.C., area.For example, London's client Doug Zimmerman heads the mid-Atlantic franchise for Freedom Boat & Yacht Club. The company sells time aboard boats. Founded in 1989, FBYC now has 10 locations, four franchises and 1,300 members who each pay $15,000 a year for unlimited access to boats any time they want one. The only additional cost is fuel.Zimmerman budgeted $2,000 for a round of search-engine optimization tests. "Our keyword program began with 'boats Maryland,' which is one of the states where Freedom Boat operates," London says. "Once we determine whether those leads are qualified, we can drive down the cost-per-click by segmenting, for example, 'boats Maryland rental." Adding the word "rental," London says, is "a proxy for

those looking for water recreation without commitment." After spending only $200, London says they've targeted the right keywords. In this case, with a regional and high-end niche business, the process was easier.Mass-market products might take more testing. "Often, companies use industry buzzwords that their target audience isn't using," says Stacey Williams of Prominent Placement, a search-engine marketing consultant based in Atlanta. She suggests business owners subscribe to Wordtracker.com, an affordable online tool that can keep you updated on current keywords.

2. Managing it all yourself. "Managing rankings is a full-time job," says James Korenchen, managing director for PR at

McKee Wallwork Henderson, an interactive ad agency based in Albuquerque, N.M. Staying on top of keywords, measuring results and conversions and making sure search engines deliver on pay-per-click arrangements takes technical expertise and a lot of time.You're smart to have your search-engine marketing managed by an agency, a consultant or an engine's software offerings. For less than $100 a year, for instance, Microsoft's Submit It! can recommend keywords, submit to engines and track your progress.

3. Assuming one engine fits all. Relying only on the big, well-known engines limits your placements. "The most common mistake is throwing too much money at one method, one search engine or one message," says Aaron Keller, at Capsule, a brand development company in Minneapolis. Instead, budget your money to develop a distinctive set of messages and use a combination of search engines to successfully reach customers.

4. Giving up too soon. Make sure your expectations are realistic. Search engines may take up to eight weeks before listing your site. Paid listings go up more quickly, but also take time. You'll need to fine-tune the right package of keywords, engines and pay-per-click or paid searches. Stay with it and you'll be rewarded.

5. Blinded by the site. If your pages aren't optimized for search engines, all the right keywords in the world won't get you results. A frequent error is that the home-page floats, say, because of a splash page or a recently redesigned page left

unlinked to other pages. If that's the case, the engine won't scan all the relevant pages.On the flip side, owners sometimes try to cram too many keywords onto the home page itself. But, says consultant Williams, "when a search engine reads hundreds of

different words or phrases on a page, it doesn't know what that page is really about, and the page won't get ranked high for anything. It works much better to optimize all the key pages on a site for one or two different search terms." Besides submitting keywords, for example, Submit It! also analyzes your Web site to ensure that pages are optimized for submission.

Nowadays, every business must offer anywhere, anytime choices to customers. And when done right, search-engine marketing absolutely gets you attention from the online visitors you want to attract.

By Joanna L. Krotz

HARNESS THE SALES POWER OF e-mail

2007-12-30T17:08:00.000-08:00

Got a couple hundred bucks?

That's about all you need to send 1,000 highly personalized e-mail messages to specially selected customers. And that's both the good news and the bad.

When done right, e-mail marketing is not only breathtakingly affordable but also extremely effective. Depending on how you plan to measure (by opened messages, click-throughs or conversion rates) and your targets (whether new, existing or best customers), e-mail marketing can yield response rates that range from a satisfying 5% to a heady 50%.

But the cheap cost of entry has generated a sea of spam and that's obviously made consumers wary and annoyed.

You must make sure to gain opt-in commitments from your

prospects or customers before sending any e-mail marketing. That can be in the form of online registration, prior contact or express emailed permission from each recipient.

With that in mind, here's how to launch an e-mail campaign.

1. Define Your Goals

No marketing can succeed with an unlimited or shifting horizon. You must set goals that define your success. For e-mail marketing, campaigns tend to get better results when there's a clear call to action, perhaps with the added urgency of a time-sensitive window. Typically, e-mail marketing can:

Announce special deals, sales or discounts

Invite customers to events, VIP parties or conferences

Offer news or information that drives performance or decisions

At the outset, carefully define what you want from the campaign. Then focus on the messaging and distribution that will achieve it.

2. Connect with Customers

Different designs and messages will yield different results. The idea is to customize batches of messages in order to emphasize benefits that speak to specific customer needs. Electronic tools make it much easier to segment customers and sales leads according to key characteristics.

You can quickly group customers into byte-size market chunks of similar demographics, purchasing history or other qualifiers by using Microsoft Outlook Business Contact Manager.

You'll find seven pre-formatted Account reports, such as Accounts by Rating or Neglected Accounts.

Or you can customize reports, and then export those tailor-made reports into Microsoft Office Excel for further analysis.

Should you need additional, targeted e-mail addresses for your campaign, Business Contact Manager integrates with the fee-based Microsoft Sales Leads service.

This service lets you:

Use a wizard to select the most appropriate sales leads from a database of more than 14 million businesses and more than 250 million consumers.

Purchase and download the selected leads at a low cost (ranges from $.10 to $.50 per lead depending on how exotic the query is).

Import the leads directly into Business Contract Manager, using

the compatible file format.

3. Manage the List

If you're developing your own campaign, first create your mailing list. Then select the style of your e-mail publication.

You can avoid hassles by relying on the fee-based Microsoft List Builder service to help make the process easier and more cost-effective. This service creates and sends out your e-mail campaign and then automatically tracks your opened and click-through rates, as well as any opt-out customers.

Industry analysts, such as Jupiter Research, estimate that the cost of e-mails that are sent but not delivered will nearly double from $230 million in 2003 to $419 million in 2008. That kind of forecast prompts many business owners to rely on outside experts to distribute and measure delivery rates.

Don't forget to keep updating customer information. When a new customer contacts you, create an entry for them in Business Contact Manager. Business Contact Manager enables you to consolidate all interactions with a given customer in the Contact History section, including e-mails, tasks, appointments, notes, and documents. If you send out your e-mail campaign to your Business Contacts in Business Contact Manager, this activity will be captured automatically in each recipient's Contact History.

4. Personalize. Personalize. Personalize.

Recipients more readily sign up for e-mail marketing when offered a prize, entry in a sweepstakes or the like. They're also more inclined to register and input personal data when they're already customers of the sponsoring company.

So the more you reward customers for giving you access to personal information and the more familiar they are with your products or brand, the better your responses tend to be.

To get customer buy in, try using name-personalization messages. Make sure you test several subject lines, and message copy and landing pages before the launch.

If you want to use attention-grabbers like video or animation or audio, costs will rise. But you can still do quite a lot with text and links to a Web site or special landing pages.

Some message dos and don'ts:

Make it short and compelling. Don't include detailed product descriptions or windy stories about the company's history.

Use lots of short titles and bulleted points or highlights, so customers can take in information at a glance. You may want to set up a summary at the top and jump-link to information that follows, so users can quickly access what interests them.

Always set up a way for customers to easily update their information or unsubscribe.

Check messages from time to time to make see that the information is still timely and up-to-date. (Need I mention proofreading?)

Never spam — not anyone for any reason.

Match your format and message to your customers. Try to include some point of difference or attitude or special service that makes you stand out.

Finally, support your campaign. Don't simply send out your messages and sit back. Plan specific follow up, say, by sending automated bounce-back replies or by integrating the e-mail campaign with other channels, such as phone calls or direct mail.

The last thing you want to do generate customer interest and then be unprepared to act on it.

GIVE YOUR WEB SITE A FACELIFT

2007-12-28T09:14:00.000-08:00

You remember it well: that day back in the late 1990s, when your company Web site first went live. It looked swell at the time, and you were so proud to have graduated to the Internet Age.

Here's a fair question: How many times since have you refreshed the graphics or content of your Web site? Twice? Once? Not at all?

Most businesses, it turns out, are still hosting first-generation sites that went up at the turn of the millennium, experts say. Likewise, the majority of these sites are pass� by today's "make-it-useful" standards -- sometimes embarrassingly so.

Internet-savvy businesses will refresh the content on their Web sites regularly and will redesign their sites at least once a year.

Why? For one reason, sales staffs at some companies avoid steering prospects to a business whose Web site appears out-of-date or is difficult to use, says Ilise Benun, author of "Designing Web Sites for Every Audience."

It takes only a byte or two of dated information for visitors to conclude they've hit a dead end or landed on an orphaned site. Plus, when a big-deal client clicks on your "urgent" invitation to attend an upcoming seminar, only to find that the event came and went back in 2002 and you simply haven't bothered to take it down, he will feel annoyed and foolish. And you'll be toast.

So consider this a noisy wakeup call. It's the 21st century. Is your Web site still in 1999?

Site specific suggestions

Business sites vary widely. But for the purposes of site facelifts, differences boil down to how frequently you must make changes.

Consulting services may update sites only quarterly or even annually. E-commerce sites or research companies may require updates by the hour.

Whatever your needs, you can now find appropriate and affordable off-the-shelf software and third-party service providers to do the job. You can, for instance, put a fresh "skin" on your old site without disrupting any functionality. (For more information, check out Microsoft's Web Hosting solutions for small businesses.)

"With options ranging from pre-packaged solutions to offshore IT development, businesses can get up to 10 times the Web site they could afford just three years ago at one-tenth the price," says Bryan Lyng at Lyng and Associates, a marketing communications and Web development company in Los Angeles.

Here are 11 ideas culled from Web marketers and developers that can modernize your site swiftly without costing you a bundle.

1. Reduce the number of site pages. Focus on redesigning only the core 10 to 15 pages, suggests Matt Greer, chief executive officer at Zeeo Interactive in Boston, a Web design services company. You can then archive any remaining popular or highly trafficked pages into Adobe PDF or Microsoft Word documents that are suitable for download.

2. Make the site a marketing tool. If you're not yet capturing data basics, such as which sites and search engines visitors are clicking from or which pages are most trafficked, get cracking.Use prepackaged software or a Web services provider such as Microsoft's FastCounter Pro to capture detailed information about site visitors. "The first question to ask is: 'When visitors come to your site, what do you want them to do?'" says Erin Duckhorn, spokesperson for Crucial Technology, an online memory upgrade provider based in Boise, Idaho. Once you have answers, you can define the tracking metrics and develop the content, navigation and structure that will quickly satisfy your targeted visitors.

3. Set up an e-mail program. Create an incentive for visitors to register or give you their e-mail addresses. "Give away something that the targeted audience would perceive as value for their exchange of personal information, like a prize for consumers or a white paper for business-to-business clients," suggests Jeff Stanislow, president and CEO of Motor City Interactive, a digital advertising agency in Novi, Mich. Once you have addresses, send out useful e-zines or other bulletins.

4. Create an online reward for prized customers. Treat your best customers with distinctive perks or discounts. "You can give them their own area of the site without any special technology," says Wally Bock, a Web consultant in Wilmington, N.C. You can also, of course, e-mail special offers.

5. Speed loading time. In the beginning, fancy graphics and online applets were cool. Now, they're mere obstacles in the path of getting to information or products. Three words for you: Streamline. Streamline. Streamline.

6. Give visitors greater, self-directed control. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, for example, reworked its site (www.fairmonthotels.com) to expand online booking capabilities. Now, guests who make online room reservations can book dinner or spa services at the same time. The site also added a "Fairmont Planner" that matches individual resort properties to guest profiles or needs, as well as a "virtual concierge" that offers more details about services.The changes resulted in significant growth in bookings at the hotel chain and its amenities in recent

years, says spokesman Mike Taylor. TravelCLICK's eTRAK study of more than 30 industry Web sites clocked an increase in Fairmont bookings of 165% in 2002.

7. Get fashionable. Revise the site's color palette. One opinion: "Think Far East colors, like rust, persimmon, mustard or saffron, and dump the jewel tones and zebra stripes that look like clothes from the back of your closet," says Dali Wiederhoft, a Minneapolis publicist.

8. Invest in a content management system. Stop relying on static HTML. "This used to be a big investment only feasible for the big boys," says Dmitri Buterin, who heads the Toronto office

of Web developer BonaSource. "But now, for an investment of $5,000 to $10,000, anyone can get a pretty good CMS [content management system] and basically make most updates on their own."

9. Insure visibility on search engines. The old home page of BreastCancer.org, a nonprofit informational group based in Narberth, Pa., was dominated by a giant image of the organization's logo, an illustrated character called Polly, which prevented search engines from finding the site. "The makeover moved a smaller Polly to the upper right corner of the home page and used text and text links to guide the not particularly Web-savvy users of this site toward the essential information they came looking for," says Ilise Benun.

10. Align the site to the organization. No doubt, you've reinvented your business a half-dozen times over the past few years. How appropriate is your site now? What about secondary channels or pages? "Many businesses grow their sites in piecemeal fashion," notes Kevin McLaughlin at Public/i, a public relations firm in New Brunswick, N.J. "As new sections are added over time, the same messages or positioning is not always reflected in the copy throughout the company's entire Web site." Make sure your site's messaging is always in tune with offline marketing.

11. Add testimonials or success stories. "Very few sites do this and there's no question that they add major credibility for buyers," says Philippa Gamse, a Web strategy consultant in

Santa Cruz, Calif. Ask longtime customers for quotes or permission to post their case histories and their satisfaction with your services.

Any of these ideas will help update your online presence. But the

real advice is simply not to get lazy. Pay attention to your Web site whenever you shift direction or significantly grow the business. Times, indeed, have changed. All marketing and messaging must be seamless -- consistent, uniform, multimedia and multi-channel. Move your Web site into the new century.

by Joanna L. Krotz

HELP PEOPLE TO FIND YOUR WEB SITE

2007-12-27T14:47:00.000-08:00

Experienced Web designers will tell you, "Just build it — and they won't come." It's true. Simply putting up a Web site won't bring visitors. It takes work to entice customers to your site once, and even more work to make them come back.

One way that most people find Web sites is to use search engines such as Google.com. Google accounts for nearly half of all Internet searches. Yahoo! and MSN are the next most popular search sites.

So, just in case you didn't know this already, good rankings in search results are essential to helping people find your site. Many people don't go beyond the first page of the results' pages. Furthermore, top is better than bottom on the list.

Search engines use sophisticated algorithms to order search results. Good page rankings do not happen by chance. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of creating Web pages that will garner high rankings.

Each search engine uses a slightly different algorithm. Moreover, most tweak their algorithms regularly. However, the basics of SEO hold true for all search engines. Although SEO is tricky, a carefully planned approach can increase traffic to your site.

Here are eight steps to successful SEO:

1. Choose keywords wisely. Keywords are the words that customers use to find your site when using a search engine. The idea is to optimize your page for these words or phrases. You should choose keywords that accurately reflect your business. They should be specific enough to target potential customers, but not too narrow.Of course, you'll probably have numerous keywords. The best approach is to pick different keywords for different pages. If your business' name is well known, use it as a keyword for the About Us page. But most customers will be searching for your product or service, not your name.For help with keywords, check your server logs to see what search terms have worked for your site. Also, try search terms to see what works on your competitors' sites. Additionally, Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions (formerly Overture) has a free tool that ranks keyword popularity. Conveniently, it also lists alternate terms. It's at: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion. (Microsoft Submit It! has a similar tool worth checking out.)

2. Use keywords wisely. Your site's keywords should appear in each of your pages' "meta title." The "meta title" appears at the very top of the browser window, above the menu bar.Also, the keywords should appear regularly throughout the opening Web page. It is especially important that they appear frequently in the opening paragraphs.However, resist the temptation to overuse keywords. This is called "keyword stuffing." The search engines can spot it and will reduce your page rankings. Tools are available to help with optimal keyword density. However, avoid software that writes the site's pages. Search engines can sniff these out, too.Here's the SEO golden rule: Never sacrifice quality of content for keyword placement. This will affect your page ranking. Most importantly, your site won't appeal to visitors.

3. Test keywords with pay-per-click advertising. Google's AdSense, MSN adCenter or another pay-per-click advertising program will test keyword effectiveness. You will see if your

keywords will bring traffic to your site. Also, you will ensure your keywords target paying customers.Pay-per-click can be expensive. You must bid on keywords which generally start at 5 cents per click. However, used correctly, they will bring customers to your site.Pay-per-click isn't a replacement for search engine optimization. It should be used in conjunction with SEO to help you evaluate keywords. If your results are poor, consider changing keywords.

4. Build up the links to your site from other sites. Search engines view inbound links as a vote for your site. Therefore, the more incoming links, the higher your page will rank.There are limits, though. The search engines must view the linking sites as quality addresses. Having disreputable sites link to yours can harm your rankings.Offer to exchange links with sites that are related to your business. If they have a higher rank, all the better. Conversely, ask disreputable sites to remove any links to yours.You can easily pull up a list of sites that link to yours. In Google's search box, simply type Link:yoursitename and click Search.

5. Keep your SEO campaign ethical. Using deceptive techniques to boost page rank will have the opposite effect. It can even get your site banned from the search results. Once you're banned, it is virtually impossible to get back in. Therefore, it's important to avoid anything unethical.Don't overuse keywords. Don't use hidden text such as small fonts or text the same color as the background on your pages. Don't create mirror sites — identical sites linking to yours. Also, make sure content varies significantly from page to page. Having similar content on multiple pages may appear deceptive to search engines.Cloaking, or hiding a page behind your page, is also a no-no. With cloaking, two pages are built. The search site spiders will see one page that is rich in keywords. Visitors see the other page, which might not be related to the keywords.There is an exception: If you have a Flash site, it's almost impossible to optimize. Search spiders don't understand Flash. In this case, you can build an HTML site that opens behind it. Just make sure it contains the same content as the Flash site.

6. Submit your site to the search engines. You want to make sure your site is indexed by the search engines. If your site has numerous inbound links, the Web spiders will find it automatically. Web spiders "crawl" the Internet monthly and update an engine's database of sites.If your site doesn't appear automatically, you can submit it for indexing, through a service such as Submit It! or on your own. The big three search sites have forms for submitting Web addresses. Here are the submission pages: Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl Yahoo!: http://tinyurl.com/5oclp (registration required) MSN: http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

7. Monitor the progress of your SEO, but be patient. SEO doesn't happen overnight. It will take months to get good page rankings. Trying to rush your SEO campaign can lead to mistakes. And the consequences of these mistakes can be severe.However, it is important to monitor your progress. Do searches with the major engines for your keywords to see how
you rank. You might also be surprised to find you start popping up for related terms. That's icing on the cake.Results will fluctuate. Rankings change daily or even hourly. Check frequently for an accurate gauge of where you stand. Don't sweat the minor ups and downs. But if you notice a downward trend, take action.As your site traffic increases, so should sales. If sales aren't increasing, reevaluate your site content and navigation. Good copywriting and pointers go a long way in increasing sales.

8. Consider outsourcing. Search engine optimization is an ongoing process, and can be a full-time job. Some companies specialize in SEO.Hiring an SEO company to optimize your Web site will be expensive. Prices will vary depending on your site, services offered and for what length of time. Many companies spend tens of thousands of dollars for the initial SEO. Monthly maintenance can also run into the thousands.However, the advantages might make it a wise investment. You are hiring experts who will achieve better results than you. And the increased business from good SEO hopefully will more than cover the costs.Bad SEO can be more harmful than no SEO. So it is important to find the right company to handle your campaign. Ask to see the company's code of ethics. It should explicitly address deceptive SEO techniques.Of course, the company should also have a good page ranking itself. But don't rely on this alone. Contact the references the company provides. Visit sites the company has worked on and note the quality of the copywriting.Next, the company should be able to provide a detailed plan. It should include a variety of methods to improve your rankings. Of course, its methods — and pricing plan — should be clear.Watch for companies that create unrealistic expectations. For example, if it guarantees a top spot in Google for a popular term, run. Also, if it promises fast results, it could be using deceptive techniques. (You should also read Google's advice for selecting an SEO company: www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html).Before you consider outsourcing, however, you might want to try SEO management software. Microsoft's Submit It! is one such tool. It can help find keywords, submit pages, and track results. Also, it's less expensive than outsourcing.

Remember, though, search engine optimization can only do so much. Well-optimized pages might bring visitors, but only a good product will convert visitors to customers.

By Kim Komando

HOW TO MAKE MONEY FROM YOUR BLOG

2007-12-27T14:36:00.000-08:00

Many of the people who write blogs today simply want to share their opinion on something. But then there are the business-minded folks, who have found a way to use blogs, or Web logs, to bring in a little extra cash too.

I recently wrote a column detailing how to get a blog up and running to boost your small business.

If you're interested in taking it further — blogging for bucks, if you will — here are five strategies that could turn your blog into a moneymaker.

1. Sell advertising. This is likely the most common means of leveraging a blog to generate income. If yours happens to become a well-known blog, or one that is well-received in a particular niche, it's always possible to sell ad space on your own. For lesser-known blogs, services such as Google's

AdSense or BlogAds enable bloggers to establish ad programs.AdSense's — which lets you select several ads that are consistent with the content of your blog — pays you based on how many readers click on the ads for further information. Even better, it's free. BlogAds, on the other hand, hooks bloggers up with would-be advertisers and levies a commission in return for any ad placements that result. "The nice thing, too, is that the ads are relatively unobtrusive," says Scott Allen, co-author of "The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online."

2. Help sell others' products. Here is another click-through opportunity. Affiliate programs enable your blog to serve as a conduit between readers and online sites offering various goods and services. One popular choice is Amazon.com. If, for instance, you offer book reviews or even just mention a book in passing in your blog, an affiliate program provides a means for

your readers to click directly from your blog to Amazon to obtain further information about the book. If they break out the checkbook or charge card, you get paid as well.

3. Solicit contributions. Not every blog-related income opportunity involves hawking goods or services. As Blanche DuBois did in "A Streetcar Named Desire," consider relying on the kindness of strangers. Ask for contributions. If, for instance, your small-business blog supports a cause or issue in some fashion — say you repeatedly mention tax reform, health care or some other topic — you can always ask for reader support.Even if you've attracted a group of regular followers who simply enjoy reading what you have to say, they may be willing to underwrite their loyalty with a little financial help. Programs such as PayPal make it easy to establish a simple on-site contribution collection button. "There are lots of worthy 'cause' blogs that would qualify for donations from grateful members of the blog community," says Las Vegas communications consultant Ned Barnett.

4. Market your services in your blog. Many people associate blogs exclusively with a cyberspace-based soapbox — a place to shout your opinions and little more than that. Granted, blogs are an ideal venue to share your thoughts with others, but don't overlook their capacity to generate new business as well. When

appropriate, work in references to what you do and, in turn, what you may be able to offer any would-be client or customer who may be reading your blog. That can spread your opinion and your business moxie at the same time."Instead of short commentaries that begin a dialogue with readers, as many blogs do, I write the equivalent of journal articles that demonstrate my abilities, strategies and perspectives on specific issues," Barnett says. "When it resonates, it means money. Since starting this approach, I have generated three new paying clients and brought in about $10,000 on revenue — directly attributable to specific blogs."

5. Use a blog to deepen your existing customer relationships. Nor does any marketing material inserted in blog content have to be limited to bringing in completely new business.

By using a blog to regularly communicate with existing clients as well as other readers, you can take advantage of the opportunity to fully inform them about everything your business does. That may expand your readers' understanding of the full scope of your products or services."My blog has helped existing clients determine the range of my skills and services," says Ted Demopoulos of Demopoulos Associates, a Durham, N.H. consulting and training concern. "One client who had only used me for training in the past was surprised at my range of expertise and is now using me for a consulting project. Another who only used me on technical projects is now considering me for a more business-oriented project."

By Jeff Wuorio

MAKE YOUR BLOG POPULAR

2007-12-27T14:14:00.000-08:00

David L. Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati, keeps tabs on more than 45 million weblogs. Here’s his advice for cracking his site’s Top 100 list.

1) React quickly. Commentators like Andrew Sullivan and Michelle Malkin draw megatraffic with immediate rebuttals to A-list pundits at The New York Times and Fox News.

2) Make your posts easy to read. Italian comic Beppe Grillo broke into the Top 10 by setting his key points in boldface.

3) Link, link, link! It’s counter-intuitive, but the busiest blogs in Technorati’s index are those like Insta-Pundit.com that link prolifically to other sites. Linking works because most bloggers reciprocate by sending their readers your way.

4) Optimize for search engines. Put the name of your blog (even if it’s just your own name) in the main URL and the title tag of your site. On Technorati, identify your blog with search topics, like “politics” or “sewing.”

5) Post, post, post! Chinese actress and director Xu Jinglei has the most popular blog on the planet. At first we thought it was a glitch in our system, but it turns out she’s a real-world celebrity who makes time to post almost every day. What’s your excuse?

Google Adsense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets

2007-12-26T15:47:00.000-08:00

Build an Empire?

When you’re deciding to become a website publisher you will fall into one of two broad categories:
* Publish 100 websites that each earn $1 a day profit
* Publish 1 website that earns $100 a day profit
The reality of it is, most people end up somewhere in between. Having 100 websites leaves you with maintenance, management and content issues. Having one website leaves you open to all sort of fluctuations (search engines algorithm’s, market trends, etc). You can adapt your plan on the way, but you’ll have an easier time if you start out going in the direction of where you want to end up.

General or Niche

You can build your website around general topics or niche ones. Generally speaking niche websites work better with adsense. First off the ad targeting is much better. Secondly as you have a narrow focus your writing naturally becomes more expert in nature. Hopefully this makes you more authority in your field.

If this is your first try at building an adsense website, make it about something you enjoy. It will make the process much easier and less painful to accomplish. You should however make sure that your topic has enough of an ad inventory and the payout is at a level you are comfortable with. You may love medieval folk dancing, but the pool of advertisers for that subject is very small (in fact it’s currently zero).

Once you’ve gotten the hang of how Adsense works on a website, you are going to want to dabble in some high paying keywords, you may even be tempted to buy a high paying keyword list. This does come with some dangers. First off the level of fraud is much higher on the big money terms. Secondly there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff. So, don’t try to run with the big dogs if you can’t keep up. If you have to ask if you’re a big dog, then chances are, you’re not. I have used a high dollar keywords report from cashkeywords.com and was pleased with my results (see cash keywords free offer recap).

New Sites, Files and Maintenance

When you’re building a new site don’t put adsense on it until it’s finished. In fact I’d go even farther and say don’t put adsense on it until you have built inbound links and started getting traffic. If you put up a website with â€œlorem ipsumâ€ dummy or placeholder text, your adsense ads will almost certainly be off topic. This is often true for new files on existing websites, especially if the topic is new or different. It may take days or weeks for

google’s media bot to come back to your page and get the ads properly targeted. TIP: If you start getting lots of traffic from a variety of IP’s you will speed this process up dramatically.

I like to build my sites using include files. I put the header, footer and navigation in common files. It makes it much easier to maintain and manage. I also like to put my adsense code in include files. If I want/need to change my adsense code, it’s only one file I have to work with. TIP: I also use programming to turn the adsense on or off. I can change one global variable to true or false and my adsense ads will appear or disappear.
Managing URL’s and channels

Adsense channels is one area where it’s really easy to go overboard with stats. You can set up URL channels to compare how one website is doing to another. You can also set up sub channels for each URL. If you wanted to you do something channels like this:

* domain1.com - 728 banner
* domain1.com - 336 block
* domain1.com - text link
* domain2.com - 728 banner
* domain2.com - image banner
* domain2.com - 336 block
* domain3.com - 300 block

While this is great for testing and knowing who clicks where and why, it makes your reporting a little wonky. Your total number will always be correct but when you look at your reports with a channel break down things will get displayed multiple times and not add up to correct total.
Makes things pretty confusing, so decide if you really need/want that level of reporting detail.

TIP: At the very least you want to know what URL is generating the income so be sure to enter distinct URL channels.

Site Design and Integration

Once you know you are going to put adsense on your website you’re going to have to consider where to put it. If this is new site it’s easier, if it’s an existing site it’s more difficult. While there are some people who will be able to do it, in most cases I’d say if you just slap the adsense code in, you’ll end up with a frankensite monster (props to Tedster of WMW for the buzzword). While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. Now I’ve done really well by placing it on the right, but you should know why you’re doing it that way before hand, and be prepared to change it if it doesn’t work out.

Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

* 336Ã—280 large rectangle
* 300Ã—250 inline rectangle
* 160Ã—600 wide skyscraper

From the sites that I run, I do really well with the 336 rectangle and 160 skyscraper. My next best performing ad size is the 728 leaderboard, I don’t really use the 300 inline rectangle too often. So really it depends on how well you integrate these into your site. Placement can have a dramatic effect on performance. TIP: When working on a new site or new layout you may want to give each location it’s own channel for a little while until you understand the users behavior.

Another ‘trick’ that can increase your CTR is by blending your adsense into your body copy. For example if your body copy is black, remove the adsense border and make the title, text, and URL black.TIP: Try changing all of your page hyperlinks to a high contrast color (like dark red or a bold blue) then change the adsense title to the same color.

The one area where I’ve found blended ads don’t perform as well is forums, especially ones with a high volume of repeat members. Regular visitors develop banner blindness pretty quickly. One ‘trick’ to keep the ads from being ignored is to randomize the color and even the placement. As with any of the decisions about location, placement and color it’s a trade off. How much do you emphasize the ads without annoying your visitors. Remember it’s better to have a 1% CTR with 500 regular visitors as opposed to a 5% CTR with 50 visitors. TIP: For forums try placing the adsense ads directly above or below the the first forum thread.
Using Images

One of the latest ‘secrets’ to make the rounds is using images placed directly above or below an adsense leaderboard. This has been used for a while but came out in a digital point forum thread where a member talked about quadrupling their CTR. Basically you set up the adsense code in a table with four images that line up directly with the ads. Whether or not this is deceptive is fuzzy and very subjective. Obviously four blinking arrows would be ‘enticing people to click’ and be against the adsense TOS. However placing pictures of 4 laptops over laptops ads isn’t, so use your best judgment here and look at it from the advertiser or Google’s perspective. If you have a question as to your implementation being ‘over the line’ write to adsense and ask them to take a look.

As far as using the images, I’ve done it and can tell you it definitely works. You get the best results when the images ‘complete the story the ads are telling’. For example if you have ads about apple pies, use pictures of freshly baked apple pies, instead of granny smith, Macintosh, pink lady, and braeburn apples. TIP: Don’t limit yourself to using images only on that size ad unit, it works just as well with the other sizes, like the 336 rectangle.

Added:
I got a little criticizm for this and rightly so, as I wasn’t specific as I could have been. Do not use very identifiable brand name or products for your images. Use generic non-specific stock images whenever possible and appropriate.
Multiple Ad Units

Another way to increase ad revenue is to use multiple ad units. According to Google’s TOS you are allowed to post up to three ad units per page. Similar to standard search results the highest paying ad units will be served first and the lowest being served last. If there is enough of an ad inventory, place all three ad units. However you should pay attention to the payouts. Current assumption is you get 60% of the revenue (on a $0.05 click you get $0.03). So if a click from the third ad unit is only paying between 3 to 5 cents you may want to omit it from your page. This is one are where giving your ad units channels does have value. If one ad unit is getting a higher percentage of click throughs you’ll want to make sure the highest paying ads are being served there. TIP:Use CSS positioning to get your highest paying ads serving in the location with the highest CTR.