SEO Common Tips

PPC MOST IMPORTANT TIPS

2009-06-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

Niche Research

Your main task here will be to determine which niche(s) of your chosen topic have an active market base that you consider are worth pursuing. As a general rule, the more competitive a market is, the tighter your niche will need to be.

The basic idea is to collect and analyse macro-level data.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

If you want your pages to rank high for popular searches on Google, then you need to know what keywords people are searching for, how many of them are doing it and how much competition you’ll be up against for that term. But don’t stop there, to make SEO an effective strategy you’ll also need to categorise your keywords (find topic ’clusters’) and use them to develop an appropriate link structure for your site. You’ll also want to spend time considering keyword intent – just because a keyword is showing high traffic numbers, doesn’t mean you’ll want to target it on your site.

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaigns

PPC campaigns focus on huge lists of long tail keywords with specific intent (usually looking for keywords people use when intending to make a purchase, although that varies with the goals of the campaign) and emphasis on negative keywords to rule out irrelevant matches. The more relevant the keyword is to the specific intent of the campaign goals, the more valuable that keyword becomes.

Identifying keyword trends across multiple social networks

There’s no need to limit keyword research to search engines any more - people can find your content in many ways and social media networks are every bit as important for many bloggers. Analysis is a little different here, depending on the social network you’re interested in, it could be more ‘topic’ based, rather than keyword specific, but your ultimate aim is to identify ways to categorise or present your content to give it the best chance of becoming popular.

Competitor/Peer keyword analysis

It’s always good to have a look at what keywords your competitors (and peers) are targeting and ranking well for. It’ll give you more ideas about how to manage your link structure and categorise keywords, but taking this a step further it also helps you to identify which sources you should be targeting for links or guest posts for particular topics.

If you’ve got an article that targets a specific keyword, then it makes sense to get it visible on the site(s) that have a better presence for those keyword terms… it also helps you to identify these possible sites in the first place.

Finding the questions people need answered

Finding questions people are asking isn’t about driving traffic to your site (although it will help with long tail searches and building relevance to your main keyword themes), it’s about keeping them there and identifying valuable content to blog about. If a reader searches for something specific, and you provide a comprehensive answer, then you’ve provided closure on that train of thought. It gives them time to stop and see what else your site can offer them rather than click away immediately and continue looking for what they were after in the first place.

Research for an individual posts

Keyword research is an ongoing process - it’s not just something you should do prior to launching and then never look at again, each post you make gives you further opportunities to maximise your keyword exposure. There are two main aims when researching keywords for an individual post, finding the right way to structure the title, and identifying related keywords to add relevance to your main subject.

Before I finish up, another reminder of the importance of setting your keyword research goals… it’s not all about SEO, or about finding a niche – to get real value out of keyword analysis, you need to consciously have that end point in mind, the better you can define what you’re looking for, the easier it will be to find.

Keyword Research for PPC

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 9:46 AM

Introduction
Back in July I wrote about keyword research for SEO. Although researching keywords for SEO is similar to that for PPC there still are many core differences.

In many cases using the generic targets with high searches can be very costly in the world of PPC. While they can offer a good return, often long tailed, very specific phrases can offer more qualified traffic at a lower price.

Categories
When it comes to any form of keyword research an Excel spreadsheet can be your best friend. I highly recommend using this to sort out your ideas before entering them into the PPC platform to prevent timely rearranging in the future.

Before you begin thinking of and gathering long lists of phrases, first decide where you want to drive traffic to in your site. This could be determined by anything from products or services, to specific informational landing pages and you may have a single destination or several.

Create columns in Excel that each will represent a specific category of phrases. Where you want to send traffic to will vary widely on the type of website you have. These categories will ultimately be used to define various Ad Groups in your PPC campaign.

If you are a real estate agent in Seattle, some appropriate categories may be; houses, condos, town homes & commercial. In this case you will want unique target phrases relevant to each category.

Geographic Targeting
Once you have your categories figured out you need to ask yourself what areas you will be targeting your ads to. Do you offer your services on an international level, or are you limited to a single country? Perhaps your services are limited to a specific city or state. These factors will contribute to your keyword choices.

Sticking with the real estate example, if you are selling real estate in Seattle, the generic phrase "real estate" would be a huge drain on your budget resources and would deliver a very low level of qualified traffic. In most cases targeting this phrase would simply make no sense. If, on the other hand, you are only displaying your ads to the geographic area of Seattle, the level of qualified traffic increases dramatically because only those searchers in the Seattle area will see your ad, and, if they are interested in real estate, your site and ad will be highly relevant.

For any campaign served up nationally where you are trying to gather traffic for a specific geographic region it is important to, in most cases, stay away from generic terms. Be sure that your ad copy also uses some form of qualifier such as a location, to help discourage clicks from searchers that are unqualified.

If you decide to go with a national or international campaign, you will most likely want to rule out the generic terms, and instead use more specific phrases such as "Seattle real estate" or "Seattle Washington real estate". This way, for someone searching from Miami for a property in Seattle they will view your ad as relevant.

Initial Phrases
Now that you have an idea of the categories and geographic targeting, it is time to start working on your keyword lists. Start by rattling off as many relevant phrases for each category that come to mind and list them in your Excel sheet.

Once you have exhausted all possibilities, go visit your site and the destination pages for each category. Are there any phrases that you have missed that will suit your needs well?

When it comes to PPC long tailed phrases can sometimes be very effective. While they may deliver a limited amount of traffic, this traffic is often very well qualified and more likely to result in a desired action. "Seattle 3 bedroom house for sale" may work well as a long tailed phrase, but remember, as your phrases become more specific, so should your landing pages. With this example, for optimal performance you would want to ensure that the visitor is directed to a page with listings for 3 bedroom homes.

If you find that your phrases under each category are closely related, but would require different landing pages, as in the above long tail example, you may want to add an additional column to the right, and beside each phrase paste in the most relevant URL for your site. You can later use this URL to ensure that each phrase drives traffic to the best possible location on your site.

What is PPC campaign Management?

Whether you are a newcomer or a seasoned player, Pay per Click has the potentiality to fetch you money. It can garner innumerable clicks to your website and with the proceeding upholds your online image. Following is a brief about pay per click, its importance and methodology.

As the name suggests, pay per click is ‘pay for the clicks and clicks only’. As a visitor clicks on advertisement of any website, he will be taken to its sales page or affiliate marketing site. However, for a successful PPC campaign, you need to have a link with keywords in your advertisement.

PPC Keyword Analysis

The keyword is considered as the most important part of any PPC advertisement. You need to bid for keywords. And in order of the bid value, your advertisement will be placed in the respective website. Select perfect keyword that describes your service/product at its best. In order to get the most relevant keywords, conduct a rigorous research and come up with the right answer.

Pay per click Publisher Networks

When it comes to selecting a suitable publisher netowrks for PPC campaign, you have several options at your disposal. Major PPC service providers are Google and Yahoo. However, before selecting any service provider for PPC campaign, make sure you know your target well and understand the marketing credibility of service provider. Provide them details of your requirement. Tell about your product, target audience and area.

PPC with all flexibilities has turned out as an effective medium for propagating yourself through online media. Everyday innumerable people are benefited with PPC campaign. What it needs to succeed in PPC is a good understanding of the subject and up to date information about the occurring. Once you have the knowledge, you are about to count profit through your PPC advertisements.

Pay per Action: Pay For the Clicks That Fetch Money

Next to pay per click, pay per action is the big buzz from Google. The search engine giant with this new keyword is all set to expand its reach in the field of online advertisement. Pay per action, unlike any other advertising program is truly target oriented, methodical and gives numerous flexibilities to advertisers as well as publishers. What’s special about pay per action and how it is an out of the box idea? Let’s get inside the article to track down the facts.

What is Pay per Action

Well, at the very onset, let’s mull over the word ‘pay-per-action’. As the name denotes; pay-per-action means pay for the action which is done. Here, an advertiser pays only when a specific/defined action is done by a user and which in turn increases his (advertiser’s) sales for e.g., the advertiser will pay once a user makes a purchase, signs up for availing any service or generate revenue etc. Thus, pay per action is more specific. You need not to feel the pain of those clicks which go unproductive without fetching you money.

Pay Per Action Publishers Netowrk

Pay per action advertisements appear on the sites of publishers, who are already in Google content network. Here publishers can choose those ads which are well-applicable for their website. When an advertiser prepares a pay per action advertisement, he is given a chance to enter a serious of keywords that best describes his product or service. These keywords will now propagate their (advertiser’s) services to publishers of Google content network. Publishers are also allowed to browse advertisements either by product category or by viewing entire advertiser inventory.

Pay Per Action Media

As long as pay per action advertisement is concerned, an advertiser has the flexibility to create several sorts of advertisements. Text ads, image/display ads, text link ad format and many more; an advertiser has plenty of options around him when selecting an ad for pay-per-action campaign.

Pay Per Action Pricing Model

Now a little bit about the pricing of pay per action advertisements. Well, here an advertiser is the king who define ‘what’ and ‘how’ meaning an advertiser himself defines a fixed amount of money that he would like to pay. Under pay per action program, an advertiser pays only when a defined action is completed by any user. In no way, he is bound to pay for the action which remains unfinished or end up with a mere click. For example, as an advertiser you may wish to pay $2 once a user fills out a form on your site and $6 whenever he made a purchase agreement.

Pay Per Action a Win-Win Situation

Potent with possibilities, Pay per action is indeed a much-applauded advertising program framed by Google. It is beneficial for both publisher and advertiser. Taking the above under consideration, it would not be wrong to say pay per action is likely to open up new avenues for advanced online advertising programs.

PPC Management Tools / Pay Per Click Optimization

PPC (pay per click) Management can be a very daunting task when it comes to managing a campaign having several themes and thousand of keywords. Professional PPC Management Tools have come to relief to help you manage these campaigns with precision and ease.

Top PPC Management Tools

Atlas Search is a very effective PPC management and Pay per click optimization tools. Atlas Search’s exclusive allows rule based bidding to set bidding on keyword to meet marketing goals with less hands-on management and resources.

Atlas Search support pay per click search engines like Google, Yahoo, GoClick, SearchFeed, MIVA, Kanoodle, Enhance Interactive, Mirago, Search123, Ask Jeeves, and Turbo 10.

2. BidRank is a PPC campaign management tool for desktops. BidRank works on rank range, maximum bid for each individual keyword listing, update frequency, and target rank. The bids can be updated every 60 seconds to every 24 hours.

BidRank Plus supports Google AdWords, Enhance Interactive (formerly ah-ha), BrainFox, MIVA, Kanoodle, SearchFeed, 411web, Turbo10, Mirago, 7Search, Mamma & QuePasa!

PPC Bid Max is a keyword bid management and optimization tools. The key operation of PPC Bid Max are:

build your keyword list
manage your keywords
automatically monitor your keyword bids
URLs at all major pay per click search engines.

PPC Pro is again a PPC Bid Management Tool for desktops. PPC Pro, is a rank monitoring and setting PPC tool. One can set keyword position that you wish to maintain and it update your bids to ensure that you rank at your choice of position.

These PPC management tools are great to help you optimize your PPC campaigns and the choice of the tool can depend on your marketing goals and strategy.

Smart Tips PPC Management?

Effective PPC advertising need a good strategy to make a PPC campaign pay for itself. A Campaign that is not well managed can cause more good than harm. This article is targeted at offering some good ppc campaign management advice to help you bid better and help you define keyword research strategy.

How to decide on a PPC Campaign Bid?

It is important that you know how much can you bid for your keywords per click, as there are keywords that can cost you upto 5-6$ per click. To understand how much you should be bidding for a keyword you need to understand your conversion rate which s typically around 3% for an average website. Which means you will spend $220 dollars to close a sale.

So what is the solution is that we target a less expensive keywords in huge volumes to get you the volume of traffic that you need to run your business. So by targeting less popular keywords, one can manage the same amount of traffic by reducing the cost.

Managing PPC Keywords

Although we have a solution but it can be difficult to manage a large list of keywords. So one needs to make sure that the analytics are strong and one has to keep track of which keywords are sending in traffic and conversions.

An alternate to this can be using PPC bidding management software, These software can help you track your keyword listings, and can help you adjust your bid amount to manage rankings.

Bid Rank
GoToast

Another option is to outsource the PPC management to seo companies who offer PPC management services.

Organic SEO versus PPC Management - Part -2

In reference to my earlier article regarding SEO verus PPC Advertising, Let us move forward in understanding the up and downside of PPC advertising on the internet in contrast to organic seo.

PPC Advertising (pay per click):

With the rising competition on this medium for quicker traffic to the website this medium is slowly and steadily becoming difficult to master and optimize. A closer look into the PPC advertising model will give you an insight in to the dynamics of PPC campaigns.

The cost per click of the keywords are rising day in day out, reaching upto 2-50$ per click, and is expected to go even higher in times to come.
Fraud click also takes a toll on your budgets as the competitors click on your ads, although these networks have algorithms to monitor but this cannot be fool proof.
A need of a PPC expert is slowly becoming mandatory adding to the cost of the campaign.
Management of the keywords and their cost per click is again a daunting task as you might be paying more than you are required to, as there are no defined rules for bidding cost per click.

PPC Bidding Management Advantages

I might have sounded very negative hear but with all the above facts there is an upside, but i would like to put that PPC is the rich mans way to traffic.

If you have the budgets ranging from 1000$ and above for a month you can benefit from PPC.
PPC campaign offer quick traffic if managed well by a PPC expert.
PPC campaigns also give an impression to the end user that you are spending money for the ad so you must be related.
PPC campaign can be highly targeted as you can select what keywords you wish to target, while these can be very competitive when it comes to organic search results.

In short how i would like to summarize the article is that if you have the money PPC is the way to go, and if you have the right SEO team to carry out your SEO then their is nothing like it.

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)

Introduction: Many people new to marketing think that Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) is the magic formula to achieve high ranking in the search engines and thereby secure a steady stream of money. The claim is supported by the documentation of almost all keyword research tools and has been repeated by thousands of inexperienced marketing people.

I say that if anyone says that the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) is great to find good keywords/search terms, without expalining any of the drawbaks, then they are either out to cheat you or they just don’t know better.

Definition: Keyword effectiveness index: A mathematical representation of the popularity of a keyword compared to its popularity mesured as the number of pages in a search engines index.

Description: KEI is a statistical formulation that reveals the most effective keyword phrases and terms to use in optimize your web pages for. Efficiency can be many things. According to KEI, it is efficient to optimize for keywords that have many searchers, but only a few competing pages.

The lower the KEI, the more popular your keywords are, and the less competition they have. That means that you might have a better chance of getting to the top in the search engines and receive a good number of searchers for your effort.

Example: Suppose the number of searches for a keyword is 821 per day and Google displays 224,234 results (pages) for that keyword. Then the ratio between the popularity and competitiveness for that keyword is:

224,234 divided by 821. In this case, the KEI is 273.

Example on the opposite: Suppose the number of searches for a keyword is 2 per day and Google displays 11,224,234 results (pages) for that keyword. Then the ratio between the popularity and competitiveness for that keyword is:

Explanation: According to the KEI definition, the best keywords are those that have many searches and that don’t have much competition in the search results. A low KEI is therefore preferable.

In our example, it is clear that the keyword with a KEI of 273 sounds as a good keyword to optimized a pages for. It is just as clear, in the example on the opposite, that the keyword that has lots of competitors and a low number of searchers which gives a KEI equal to 5,612,117 is a tough fight for a small prices (unless the two searchers are very valuable).

However, the KEI makes no statement about the quality of the competition. While there might only be a few competitors in the search results, these competitors could be big players with big SEO teams and thousands of back links.

The number of search results cannot really tell you whether it is easy to get your web site listed in the top 10 results for that keyword or not. It’s much easier to move your web site from position 20,000 to position 12,000 than from position 190 to position 6.

In addition, the KEI factor is not a scientific number. It is more like a rule of thumb.
We will expect:

• The KEI for a keyword to increase if its popularity increases. Popularity is defined as the number of searchers.
• The KEI for a keyword to decrease if it becomes more competitive. Competitiveness is defined as the number of sites which a search engine e.g. Google displays when you search for that keyword using exact match search.

As a general rule, it isn’t advisable to select or deselect keywords wholly on the basis of numbers like KEI.

Keyword statistic has some uncertainties attached. Keywords relevancy has to be the most important, some of your keywords you are able to rank for in the search engines and others will give your users a good experience.

History: There haven’t been many successful metrics that have been calculated by two or more variables. The Keyword effectiveness index has been the most succesful.

Future: There is a need for more useful variables in SEO and I predict there will come many in the future. I personally will develop at least a handful of methods to select good keywords, but I need to finish my research before I make them public.

How to practice: When you have a keyword phrases, with a high, medium or low KEI, you need to be able to answer: Is there a reason why the KEI might be giving an incorrect picture?

There can be many reasons why KEI are showing you something you can’t use. Here are some of the reasons:

1. The position of the words in the keyword phrases is unnatural.
Ex. “keyword report” has 534,000 pages in Google’s index, and the more unnatural “report keyword” has 29,100 pages. This doesn’t mean there is 18 times less competitions for “report keyword”.
2. More words in a keyword phrases, means a much smaller changes to find them in a webpage.

3. The most search engines don’t give the accurate number of pages in their index.
4. The number of searchers isn’t an accurate number and many times known keywords are inflated by the use of automated tools like webmastergold.

By blindly using KEI to select keywords, you run the risk to select keywords that have keywords in an unnatural order, long keyword phrases and known highly competitive keywords where it is mostly automated tool that search for them. Not good if you were looking for keyword phrases with little competition and many searchers.

Tips: Always ask yourself if there is a good reason why a keyword phrase has a low number, before you get all excited.

Some keyword phrases convert badly to customers and therefore it is easier to rank for them. Do you want to put a big effort to rank for low value keywords?

Links: Keyword, Keyword Demand, Keyword Phrase.

Conclusion: Use Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) carefuly. Is there any reason why KEI shows it is a good keyword to use, but it is not?

Keywords: Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI), Number of pages, SEO, SEM, keyword phrase, keyword tools, keyword popularity, keyword selection, keyword lookup, keyword phrase, Keyword, search term, Key phrase, single keyword, choosing keywords, search engines index, search phrases, keyword list phrases, long keyword phrase, seed keyword list, define keyword phrases

What is your experiance with Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)?
Do you like to use Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)?
Do you have any alternative methods to find good keywords/search phrases?

More about SEO and PPC Defination

2009-06-03T11:30:00.000-07:00

Definition of Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) consists of various techniques that seek to improve the ranking of a website in search engine results. Websites should be optimized for keywords that are frequently searched upon by prospective customers. Optimization includes incorporation of these keywords into copy, page titles, link text, and various other elements of the website.

Definition of Pay-Per-Click

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) refers to a class of internet advertising in which advertisers pay a fee for every visitor that clicks on their ad. PPC is often used to refer to keyword advertising on search engines and other websites.

Definition of Link-Building

Link-building is the practice of obtaining links from external web sites to your own to improve both direct referrals (people clicking on the links) and search engine ranking.

Paying for links and reciprocal linking are more effective than simply requesting uncompensated links from other sites.

Definition of API

An API, or Application Programming Interface, enables software applications to communicate with each other. Just as a user interface allows a person to interact with a software application, an API allows a program to interact with another piece of software.

Definition of Long Tail of Search

The long tail of search refers to the vast number of lower traffic volume keywords that are often much less competitive (for SEO) than the most popular keywords. If you created a graph that shows the frequency of keywords on the vertical axis and the keywords ordered from most frequently used to least on the horizontal axis, you would find a very high but narrow peak for the common terms and a very, very long "tail" of numerous keywords that individually have few queries. The cumulative searches on these "long tail" terms can be a very large number. The long tail contains many simple variations and refinements of the general, short, and often somewhat ambiguous terms that have the highest volume.

Definition of Backlinks

Backlinks are links from another site to your own. Most search engines use the quality and quantity of backlinks to help determine search engine ranking.

Definition of Natural Search Results

Natural search results are those listings that appear at the discretion of the search engines and that do not incur a charge to the listed site. In most search engines, these are the "main" results. There are frequently ads near the natural results for which advertisers are charged either each time someone clicks on them (PPC) or for each impression.

The goal of SEO is to achieve good ranking in natural search results.

Definition of Bid Jamming or Bid Trapping or Pinning

Bid jamming, sometimes referred to as "pinning", is a technique used in fixed-bid PPC programs like Overture / Yahoo! Sponsored Search to pay less than your competition for similar ad positions while holding their costs high. You "jam" your competitor by bidding one cent less than them, thus forcing them to pay their entire bid price for each bid while you pay one cent more than the bid immediately below yours. If the next bid is much lower, your competition can be spending substantially more for the higher ad position.

Definition of Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are used in keyword advertising to prevent ads from being shown when the search terms contain the negative keywords. For instance, a realtor who sells houses in Omaha could specify "commercial" as a negative keyword so that their ads do show for searches upon "Omaha real estate" but not "Omaha commercial real estate".

Negative keywords can have a tremendous impact on ROAS by significantly reducing the number of clicks by poor quality leads.

Definition of Nofollow

Nofollow refers to a link attribute that allows website owners to tell search engines that a particular link does not confer credit to the target site. For instance, a Google discourages the use of paid links, and they ask that site owners use nofollow on them so that people cannot buy more backlinks.

It is possible specify nofollow for all links on a page using the "robots" meta tag.

Here is an HTML example of a link that uses nofollow:

Great Site

Definition of CAN-SPAM

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 established the first United States standards for senders of commercial email. It designates the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as the enforcement body for this legislation.

CAN-SPAM has many stipulations for commercial email senders including requiring them to use appropriate subject lines, provide a physical address of the sender, offer recipients the ability to opt-out of future correspondence, and conspicuously label adult material.

CAN-SPAM is an acronym for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003.

Definition of Opt-In Email Marketing

Opt-in e-mail advertising or permission marketing is a method of advertising by electronic mail wherein the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it. It is one of several ways developed by marketers to eliminate the disadvantages of e-mail marketing.

E-mail has become a very popular mode of communication across the world. It has also become extremely popular to advertise through. Some of the many advantages of advertising through e-mail are the direct contact with the consumer and it is "inexpensive, flexible, and simple to implement" (Fairhead, 2003). There are also disadvantages attached to e-mail advertising such as alienating the consumer because of overload to messages or the advertisement getting deleted without getting read.

A common example of permission marketing is a newsletter sent to a firmâ€™s customers. Newsletters like this are a way to let customers know about upcoming events or promotions, or new products. In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive this newsletter.

Definition of Click Fraud

Click fraud refers to malicious clicking on pay-per-click (PPC) ads in order to assess charges to the advertisers or search engines.

Click fraud can be used to penalize advertisers by driving up their costs to the point that they curtail advertising spending or otherwise modify their behavior in ways that benefit competitors. However, the most common use of click fraud is thought to be by website owners who host PPC ads and receive a percentage of PPC revenue. By clicking on their own ads or generating clicks through automated means or complicit individuals, they may increase the revenue they receive from advertising.

Definition of Page Rank

Page Rank (often denoted PR) is a quantity defined by Google that provides a rough estimate of the overall importance of a web page. Many factors influence Page Rank, thus it is a poor indicator of how well a page ranks for particular keywords.

Contrary to popular belief, the word "page" in Page Rank has nothing to do with web pages. It's from the name of one of PR's inventors, Larry Page.

Definition of CTR

CTR, or Click Through Rate, is the fraction of users who click on a keyword advertisement to those that view that advertisement (an impression). CTR is usually expressed as a percentage

Definition of Impression

An impression is a single display of a particular ad on a web page. Some search engine advertising fees are based upon the number of impressions, while the majority are based upon the number of clicks (PPC).

Definition of Pay-Per-Click

Definition of Cloaking

Cloaking refers to the practice of showing different content to search engine spiders when they visit your site than users would normally see. Cloaking can be used to try and influence search engine ranking, although the search engines typically frown on any such attempts, and the penalty for detection can be removal from their index. There are legitimate uses for cloaking techniques that involve large websites that may need to save server load or that use it to circumvent the limitations of technologies that the search engines might otherwise not be able to read.

Definition of Cost Per Acquisition

Cost Per Acquisition or CPA refers to the average cost of acquiring leads or customers. It is most commonly associated with Search Engine Marketing (SEM). CPA is calculated by dividing the cost of advertising by the number of leads or customers for a given period of time.

Definition of CPM

CPM is an acronym for Cost-Per-Thousand. Many online ads are priced on a CPM basis in which the cost is expressed for 1000 impressions. E.g. If a banner advertisement is placed at the price of $20/M then the CPM is $20, or $20 for 1000 impressions.

Most search engine ads charge based on the number of ad clicks (PPC) instead of impressions.

Definition of ROAS

ROAS stands for Return On Advertising Spending and represents the dollars earned per dollars spent on the corresponding advertising. To determine ROAS, divide revenue derived from the ad source by the cost of that ad source. Values less than one indicate that less revenue is generated than is spent on the advertising.

A full cost/benefit analysis requires consideration of profit--instead of revenue--versus advertising spending.

Definition of CTR

CTR, or Click Through Rate, is the fraction of users who click on a keyword advertisement to those that view that advertisement (an impression). CTR is usually expressed as a percentage.

Definition of Google Bombing

Google Bombing refers to the practice of creating a large number of links with specific keywords in the anchor text to rate a site very highly for that keyword. For instance, one of the most successful Google bombs resulting in the top Google result for "miserable failure" to be the Presidential home page of the white house during the first George W. Bush administration.

Definition of Google Sandbox

Google Sandbox refers to a hypothetical mechanism that factors a website's age (or lack thereof) into its ranking on popular keywords.

Around the end of 2004, many website developers started noticing that sites that previously took 4-8 weeks to get indexed and ranked by Google were suddenly taking much longer. People surmised that Google put some new sites into a "sandbox" until time and other factors indicated that they had been around long enough to be indexed. Google denies the existence of a rigid sandbox rule. Many of web marketers have observed effects and talked to knowledgeable people that lead us to believe that the sandbox effect is not discrete, rather that website age is being made more important among many other factors for determining website ranking. This is somewhat of semantic argument since most websites seem to take roughly the same amount of time to be indexed: almost a year.

Definition of ROAS

A full cost/benefit analysis requires consideration of profit--instead of revenue--versus advertising spending.

Definition of ROI

ROI (short for Return On Investment) refers to the percentage yield provided for a given investment. This term is used for evaluating SEM and other forms of advertising by dividing the profit derived from advertising by the cost of that advertising.

Definition of Google Bombing

Definition of Google Sandbox

Google Sandbox refers to a hypothetical mechanism that factors a website's age (or lack thereof) into its ranking on popular keywords.

Definition of Impression

Definition of Search Engine Advertising

Most search engines show ads alongside search results. The search query determines which ads are shown. Typically advertisers pay a fee every time someone clicks on their ad (Pay Per Click), as opposed to traditional advertising where they pay for the number of impressions.

Definition of Index

A search engine index is a database that correlates keywords and websites so that the search engine can display websites that match a user's search query.

Definition of Indexing

Indexing is the process of building a search engine index.

Technically, indexing is a separate step from assigning keyword rankings.

Definition of Search Engine Optimization

Definition of KEI

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) attempts to characterize the value of a keyword based upon its popularity and the number of competing websites. Higher KEI values are "better" in that they represent more searches per website.

Typically KEI is the the ratio of the square of the searches upon a particular keyword in a day divided by the number of websites that are listed for that keyword. For example, a keyword that has 100 searches a day and for which Google shows 5000 websites would have a KEI of 2. (100 * 100 / 5000)

Definition of Keyword

Search queries are referred to as keywords when targeted by SEO and search engine advertising. Keywords may consist of more than one word.

Definition of Keyword Advertising

Keyword advertising refers to a variety of techniques that associate advertisements with particular terms on websites. The most common form is exemplified by Google AdWords and Yahoo! Sponsored Search which display ads alongside search engine results. Most ads are composed entirely of text while some may include graphics.

Keyword advertising complements SEO by enabling site owners to target search engine users beyond the vocabulary upon which they rank well in natural search results.

Definition of Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission is the process of notifying search engines of the existence of website content so that they include the site in their indices and search results.

Search engine submission is only necessary if the a site has not been found by the major search engines. Most major search sites frequently revisit already indexed sites to ensure that their search results reflect current content. More information on search engine submission myths can be found here.

Definition of Keyword Advertising

Keyword advertising complements SEO by enabling site owners to target search engine users beyond the vocabulary upon which they rank well in natural search results.

Definition of Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of determining what keywords are used in search engines by potential customers.

There goals of keyword research include the following:

Identify the broadest possible set of keywords used by potential customers.
Determine which keywords are most popular and thus represent the primary targets for SEO and keyword advertising.
Identify keywords whose search engine ranking is realistically obtainable by SEO.
Determine what negative keywords will make keyword advertising most cost effective.
Identify customer language that can influence branding and messaging.
Develop additional content based upon user terminology.

Definition of Spider

Spider is used as both a noun and a verb. Search engine spiders (aka "spiders") are software applications used by search engines to index web pages. They "spider" the web by following links from one page to another.

A site is said to have been spidered after a search engine has crawled and indexed its contents.

Definition of Splash Page

Splash pages are web pages that act as stylized "doorways" to a site that provide a highly tailored message to new visitors. They are different from typical home pages in that they usually have an "enter" button or equivalent.

There are several significant downsides to the use of splash pages, the most notable being that users find them annoying and may leave your site or choose not to revisit it later. Others are that they can harm SEO efforts, they often rely on technology that not all users have, and their development often highlights weaknesses of the rest of the site that should be handled in other ways. Consider that search engines will bring users to the specific page of your site that is most appropriate to their query, so the development of a splash page is wasted effort for these visitors.

Definition of Stemming

Stemming of keywords involves extracting the root words, dropping such things as plurals and gerunds (ing). Some examples would include: running/run, apples/apple, and educational/education.

Most search engines perform stemming by default when providing results so that a search on something like "green apples" will not exclude sites that only use the singular form, "green apple".

Stemming is important from an SEO standpoint because while the search engines will tend to stem, they still tend to favor the results that are an exact match to the search query.

Definition of 301 Redirect

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A 301 redirect is a method of telling web browsers and search engines that a web page or site has been permanently moved to a new location. Usually a 301 redirect includes the address to which the resource has been moved. Web browsers will typically follow 301 redirects to the new location automatically, without the need for user action.

A 301 redirect should be used whenever a website is moved to a new domain name (URL) so that search engines will quickly change their indeces and, in theory, preserve the search engine rankings that the site had at the previous domai

Definition of Link Bait

Link bait (or linkbait) refers to anything on a website that encourages links from other websites. It can include content, online tools, downloads, or anything else that another site owner might find compelling enough to link to. Link bait is important because most search engines use backlinks as a major factor in determining ranking.

Definition of Search Engine Ranking

Search engine ranking refers to the position at which a particular site appears in the results of a search engine query. A site is said to have a high ranking when it appears at or near the top of the list of results. Just to confuse things, results are typically numbered starting at 1 and increasing down the list of results, thus a higher ranking corresponds to a lower number, 1 being ideal.

Definition of Above the Fold

A search engine result is said to be above the fold when it appears on the first page of search results and doesn't require scrolling to view. Search engine users are less likely to click on results that are "below the fold" (require scrolling). Where the fold appears depends upon the user's window size and screen resolution, but it is common practice to designate the fold as residing between positions 5 and 6. The second and subsequent pages exhibit dramatically lower performance than the first page, and the effects of the fold become negligible on these pages.

The term "above the fold" comes from the newspaper industry where headlines and advertisements placed above the horizontal fold are known to attract more reader attention.

Definition of Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking, or link-swapping, is the creation of a link from your site to another in exchange for a link back from that site to yours.

Definition of Link-Building

Link-building is the practice of obtaining links from external web sites to your own to improve both direct referrals (people clicking on the links) and search engine ranking.

Paying for links and reciprocal linking are more effective than simply requesting uncompensated links from other sites.

Definition of Anchor Text

Anchor text refers to the text that composes a link to another web page or resource. In the HTML link example that follows,

My Example

The words "My Example" are the anchor text.

Search engines often look at anchor text to determine what the link is about and thus infer the subject of the site to which the link points. It is widely believed that placing keywords in anchor text helps search engine ranking.

Definition of Search Engine Advertising

Definition of Pay-Per-Click

Definition of Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is now synonmymous with Search Engine Advertising. It used to be an umbrella term referring to various techniques for acquiring website traffic from search engines, such as:

Definition of Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission is the process of notifying search engines of the existence of website content so that they include the site in their indices and search results.

Definition of Search Engine Optimization

Banned Websites and how they become banned?

2009-06-03T05:34:00.000-07:00

Banned Websites and how they become banned?

When you hear about banned websites, it often times doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. People talk about banned websites when they refer to sites that have been penalized by Google for violating some of its policies about search engine optimization. An outright ban on a website, however, is very uncommon, so the term banned websites can be something of a misnomer. But, there are lots of things you can do wrong regarding SEO to have Google penalize your site severely, so that your position in the search engines results rankings can fall dramatically, creating the impression that you must be one of these banned websites.

Basically, the only cure for banned websites is to try and fix your search engine marketing strategy to try to better conform to Google's standards. This can be difficult since Google doesn't speak much publicly about its exact policies for banned websites. But there are many well known tactics and methods that Google frowns upon, and in the end, it can be much easier to avoid using these methods in the beginning than it is for banned websites to try to right the ship and climb back up the rankings.

The key to avoiding becoming one of the roughly 5% of banned websites out there today is to not do anything to overtly or unfairly manipulate your content or site structure that Google will frown upon. These include many so called black hat practices, and below we will discuss two of the most common. Usually, methods that can result in banned websites are listed in the Terms of Service, so be sure to read them.

Buying and Selling Links-Google uses links to determine its Page Rank system, which is one of the biggest influences on your overall position in their search results. Therefore, if they determine that you are buying or selling links in order to falsely promote your Page Rank, they will penalize you as they do other banned websites. This can often result in a 2 or 3 point drop in your own Page Rank, and stated previously, this can be very difficult to overcome.

Keyword Spam-This practice refers to stuffing your content with an overabundance of keywords to make your site appear more relevant to the search engine crawlers than it really is. This is the reason for many banned websites. This practice also includes cloaking, or making keyword rich text invisible to the viewer, and it is the reason for a lot of banned websites. Many experts feel that a good main keyword density should be anywhere from 3-7% for any text, so try to stay within those boundaries to avoid getting a banned websites penalty.

There are other things that can be done that will result in banned websites, but basically it should be understood that anything you do to falsely or artificially improve your website's ranking could earn you a spot on a banned websites list. Remember, this doesn't mean you can't undertake some form of SEO marketing, but try to incorporate it into good, quality content and site structure that isn't trying to cut corners or fool anyone.

Google will often times issue a banned websites warning before they make your sites banned websites, so take heed if this happens. There are all kinds of SEO tools out there to help you find winning strategies to rank highly, so use them. It's easier to try something different with your SEO now than it is to try to fight banned websites back into the rankings later.

National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities

2008-06-24T04:45:00.000-07:00

National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities

Latest Seo Tips - Free Seo Tips: Types of Link Building

2008-04-04T09:21:00.000-07:00

Latest Seo Tips - Free Seo Tips: Types of Link Building

Gurupadamohapatra

2008-03-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

Hi I am gurupada mohapatra.