Digital Marketing Attribution – Insights and Advice: SMN Webcast Wednesday

How does online display advertising impact search marketing performance? How do these marketing channels interact? On Wednesday, July 27, at 1 PM EDT, our sister site, Search Marketing Now presents a live webcast, “Digital Marketing Attribution: How Marketers and Agencies Convert Insight to Actions.” Madan Bharadwai of Visual IQ will present several insights, while Adam Gitlin and Seb Maitra will discuss how to turn those insights into action. The webcast is free and registration is open at Search Marketing Now. Thanks to Visual IQ for sponsoring this webcast.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: SMX & SMN Alerts

About The Author: Claire Schoen is director of Third Door Media's Search Marketing Now webcast series. Claire has held senior marketing and operations positions in publishing for nearly thirty years. See more articles by Claire Schoen

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How to Find an Honest SEO International Internet Marketing Company

One of the greatest challenges facing any international business today is being found on the Internet. The Internet has changed the fundamental means for how we conduct international business. It provides instant, real time answers to many of our daily commercial and personal questions. But now that you have a Website, can your site be found when one performs a search on Google, Yahoo, Live.com or AOL for your company's product or service?

Chances are that when another domestic or international business seeks to find your products or services, they will not find you. Most Webmasters deal only with design and layout. They are graphic artists who have learned a little bit of HTML. They copy and paste written copy into a table and upload. They are not expected to be professionals in the art of international Internet marketing nor should they be.

The Internet is a big place. An expanding and creative digital universe which demands a variety of professionals in hardware, software, graphics, copy writing, international marketing, domain retailers, operations, finance, journalism, advertising and public relations. But where can we find that magician called an SEO or search engine optimization international marketing professional?

We find an avalanche of companies advertising themselves using Google adwords as SEO international Internet marketing and Web promotion professionals. But sad to say, over 80 percent of these companies know very little about SEO Internet marketing and much about how to take your hard earned money.

In May of 2006 the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) announced that Internet advertising revenues reached a new record of $3.9 billion for the first quarter of 2006. The 2006 first quarter revenues represent a 38 percent increase over Q1 2005 at $2.8 billion and a 6 percent increase over Q4 2005 total at $3.6 billion.

Last year, AdWords alone generated $3.4 billion for Google.

With the Internet being the place to secure market share, many charlatans and wannabe international Internet marketing professionals are surfacing - thieves who know little more than how to cash your check and disappear quickly.

So how does one go about shopping for an honest and successful company which specializes in international marketing and public relations on the Internet?

You must ask several questions. Problem is, most companies seeking international SEO Internet marketing support do not know the questions to ask. Leyden Communications (Israel) provides below a list of questions for every company from Tel Aviv, London, Washington and New York, to Paris, Japan, India and China to ask the SEO or international Internet marketing company before they sign a contract.

First, if your target audience is New York, London, Manchester or Los Angeles, or any native English speaking market, be certain to hire a native from that country. One whose English is at mother tongue level and understands the marketing culture of your target market. If you do hire an Israeli, make certain that they have lived and worked in your target market locale for at least ten years.

Second, you want to know what experience and for how many years they have worked with international marketing, conventional distribution channels, sales, marcom, viral marketing, production of brochures, advertising and public relations?

Third, what professional experience do they have in copy writing, journalism and research?

Fourth, what practical experience do they have in programming?

And last but not least, how long have they been working on the Internet?

An international Internet marketing professional must wear many hats to succeed. The Internet SEO must be an experienced international marketing or PR person - one who understands how to penetrate and motivate a market outside of Israel without the Internet. They need to understand the basics of international marketing, branding, distribution and sales channels in order for them to integrate the digital world with the classic print, broadcast media and sales markets. The SEO must be an accomplished, creative and professional writer who can write for both the reader and the search engine.

This article is an example of how one writes for both the reader and the Google and Yahoo search engines. The English suffers a bit as the writer finds a fine balance between getting your attention and the eyes of the search engines. But what is more important? The search engine!

For if your customers in the UK, France, Germany, Brazil, Japan and South Korea do not find your Website, then having a Website with the best of conventional copy writing will find itself lost in cyberspace.

Can you find a Webmaster, Internet graphic design, Internet programmer, professional Internet marketing, international marketing guru and professional journalist and or copywriter all in one person?

Many in Israel will tell you yes. I say, you will be lucky to find a team with each one of these professionals in no more than perhaps three international Internet SEO marketing companies in Israel.

What then would be the real acid test for securing a professional SEO - search engine optimization Web promotion marketing company in Israel, New York, London, Paris or Beijing?

Simply perform a search on Google for "Israel Internet Marketing" or "Israel International Marketing."

If the SEO company you are talking to in Israel is not listed in the top ten, you must ask yourself one question: "How can they rank you, without the continued use of an expensive Google adwords campaign, in a top ten position?"

Google Adwords are a very powerful advertising tool used by SEO international Internet marketing companies in Israel, but they are not a substitute for having your commercial Website stand on its own digital legs. Adwords are not a substitute for getting out optimized news stories on Google News and PR news releases in to the many corners of the Net. Adwords do not substitute for creating blogs, professional rooms and forums in Google and Yahoo and the creation of videos for YouTube.

Can a native born SEO in Israel find, let alone professionally write the English, French, Spanish or China copy and news you need for your Website and for international blogs and news releases?

Are they fluent in a variety of Israel export and import markets relating to hi tech, food, defense technology, agriculture, biotech, security, real estate, chemicals, metals, gaming, politics, crisis communications, education, plastics, music, shopping, telecommunications, sales, stocks, manpower, diamonds, Judaica, office products, food, beverages, tourism, games, textiles, dating, health, sports, news, videos, clothes, hotels, airlines and rental cars?

Allow the native Israel SEO to market your products and services to domestic markets and sales cultures that they know best - Tel Aviv, Ra'anana, Ashdod, Herzlia, Afula, Haifa, Jerusalem, Kiryat Shomona and Eilat.

Never look at office size as a measure of success. What you are paying for is knowledge and talent. Many SEO professionals and their complimentary staff of copy writers and programmers may work from a home office in Israel. Again, judge their international Internet marketing success by the ranking of their clients and their own personal search engine optimization ranking on Google and Yahoo.

Never pay a maintenance fee. International Internet marketing SEO professionals are not servicing a car or cleaning a house. What you do want to invest in is more Web pages created by their Webmaster and more news stories and or news releases created by their PR firm to be placed on Google News.

Never pay all that they ask for up front. Unless you know the company a good policy is paying half before the work begins and the balance once the work is completed. It takes about three weeks to begin seeing the results of SEO or search engine optimization. Although with some Israel SEO, you can see rankings improve within a matter of days by using Alexa.com. In using Alexa.com, it is a tool that you can use, one that cannot be played with by the SEO or SEM company.

Lastly, if the SEO international Internet marketing company promises you a first place ranking, you will then know that they are bogus. No SEO or SEM can promise you something for which only Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL control. They can promise you a higher ranking and depending on the link density of your industry maybe even a top ten position.

Remember that the top ten search engine position that we are talking about would not be a paid Google adwords sponsored link. It is your Web site, your Web pages standing on their own two feet that counts. Also having an optimized news story about your company's products and services in a top ten position would equal your Website being in a high SEO ranking. In fact, as long as the SEO news / public relations story is in a high position, it reinforces your credibility as it serves as third party endorsement. It is far more potent than your Website ranking, as long as the story has a link to your Website.

Your first stop in hiring an international Internet marketing company in Israel is a Google search.

Your second stop is to meet the SEO and SEM - search engine marketing team. If you don't see a native English speaking, experienced international marketing professional who understands terminology such as POP, embassy commercial attache department, Israel Export Institute, packaging, four color bleed and what an optimized SEO news headline on the Internet looks like - keep walking.

Joel Leyden was one of Israel's first Internet pioneers, having co-created Israel's first commercial Website - NetKing - in 1995, the first Internet based news organization in Israel - Israel News Agency, the first Website for an Israel Prime Minister, first site for the Israel Defense Forces and hundreds of commercial, non-profit and governmental organizations. Leyden has worked for over 25 years in journalism, international marketing, public relations and advertising from New York and Israel. Leyden was Israel's first SEO and today provides lectures on international Internet marketing.

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

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Content Marketing is the New Black

Learn how marketers are building successful content marketing campaigns — and how to find the right content marketing partner for your business.

Read this E-Solution Spotlight at Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Sponsor Messages

About The Author: Search Engine Land Search Engine Land is a news and information site covering search engine marketing, searching issues and the search engine industry. Special site announcements and occasional sponsor messages are posted by Search Engine Land. See more articles by Search Engine Land

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Are QR Codes Good For Local Marketing? A Contrarian View

Quite a few marketers have raved about QR codes as the best thing since sliced bread. Small-to-medium local businesses wonder if they should jump on the bandwagon as well, but is there enough substance to justify the buzz? Consider this contrarian view before deciding if you should.

With new and emerging technologies, it can be challenging to identify whether integrating them will produce a good-versus-bad ROI. With some experimental interactive marketing ideas, the “law of diminishing returns“ eventually kicks in, meaning you expend progressively more time and effort for lower and lower returns.

If the tactic you’re considering has an extremely nebulous potential return, it might not justify any time spent on it at all. QR codes may fit into this category.

They are not a substantial improvement over URLs. At its most basic level, a QR code is a method for communicating and storing a very precise ID to be associated with some thing, such as a product, an advertisement, a business, or an individual. In this respect, it works very similarly to a URL. (They can also store plain text, but most of their best business functions seem to be in the role of ID/product-numbers or URLs.)

For instance, if you saw an ad in a newspaper or magazine that looked interesting to you, you could scan it with your mobile phone, and the app on your phone would translate the graphic code into a URL which you could save or have it launch straight into a browser window on your phone.

While this theoretically could save you from having to manually type in a URL you read off the ad, it’s not necessarily all that much faster (I’ve watched people pulling up the app, getting close enough to the QR code, aligning to snap a pic, etc.). If one frequently wanted to visit URLs found when reading newspapers or magazines, this small time savings could drive one to install and use the app.

But, I’d venture to say that most people reading print media are not in a mode to take notes or go look up websites all that frequently while in the midst of that activity — I think those moments are more sporadic. And, when a consumer reaches that point, it’s not difficult to type in a URL, which incidentally might be easy to remember, too.

Some of the main uses for QR codes where local business marketing is concerned has been the practice of placing QR code decals on storefront windows or in print ads, and the matrix codes are linked-to the company’s website URL. This was pushed by Google Places, and many small businesses got the decals and placed them on their windows in a nearly knee-jerk reaction based on the assumption that if Google thought it was good, then it must be. Or, perhaps it might give them some sort of advantage in Google rankings.

There’s no reason to think that QR codes help in local search rankings on Google or elsewhere. Many marketers are desperate to push against any perceived lever there may be in making the needle move in Google rankings, so quite a number of people fell in line and posted the matrix code graphics on their store entrances. But it likely did nothing for rankings. In fact, there’s reason to believe that messing with your site URL structure to make better QR codes may de-optimize it for search.

Rhetoric around QR technology has been suspiciously hype-laden

The online marketing community’s enthusiasm around QR codes has made it sound compelling and the excitement that all of us have around clever tech is catching. But, there needs to be a good reason to use it or else it won’t have a natural place in consumer ecology.

The short life-cycle arc of the CueCat indicates this could be an evolutionary dead end

The CueCat was the product of a flashy startup during the dot-com era which allowed people to scan in small barcodes which could be later uploaded on computer to sync up with URLs.

A CueCat Scanner used technology similar to QR codes.

I remember when I was called in by the print side of my old yellow pages company to integrate CueCat code with our website for a brief, thankfully-abortive time period. I was so horrified when I realized what it was and how far in bed the print product manager had gotten with the Digital Convergence company that produced the CueCat.

It was so patently obvious that it was a nearly-pointless novelty item that I could not see there being sufficient consumer adoption of the technology to justify the amount of yellow pages ad print space to allow for the barcodes.

So, it was no surprise to me within a mere year or so when I was called upon to vet Digital Convergence’s technology for consideration of being acquired as the company was about to go bankrupt — and I had no hesitation in killing off the proposed buyout based upon technical incompatibility with our server environment and assessment of the CueCat’s complete lack of sufficient consumer adoption.

It’s still horrifying to me how eager some unsophisticated companies were to associate themselves with technology they understood poorly, and how much money they lost from investing in the technological dead-end.

Debbie Barham of the Evening Standard described the basic failure best when she said, “[the CueCat] fails to solve a problem which never existed.” And, that unfortunately seems to describe QR codes, too.

Slight inconveniences with products can amount to huge barriers for adoption

With QR codes, there are a few different inconveniences: you must download and install the app(s) on your phone. You must scan the codes. You must FIND code to scan and be near enough to capture it.

Could it be easier to use? Well, imagine if your cell phone had an app which allowed you to snap a photo of a URL, and then it might automatically launch your browser window with the URL. This isn’t far outside of our current technology.

There must be a compelling incentive for consumers to adopt it

If it doesn’t quite speed up some interation enough, then it needs some sort of premium to bribe users into getting involved.

Google dropped support for QR in Places

After initially pushing intensively to get SMBs to adopt them and use them as decals at their places of business, Google dropped QR code support. If this had been working for local consumers, Google wouldn’t have abruptly halted it. This is a significant indicator that it has yet to hit critical mass.

The vast majority of average consumers haven’t a clue what it is!

Poll the men-on-the-street in your area and see how many of them know what a QR code is and have a QR app installed on their cellphones!

As a unique identifier for people, businesses, things — it likely will not have a long lifespan

For businesses, apps becoming more adept at identifying/linking based upon ubiquitous geolocations, for instance. And, what about RF IDs (a.k.a. “NFC” – “Near Field Communication”)?

Nanotech devices with embedded RF ID detection could offer seemless ID detection and invisibly bridge the gap to connecting with online/virtual info. (There is speculation that Google dropped QR code from Places in order to replace it with NFC-enabled decals.)

URLs have wider recognition and might be preferable to using QR codes in print ads

Unlike QR codes, a URL doesn’t require locating an app, downloading it, installing it, and using it to snap a pic of a code graphic. For consumers who don’t have smartphones or have yet to download the appropriate app, a URL (including conveniently shortened URLs) will work better.

Multiple, warring code protocols result in some consumer confusion

The fact that there are multiple QR flavors may necessitate loading multiple apps to read different codes for different purposes. A consumer who feels unsure of which app to use for a code will tend to avoid participating. A service which requires a degree in Internet technology to use it is a service destined for failure.

It’s easy to find reasons to nay-say QR code. However, it has gained some number of devotees and some growth of users. It would be simplistic to ignore that the technology has a few reasons to believe in it and consider that it might become sufficiently robust to gain traction. Here are a few of the reasons which I think have some merit.

It is an evolutionary step up from the CueCat

QR Codes only require smartphones for the device, compared to the specialized CueCat scanners — so, it is founded on a device which many consumers already have. While this is an adaptive advantage, it’s also insufficient in my view, because I didn’t believe the specialized device was the main flaw of CueCats in the first place — it was their lack of compelling reason to be used.

Still, this incarnation has the advantage of a slightly lower barrier-to-entry, and each incremental advantage helps bring the concept closer to the tipping point where it might finally reach critical mass.

QR code might manage to achieve a necessary degree of cool factor

Just one clever PR stunt could help propel it from the digiterati/early-adopters over into popular culture. There have been quite a few different companies, organizations and individuals which have done something innovative with QR in order to get some publicity buzz.

For example, a few days ago Ballantines whisky company got a tattoo artist to ink a QR code onto a friend which was linked to an animated version of the tattoo illustration:

Yet, this is more of a novelty than something which will bring QR tech over the top. Few people have access to the tattooed guy to scan in his matrix and get the animation to launch, so there’s no incentive for people to download the app and play along. For a stunt like this to really convert the non-QR-enabled, it needs to involve a more popular subject and it’s got to get a lot of people interested in making the scan themselves.

There is still some time yet before omnipresent ID technologies catch on and become standard

NFC or some nanotech ID handshake may be just around the corner, but they haven’t arrived. Until then, there may be some useful applications for QR protocol.

Google’s purchase of Punchd indicates it may still have plans for QR where local is concerned

Punchd is a service that has a built-in incentive that can drive consumers to seek out the special QR app, download, install and use — frequently. Mashing up a loyalty program which users can engage with via cellphone makes for a compelling raison d’etre.

Innovative QR code use indicates that the tech could be one small leap away from becoming really useful

A South Korean grocery store, a Homeplus company, figured out that providing busy shoppers with a virtual store in subway stations where they are a captive audience might be solid gold, and enabling the shopping cart functionality by having consumers scan QR codes for each product they wish to purchase is actually a brilliant application.

Now, if someone comes up with an equally compelling application here in North America, you could see QR codes really enter the mass consciousness in a big way.

QR codes have yet to achieve sufficiently widespread awareness in popular culture. Their usage  could still grow at a rapid rate as some have cited, but their penetration is still insufficient to justify time spent on integration for most small, local businesses. But, don’t ask me — ask a small, representative sample of your usual customers and see how many of them know about it.

If you’re a small business, consider first if you’re in a tech-savvy industry where your customers will commonly know what this is and use it, or if you’re in a highly tech-aware location, such as Seattle or Silicon Valley. If you fall into these segments, you may fall within a narrow exception case category and this could be worthwhile for you to experiment with (particularly offering Punchd loyalty discounts).

Additional innovative applications like the South Korean grocery use could happen in the North American market, but until that happens this still may not have reached the necessary tipping point to be worthwhile.

Some future innovative stunt like the QR tattoo might manage to tempt large numbers of consumers into trying out the technology, helping it to jump past the tipping-point.

For larger companies with sufficient resources to spend, a QR integration could be used as a speculative experiment similar to the Ballantines company’s tattoo gimmick, and they still might get some publicity/buzz value out of it even if it doesn’t evolve into a more worthwhile medium.

But, for the majority of small, local businesses, this is a speculative curiosity which simply doesn’t yet merit any expense of time/resources to mess with. As such, for most of these businesses any time spent playing with this will translate immediately into lost money.

However, stay tuned on the QR code topic where local interactive marketing is concerned!

Where I could’ve predicted the rapid death of CueCat, the story isn’t completely over for QR yet, and it might yet climb its way up over the tipping-point and make it into a sustainable position in the marketplace here.

It will need something to help propel it further, though — some increase in the ineffable “coolness” factor such as a Lady Gaga full-body QR code tattoo, or virtual shopping malls in subway stations — but, it might still happen.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Featured | Locals Only

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Benefits of Buying Affordable SEO Services From Internet Marketing Experts

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is used by website owners to improve their Google search ranking & associated traffic. A team of SEO experts is required to do a complete SEO job for a website. There are multiple affordable SEO internet marketing companies available to deliver SEO Packages. To buy SEO services online is more economical rather than hiring a SEO in-house team to do the same job. An online SEO company needs to evaluate your website if you are looking for custom made solutions. But for most of the small and medium sized websites, a pre packaged SEO service should be sufficient. You may buy SEO online, also when you need to execute only a few SEO elements for your website.

There are multiple elements when it comes to complete SEO. It starts with on-page optimization and includes a variety of submission services. A new website or a website which is doing SEO for first time, requires a complete re-haul of its website to include keyword suggestions from on-page optimization team. Again SEO experts would do a very good keywords analysis to come up with right kind of keywords for your SEO project. You should therefore buy services only from a qualified SEO internet marketing company. An affordable SEO solution would also do the sitemap submission for your website to various search engines.

This SEO service is quite affordable and you may buy only a part of submission services, as what suits your marketing budget. There are multiple offerings under this banner; including directory submissions, article submissions, social bookmarking etc. One may also look for affordable SEO services, which provides RSS Feed submissions & Press Release submissions too. When you buy service, you should confirm if the online SEO Company provides content writing services too. Most of the time, a website may not have relevant articles, press releases etc, stuffed with the suggested keywords. These articles are required during submission service.

If budget permits, one should look for SEO internet marketing company which provides Blog posting, Forum participation, Video submission & various other value added services. An affordable SEO service may provide all these services under a single banner. With a qualified SEO experts team at your disposal, your website search rank on google would improve drastically. Needless to say this would help improve traffic to your website resulting into better profits. Thus it's important to buy affordable SEO services from a well qualified online SEO company. It's a prerequisite to your online business success and profits.

Seomixi, an Search Engine Optimisation company can offer the best seo services that help your website to feature within the first few pages of search engines. Such Affordable seo services can enhance your revenues. We have many seo experts in our team. The seo packages offered are very affordable and the quality of work is excellent and professional.

For more information visit http://www.seomixi.com

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SEO Marketing Services - Things to Consider When Hiring an Organic Internet Marketing Company

Being the owner of your business, you are already aware that without a focused Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign, your corporate website may not be able to draw the attention of sufficient number visitors. This in turn might prevent you from building a sufficiently large customer base in future. These days, when every business enterprise - small or big, has a web presence, it is a highly competitive task to make your site easily searchable by visitors. The SEO marketing industry thrives on this requirement. There are a lot of SEO marketing service providers in the market, practicing different SEO techniques. In this article, we will explore the points you should consider before hiring an organic SEO company.

Organic SEO Practices

The current trend in the SEO industry is organic SEO practices. What is organic SEO practice anyway? Organic SEO practice makes high-quality content as the weapon to beat competition. The high quality content is supplemented by meta-tag and title tag enhancements. Organic SEO service providers should be able to follow the workings of search engine algorithms closely. Researching for appropriate keywords and their distributed usage across the content is the key to success. Organic SEO service providers take step-by-step approach in dealing with your site's SEO needs. The results, though it takes some time to trickle in, are usually long-lasting and cost-effective.

Things to Consider Before You Sign up

Choosing an organic SEO company from the market place teeming with SEO providers is not easy. You should take every precaution so that your hard-earned money is not wasted. Take care of the following points while evaluating an SEO provider:

• The competition these days demands that your SEO provider should be a vertical expert. This means that the SEO provider should be sufficiently experienced in your industry domain.

• Secondly, the SEO company should practice clean SEO techniques. It should not indulge in gimmicky techniques like black hat SEO that are dubbed illegal by the search engines.

• Apart from focusing on high quality content, an organic SEO marketing company should be knowledgeable about advanced SEO techniques like keyword researching, optimization of internal website links, incorporation of SEO-friendly images etc.

• Your SEO service provider should be able to provide you with the following deliverables - a Website Status Report, and periodic status reports. The first report gives you a comprehensive analysis of your current search engine positioning, what you lack and where your competitors might gain. It also puts forward the SEO plan for your site. The periodic status report is a sort of progress report. It is very important in case of organic SEO campaign where results trickle in stages over a long period of time.

At the end, I will like to reiterate a few things, which should be your take from this article. Firstly, you should subject your website to SEO techniques. Secondly, opt for organic SEO practices. Lastly, evaluate the credentials of shortlisted SEO companies well, before selecting one.

Brock Morrison has been involved in e-commerce for over 9 years now. Since the days of being a university student, he was always fascinated by the internet and how search engines are able to aid in navigating billions of websites out there. Now, as veteran and an industry expert in search engine optimization and website marketing, he shares his expertise with the general public through writing articles and providing consultations on all matters internet marketing related. Tap into years of experience, going back to when Google itself was nothing more then an idea of a couple of grad students at Stanford.

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Importance of SEO Pricing in Deciding Online Marketing Cost

The results of online marketing campaign largely depend upon the search engine ranking of website. Though a website may seem beautiful, flawless, but if it doesn't attract expected traffic, even the best marketing tricks will not deliver results. Hence, SEO pricing emerges as the most important issue while deciding overall online marketing cost because even if, you are satisfied with the existing number of website visitors, updated SEO always help you to get the better return of your online marketing cost. But, how would you justify SEO pricing? Do you know the main factors which really affect SEO pricing?

Factors concerned with SEO pricing and online marketing cost:

1. Exiting rank of the website - If the website contains too many frames or is written in Flash or is poorly designed or doesn't bear adequate incoming links, SEO pricing will be more.

2. Targeted Keywords - Selection of proper keywords plays an important role in SEO. Selection of more competitive keywords increases SEO pricing.

3. Target Market - If you have planned to hit the global market, more SEO efforts will be required to place the website among the top ten global search results. Kind of product or services being offered also affect SEO pricing. If your product or services are used by relatively few people, your website may be easily optimized, so low SEO pricing will cut down overall online marketing cost.

4. Nature of competitor - If your competitors get their websites optimized too frequently to get the better rank; you will require consistent SEO services. This will boost up online marketing cost because in this case SEO pricing will be too high.

5. Your involvement in SEO - If you know the basics of SEO, you can reduce online marketing cost considerably because in this case you will need SEO services only for highly technical jobs.

How to select best SEO service:

Nowadays, when every one is slashing down the marketing cost, you can't afford to spend for unjustified SEO pricing. While selecting the SEO service for your online marketing campaign, consider the following issues:

** What is included and excluded in offered SEO service?

** Whether you are being guaranteed for measurable result?

** How much time does SEO company need to prove improvement?

** Who will manage SEO and what will the extra charge for SEO management?

** Has the SEO agency worked successfully in past with the client of your category?

How to recover online marketing cost:

Success of any online marketing campaign depends upon perfect blending of techniques and tactics. To recover online marketing cost, besides maintaining SE rank it is also must to keep a continuous vigil on the traffic, response, order conversion ratio and segment of the visitors. Just the selection of highest SEO pricing offer doesn't guarantees the success of online marketing campaign. You need to mange SEO campaign professionally. To hire the specialists for this purpose is also not a bad idea; this little increase of online marketing cost will improve the results manifold.

To know more on SEO Pricing and Online Marketing Cost do visit our site.

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Hitting the World of Online Marketing Through SEO Copywriting

Do you think your online business is not getting the response you require? Is your website getting the sufficient number of hits from your potential customer? If you think the answers to these questions are 'yes' then there is a big loophole in your process of promoting your business. It might not be getting the right exposure in the search engines. If this is the reason, the only solution to the problem is promoting you website with the SEO articles that can give your website maximum visibility in the search engines. SEO copy writing enables your website get prominence and a good SEO copywriter can bring the difference in the performance of the website in the field of online marketing.

What is SEO copywriting?

SEO copywriting is the technique of writing good value, readable content for the website using proper density of keywords and keyword phrases to provide information to the visitors. The main purpose is to help the website rank high in the search engines for a specific search term. It is a crucial part of search engine optimization of a website. Hence, SEO requires professional SEO content writers who have adequate knowledge of SEO and website promotion.

Why you need a user-friendly SEO copy writing?

As content is the only way one can get maximum visitors and back links to a website. It is due to the content that a page gets ranked in the search engines. But sometimes it is found that though your page is coming in a top rank and getting visitors you are not getting enough customers. It is due to the fact that you don't have relevant SEO-friendly content for your support.

A quality and SEO-friendly content ensures that you will get more traffic and persuade them to make dealings at you site. An expert SEO copywriter has the potential to develop the content with keywords and keyword phrases to produce good result. Most of the SEO copywriters believe in keyword stuffing. But credibility and appealing content counts a lot in SEO copywriting.

What an SEO copywriting can do for your website?

SEO copy writing is the process of developing a content using the targeted keyword of the page. If a website is being optimized with SEO friendly content everytime it is sure that the website is going to rank high and retain to that position for longer and also can create a lasting impact in the mind of the readers.

SEO copywriters develop the content according to the requirements of the website and search engines. They can provide creative and informative content with smooth flow of keywords and thoughts. The online market, where competition is among millions and billions of website, needs professional SEO copywriting services for prominence of website which eventually turns to better sales and high return on investment

As you know the importance of SEO copywriting for your website you should select a professional and reliable SEO copywriting service. The SEO content writers should know strategic writing and techniques of SEO. After all you are going to make you visible among online competitors!

The author is the webmaster of seo-contentwriter.com, a leading seo content provider in India. Its services range from article, blog to press release writing. Renowned for writing press releases, this emerging web content provider boasts an experienced panel of SEO content writers who know well how to write a press release.

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Tips For Marketing Professionals - Don't Get Blinded by SEO Science

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a science. Having overseen and outsourced SEO functions for blue chip clients in Finance, IT, Retail, Pharma and Construction here are a number of simple considerations for marketing professionals overseeing SEO strategy.

Keyword selection is your vital first port of call. When meeting an SEO professional for the first time remember you know your business better than anyone else. Your SEO professional might display a sound understanding of SEO principles regarding traffic generation, popular key words and phrases, overture research, keyword selection tools, keyword density and keyword position but how does this relate to your revenue streams - that's your call.

For example I recently inherited an SEO strategy for a specialist construction recruitment consultancy. Looking through the keywords that had been implemented by the SEO team to date I quickly realised a fatal floor. The simple search term 'construction' may generate the most traffic for the company but why optimize for such a loose term when a visitor searching 'construction+jobs' clearly represents a more direct lead for your organization. You know your business model, market place and target audience so trust your business insight - don't get blinded by SEO 'science'.

Exactly what am I paying for?

I like to ask myself this question from time to time. The answer should be a greater search engine presence and lead generation. There are a few simple tools you can use to address this - completing your own searches, using the Google link search feature, checking your 'Google Page Rank' etc but you're paying a specialist to manage expectations so make sure your expectations are being met.

For me reporting at least once every two weeks is the main provision I want to see on any agreement. This gives you the opportunity to compare actual results with what you were pitched at the start of the campaign but also to analyse your SEO strategy against your competitors. You could also install a dedicated link for your SEO team to use to track actual results. Be sure to analyse the reports, run a few spot checks on the results. Remember you want to see your website moving up the search engine results pages. Why should you be paying for little or no progress especially at the start of your SEO strategy where scope for improvement is huge?

Review and analysis of your existing website and all of it's pages and features is the second provision I look for. Part of this process will give you chance to run through your existing strategy to date and give your new SEO team the opportunity to demonstrate a sound understanding of how SEO fits into your overall marketing business model. Then your SEO team can put together a sound evaluation of what you have done well, where improvements can be made and their strategy moving forwards. Your web development team can then make any amendments (or total rebuild) to the website and/or website content, introducing meta tags and search engine friendly features based on these recommendations and your SEO team can set about the real bread and butter of SEO - back links & link trading.

Your SEO is now being managed effectively, your business expectations are being met but how does this strategy really move your business forwards.

Inside three months your website should be listed in the first 5 Google page results depending on the level of competition for keywords in your sector. This represents an excellent level of visibility for your product or service offering and if your new SEO team has done their homework with your help sales leads should start to filter through. For this type of business model it is easy to address the success of the SEO campaign i.e. how many more units have we sold since we introduced our new SEO strategy.

In addition your advertising service offering becomes a lot more appealing. If you are a community forum chances are your registered uses will increase, if you are selling advertising the level of exposure for your advertisers will be increased, if you are booking appointments or generating leads or raising money or distributing surveys - all benefit from increased exposure. The best way to really drive home SEO is to integrate into your service offering. I will use some examples.

If you are supporting the marketing of an online IT forum for business managers and you receive a good advertising lead from an supplier, say IBM for example chances are you are dealing with a tech savvy animal who will have specific questions regarding your forum i.e. number of visitors, relevant website audits, registered users, newsletter circulation etc. Providing you have a sound organic SEO strategy in place advertising on your website already represents 60% more exposure and better return on investment than most other forums in your sector. As your registered users and newsletter circulation continues to grow as does your quality of service an earning potential.

You might be supporting the marketing for a jobs board for architecture practices. Assuming these guys have an excellent eye for design and building regulations and care little for the intricacies of SEO - exactly how does your new SEO strategy add benefit to your service offering to them and how do you communicate it to architecture practice decision makers. The simple answer is a more prominent position on search pages, means more relevant architects looking for work on your website and greater exposure for the simple and unique factors that make your architecture practice the best for qualified architecture professionals.

A with most other marketing initiatives it is crucial to make sure your SEO is being managed effectively and generating the results you set out to achieve. The result is active lead generation and increased after sales assurance for all of your leading clients.

Darren Henwood

Director

Heir-Q Marketing Solutions

darren.henwood@heirq.com

http://www.heirq.com

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SEO Services - Guide to Basic Internet Marketing That Delivers Traffic

SEO Services:

Search engine optimization or SEO has become one of the most important components of Internet marketing strategies. It is a tool that enhances the process of increasing the quality and quantity of web traffic improving and provides organic search results. The normal trend is that the higher a website is ranked on the search result page, the more traffic it will get. SEO services can vary from website to website depending on the requirement but is used on website headings, in text or body copy, design and even on images.

There are many people who have a website that displays some of the best products, has some well written content and offer great service and yet these sites don't receive even half the desired traffic. This is simply because they didn't understand the importance of SEO nor did they realize its potential in driving the targeted traffic. Great products, excellent services and a site that is very well written. To enhance your website, you will require the services of a SEO consultant or an SEO copywriter who knows his/her job very well.

A SEO copywriter will add more depth to your existing website copy by adding singular or plural keywords, synonyms and keyword phrases. Now that you have understood the common practices, let us take a look at the two broad categories of SEO services. They are:

On-Page Optimization
Off-Page Optimization

On-page optimization SEO services :

Well researched keywords
Correct use of Meta tags
Keyword density optimization
On-page optimization is the most commonly applied category within the SEO services and it focuses on two elements namely, your webpage content and the website structure or architecture. The key element is your web page content and you need to take special care while writing the content. Your web page content has to be relevant and in sync with the product or services you are selling or promoting. The best way to get your website on the top of the page ranking is by using various SEO techniques. Effective use of SEO techniques can actually bring results within a short period of time.

Off-Page Optimization SEO services:

Increasing link exchange/link building/ link popularity: You can exchange your website links with another website and thus gain mileage without spending money. You can even display your link on various article directories
Using keyword rich anchor text
Submission to article directory: This is a cost free method of gaining mileage or promoting your website. There are hundreds of article directories available today for submission purposes. Most of them won't charge you anything but there are a few who would charge you a membership fee. You can do this yourself but a well optimized article will increase your relevancy thus its effectiveness.

SEO services or SEO techniques are based on certain common practices and these include:

Well researched keywords: SEO services are actually aimed at getting your site a higher rank in all search engines. To get the higher ranking, your website content needs to be keyword rich and hence you need to select the right keywords. This research for the right keywords or keyword phrase is an integral part of the entire search engine optimization process. The keyword phrase research is a process of selecting those keyword phrases, which are optimized and will help visitors to find your website. The important thing is to follow the right approach to find these keywords. If you are selling camping tents, then your keyword needs to be associated with the product and the activity for which it is used.

Heading of the web page: The heading is the most important part of any web page as it always catches the eye due to its positioning. Hence, you can always use catchy copy or tag lines to draw attention or create curiosity. Hence to create a higher visibility, you can use a primary keyword in the heading. There are two types of keywords: primary and secondary. Let's take an example: If you are offering web design, then your primary keyword will be web site design, graphic design, banner design etc. The search engines always give higher priority to the primary keyword or the keyword used in the heading. One more thing to remember is the length of text in single page. The ideal word limit is 500 because this helps to understand the keyword relevance. Not all the search engines will read through the entire page hence, try to keep the primary keywords in the beginning.

Meta tags: Meta tags, one of the SEO services, can't really be seen like the text. It is normally embedded in the code or the html. Meta tags help in letting the search engine crawler's index your website in an accurate manner. There are different types of Meta tags like the title tags, Meta description tags, Meta keyword tags and body tags.
What to avoid from a SEO company: Make sure that the SEO firm you hire does not practice black hat techniques that can get your site banned completely from the search engine... why would they do that? To get you the unrealistic goals they set and once they have "fulfilled" their end of the contract they leave you hanging with a banned site.

Moe Tamani is a senior SEO-SEM specialist with Dallas based SEO 1 Services company: www.seo-1-marketing-services.com. He also conduct Search Engine Marketing seminars in the Dallas Fort Worth area for startup and small business.

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A Step By Step Guide To Effective Online Article Marketing

Online article marketing can effectively improve organic search results in a number of ways:

Improve visibility for your target keyword phrasesObtain traffic for additional (long tail) keyword searchesAssist in building awareness and reputationIncrease targeted traffic from other quality related websitesHelps attract more incoming links to your siteHelps make your website more unique and useful

Google’s Panda update showed once again, that it’s important to have high quality, unique content. We recently evaluated a large ecommerce website that was stung by the Panda update. They have a few issues that have probably hurt them, but one of the areas of concern included many articles they had written and placed on various websites, many of which had been devalued in Panda.

In this article, I’ll cover the steps we take with article marketing. These steps have been developed from years of examining what competitors of our clients have done to become the ranking and traffic leaders in their industries. Effective article marketing is a key strategy for many of them.

Let’s dispel a misconception right now. Submitting articles to article submission sites, especially low quality articles written primarily for search results, does little for you.

We examined the results of the work done for one of our clients, for example, by their prior SEO who was writing low quality articles and submitting them to article submission sites like ehow.com with links to their site. These articles where doing almost nothing for them (and this was prior to Panda). Checking their analytics, we saw that no traffic ever came from these article submission sites, ever! It’s very unlikely that these articles helped their search engine rankings at all.

Most article submission sites do not pass much, if any “link juice” (or PageRank or whatever you want to call it) to the sites the articles link to. We found none of these articles in any of the tools we use to identify strong links, those that may be helping improve search positions. Finally, none of the articles were ever picked up and run by any other site (no surprise as they’re not very good or useful articles).

Having your Web marketing company produce low quality articles is of little value to anybody (other than the marketing company that gets paid to write the articles).

Effective article marketing is about writing quality articles that are useful or interesting to your market, using some on your own website and getting some published on other related websites.

Here are our goals for online article marketing for our clients:

Improving Organic Search Results (Getting found for more keyword searches and helping to increase rankings).Help Attract Incoming Links To The Site.Building Awareness And Often Reputation Building.Increasing Targeted Traffic From Related Sites.To Help Make A Web Site More Unique And Useful (e.g. Help educate your readers, help them decide what products/services to buy, etc.).

Later, we’ll outline how to market articles to related websites but if you aren’t writing quality articles now, then get started by writing articles to use on your own website. You need some momentum and a critical mass of example articles before you can market articles to others.

Write articles that will be helpful to your website visitors and place summaries of the articles around your website where your site visitors will see them when they are interested in the topic. Don’t just put them in a blog or section of the site where most of your website visitors may never see them.

Crutchfield, the electronics reseller, for example, does an excellent job using articles on their website. Helpful articles (and more and more videos) are suggested as visitors examine product pages or browse product categories.

Browse to the Home Theater categories page, for example, and you’ll see articles and videos suggested such as those in the screen shot below.

Helpful Articles and Videos Suggested While Shopping

You want to make it easy for your article readers to get back to the location on your website they were looking at when they clicked to read the article.

For this reason, it’s best to host the articles on your website surrounded by the same or a very similar page template (banner, navigation sections etc) as that on the webpage they were looking at when they clicked through to the article.

It’s ok to host the articles in your blog, but it’s ideal if the blog has the same or similar page template too. We suggest that for most marketers your blog be a part of your main website, not a separate blog web site (See “Where to put your blog for best search engine results“). Put any articles that you do not use on your main website in your blog.

Include links in your articles to products and services

Add links within the article or at the end of the article (or both) to get people who read the article to click through the main website, ideally to product or service category or item pages related to the article. As you progress with article marketing and get more and more people linking or sharing your articles, these links will help pass additional PageRank to your product and service pages helping them to rank better.

Add social sharing buttons and announce your articles

Add social sharing buttons (such as Facebook, Twitter, etc) to your articles. Announce each of your useful articles through your social networks and other communication vehicles (like e-newsletters, etc) that you use. If they are truly useful articles some people will share them or link to them, which will help improve rankings and get more people to read them and learn what you have to offer.

Placing articles on your website helps entice visitors to read them why they are looking at related topics they are interested in. Useful articles help convey your expertise and make your webpages more unique (more important than ever after Panda).

In addition, these articles add content to the site that search engines should index and they’ll likely be found in searches. Finally, as you progress with article and social marketing, you’ll likely attract more and more incoming links to your articles from related websites bringing more targeted traffic and helping to increase rankings.

You should never be at a loss for ideas for useful articles. Here are some tips to come up with compelling content.

Keyword research

Use your favorite keyword research tool to search on your important product or service keywords and see what related information people are searching for. You can write articles that address some of these searches.

For example, if your site is all about luggage and you see a number of people searching on phrases such as “carryon luggage regulations”, “carryon luggage sizes” etc you might write an article about carryon luggage regulations and sizes and include links to relevant pages on your site.

In this manner not only will you be helping to make your site more useful to your visitors, these articles will probably be returned in search results for people searching on phrases such as “carryon luggage regulations” who may read your article and learn about what you have to offer.

FAQ’s

What questions are you often asked about your products or services? Think about writing articles that answer some of those questions.

Search for articles ideas

You’ll usually find many articles by searching on your primary topic, product or service keywords and appending “articles” or “blogs” to the query such as “travel articles” or “travel blogs”. Or, search on the keywords within some of the article submission sites (search on “articles” and you’ll find tons of submission sites) . Scan through the article headlines for ideas (Ideas = inspiration. Not plagiarism.)

Can’t write or don’t have the time to write articles? Here are some ways to get articles written.

Empower your people

Perhaps some of the people who sell or market your products would just love to write articles. See the Crutchfield site mentioned above. Most of those articles and videos were developed by their product marketing folks.

Ask your customers

Perhaps some of your customers can write articles such as case stories like “how we use xx” type of articles.

Hire writers

Ideally, most of your articles should be original, but you could hire writers who specialize in your topics to produce useful articles. There are networks of writers who specialize in many topics. You can find some of them while you are searching for article ideas (See the section above).

As you look for article ideas, search on the names of the authors. Many times you’ll discover the author is a freelance writer who specializes in a couple of fields. Contact them about writing for you. It’s best to be honest and include the writer’s name as the author.

Use ghost writers?

This is an ethical question that I’m on the fence about and have never used myself or for any client. I believe it may be ok to use a ghost writer (such as a freelance writer who specializes in your field/topic) if you work closely with them, outline your initial thoughts, let them do research for you if needed, oversee the development of the article, work with them to revise the article, and make sure the article is accurate and reflects your knowledge and opinions.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: 100% Organic - Search Engine Optimization Tips | Beginner | How To | How To: SEO

View the original article here

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Affiliate Marketing Info

Getting good info on responsible affiliate marketing is hard

Unlike many of the other aspects of internet marketing, affiliate marketing is a much more closed environment. This means that affiliates who receive a great idea are much less likely to share that idea. This doesn’t mean they are bad, it just means that their minds are on making money and only making money.

In all honesty, this mindset is a fabulous one to have to make money, but it is on a different fork of the road than most SEO/SEM type things, in the sharing department.

When an affiliate marketer hears a good idea, their mind set is usually… “that might work for me, I am gonna try it” their mindset is not… “oh. What a valuable idea, I should share that.”

In other words, you are not likely to get a buttload of links for even the most valuable post about affiliate marketing techniques. You may, however find yourself with something even better.

Rabid fans.

I really like that Outspokenmedia covers affiliate conferences, I like even more that they cover the right ones.

I know all the people involved in such conferences and I know which ones have value and which do not.

If we all used the Rand Fishkin mathmatics of what is worth writing about (possibility of getting links plus possibility of getting more links = worth of content) then alot of valuable stuff would not get covered.

Long story short, Outspokenmedia seems to do a great job accross the board of making posts that are useful and linkworthy, and I think it is great they cover affiliate marketing conferences.  Like the recent several posts they did on Affiliate Summit which is a good conference run by people I know and trust.

If you are trying to make money off the web, I would check out their coverage on their blog. They go there, they cover the sessions, and do a great job.

The point here I am trying to make isn’t just that Outspokenmedia did some great blog posts, it is actually more about the usefulness and wisdom of writing about items of interest without regard to their possibility or probability of getting links. We all need to get links, but every post need not be link bait. Posts should help and pleasure and inform your readers.

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