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Search Engines & Directories: Keywords 101
Advertising: Making Keyword Buys a Part of Your Advertising Campaign
Linking: The Link to More Traffic
News Bytes
Affiliate Programs
The Internet Abroad
Ad Banner Pricing
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KEYWORDS 101
By Larry Gormley
What do a Fortune 500 and a small five-person business have in
common? They
both want to show up in the top ten results when someone does a
search in
one of the major search engines.
Along the same lines, a small marketing firm recently sent me the
following
message. "About two weeks ago I submitted our site with its
home page
rewritten to make use of meta tags. .. we still are not able to
locate our
site by searching using: public relations, marketing, etc.,
as keywords."
A few months ago a large, well-known company approached us. They
wanted to
show up in the top three results when people searched for the
keywords
"movies" and "employment".
Clearly, the odds of showing up in the top-ten using generic
keyword
searches are very low. Searching AltaVista using the keyword
"marketing"
results in over 730,000 matches; the keyword "public
relations" results in
over 275,000 matches; "employment" over 560,000.
Yes, there are tricks you can use to try to get higher placement
but the
tricks are search-engine specific, don't always work, require
constant
attention, and are well-known to the point that they are becoming
meaningless. Most firms do not have the time or the resources to
dedicate
to trying to win this game.
Instead of surfing against the tidal wide, ride the wave with the
following
approaches - you'll have more success and a lot less angst.
1. Carefully evaluate the selection of your keywords. Are they
too generic?
Do searches on the various search engines using the keywords. How
many
results are returned? Do not optimize your site around generic
keywords.
2. Approach the selection of your keywords from the searcher's
perspective.
If someone is looking for a public relations firm they may start
off using
the keywords "public relations" but they will quickly
start refining their
searches using other terms like specialty, location, or even
client base.
Optimize your site around linked, focused keywords.
3. What keywords do your target audiences use? Ask your current
customers
how they would search for your site.
4. Investigate the sites that show up first during your keyword
searches.
Can you get a reciprocal link on any of these sites? Are
there content
sites that contain links to other sites? Do a lot of surfing.
5. Check out your competition. Check out their Web site titles,
the content
on their pages, their Meta tags. Try to find your competitors
sites via the
keywords. Use the information to help optimize your site but
don't use your
competitors name in your "search content".
6. If you're really set on a generic keyword then consider
purchasing
keyword ad banners on one or more search engines. It might appear
to be
expensive but you're guaranteed of showing up on the top, you can
measure
the results accurately and you can experiment easily.
7. Finally, make sure you integrate your keywords in the body
text, Title
tag and Meta tags of your main page.
Larry Gormley is co-founder and Vice President of Product
Development at
Submit It!.
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MAKING KEYWORD BUYS A PART OF YOUR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN
By John Schick
Keyword advertising is one approach to purchasing ad banner space
on the
search engines. When certain keywords are used, ad banners
appear. The
following are ways to identify which keywords and search engines
to target:
1. Analyze The Top 200 Keywords
Yahoo receives over 1 million visitors daily, and the top
200 keywords
produce anywhere from 35,000 to 400,000 hits per month. Eyescream
offers
lists of the top 200 keywords from Yahoo
(http://www.eyescream.com/yahootop200.html)
and Dogpile
(http://www.eyescream.com/dogpiletop200.htm).
Many search engines will
tell you how many hits they get on lesser words if you are a
potential
advertiser. You'll pay around $40-$60 CPM (cost per
thousand impressions)
for your keyword ads on most search engines. But you can
pay as little as
$25-$30 CPM by buying keywords on less popular search engines.
2. Check Your Referring URL
Review your referring URL log for traffic from the search engines
and study
what keywords were used to find your site. If you aren't using a
referring
URL log, ask your ISP to set one up. The following is a
single line which
shows the numerical IP address and name IP address of who
visited, what
search engine they used to find the site and what keyword phrase
was
searched, among other useful info.
'206.104.199.45','pm19-12.magicnet.net','http://altavista.digital.com/cgi-bi
n/query?pg=q&what=web&kl=XX&fmt=.&q=%22search+engine+rankings%22','Mozilla/4
.01 [en] (Win95; I)','869173387'<BR>
3. Monitor your Competition
Perform keyword searches on relevant words and phrases to study
which
competitors may be running keyword ads.
4. Monitor Search Engine Rankings
Save yourself considerable time and effort by using a monitoring
service
such as PositionAgent (http://www.positionagent.com),
to monitor where your
web site ranks on the top 10 search engines for your important
keywords.
The free version of PositionAgent will report these results
instantly, and
the commercial version will enable you to track them over time,
as well as
those of your competition.
5. The More Keywords the Better
Contact the search engines and request rate cards. Don't
rely on a single
keyword as they rarely offer enough traffic to justify the rates,
and many
search engines won't allow you to buy the entire inventory of
popular
keywords. The following link summarizes rate information
from the leading
search engines: AdResource Search Engine Rate Guide
(http://www.adresource.com/sirate2.htm)
6. Select engines that offer keyword clusters and keyword phrases
Keyword clusters, offered by some search engines such as
AltaVista for
$30-$50 CPM, are a group of 25 to 75+ words that cluster around a
given
topic. You pay less for the larger keyword clusters. For example,
(equity,
equities, retirement, savings, investments, bonds, stocks,
return,
planning, options) would be a cluster for the topic
"investment". This
tends to dilute the targeting if your important keyword is
"stocks", but
search behavior predicts that potential customers for
"stocks" will search
a wide range of words and phrases.
7. Conduct Research on the Search Engines
Viaweb Inc. (http://www.viaweb.com/vw/search.html)
the leading supplier of
online store software, released the first study of search engine
keywords
used by online shoppers. They studied the amount of money spent
by online
shoppers coming from different search engines. Per capita
spending varied
surprisingly between search engines, suggesting that the same
keyword
advertising on different search engines will produce widely
varied results
among online shoppers.
Conclusion
Have we complicated what should be a simple task? Consumer
behavior is
complicated and web advertising is too important and costly to be
handled
by guesswork. Following these steps will assist you in finding
out whether
keyword buys are right for you.
John Schick developed the ideas for PositionAgent, the Internet's
first
service for monitoring Web site rankings in the search engines.
His Web
site can be found at http://www.adresource.com.
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THE LINK TO MORE TRAFFIC
By Tom Taulli
How is it possible for a site to be accessed millions of times
each month,
yet not spend a dime on advertising? Simply put:
reciprocal links to
other sites. One company with this distinction is BigCharts
(www.bigcharts.com), which
provides extensive charting for over 27,000
stocks, mutual funds and indexes. The company has been able
to arrange
reciprocal links with such heavy traffic hubs as Schwab, Hoovers,
DoubleClick, Zacks Investment Research, Datek Securities, Quick
& Reilly
and Morningstar.
I had the opportunity to talk with Phil Hotchkiss, who is the CEO
and
founder of BigCharts. Despite having only ten employees,
BigCharts has
mastered the art of reciprocal links. According to
Hotchkiss, you must be
extremely persistent. For example, when establishing a
reciprocal link
with Schwab, Hotchkiss maintained constant contact. If Schwab had
a
question, Hotchkiss was quick to respond. Also, says Hotckiss,
you must
demonstrate that you are reliable and can handle lots of traffic.
These
factors are very important for major link partners. Finally,
Hotckiss
believes that you should link to those sites that offer synergy
rather than
establishing links for the sake of linking.
The Edgar-Online site (www.edgar-online)
is another example of a site which
has successfully pursued link arrangements. This site has
become the
premier source of online filings for the Securities and Exchange
Commission. Edgar-Online has reciprocal links with such
sites as Yahoo!,
Pointcast, MSNBC, USA Today, Quote.com, and CNET SNAP!. Jay
Sears, the VP
of Marketing & Business Development, says that it is very
effective to have
a subset of data you can provide to other sites for free.
"The data
should, first, be valuable content to the partner site and
second, entice
consumers to 'click-over' to your main site." He says that
time is of the
essence. You want to get a link before your competitors
do. If not, it
becomes very difficult to get a reciprocal link. Sears also
believes that
you must do lots of research. For example, he uses his own
service to
search for public documents on the partners he wants to link
with. "While
talking with Infoseek," says Sears, "I knew how much
they had to pay to get
a link on Netscape."
Another example is Access Financial (www.accessfin.com) a recently
launched
site in the process of finding linking partners. So far, the
company is
dealing with BigCharts, NewsAlert, and Thomson's Investor
Network. Access
Financial requests a custom page located on the partner's server
with a
graphical link back to the Access Financial Web site. The
Access Financial
Web site will have a reciprocal link back to the partner's site.
The most important advice for attaining links is "Don't be
afraid to talk
to the big boys. You never know until you try."
Tom Taulli is the publisher of the Taulli Report
(http://www.taullireport.com),
a personal finance newsletter distributed by
e-mail. He is also the author of "Create An Online
Store...Get Customers
Thru' The Door," which you can purchase from the Taulli
Report site.
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AFFILIATE PROGRAMS
STT editor
Affiliate programs, also known as revenue sharing or referral
programs are
set up between online stores and sites that link to them.
When a user
clicks through to the online store from a referral link and makes
a
purchase at the site's online store, the referring site gets
credit in the
form of cash or merchandise.
Online stores see this channel as a way to extend their reach and
increase
traffic while referring sites receive additional income.
Enabling this
trend is software from vendors such as Viaweb, whose recent 4.0
release
allows merchants to manage revenue sharing links.
For the full articles, see:
http://www.webweek.com/1997/11/17/news/19971117-affilate.html
http://www1.viaweb.com/vw/re14.html
THE INTERNET ABROAD
STT editor
Standard industry analysis reveals that 30 to 40 percent of all
retail
commerce done online is shipped from the US to points
outside. This
corresponds with the growth in online users from abroad.
For example, ten
percent of citizens of the United Kingdom and Germany are
currently online.
Suzan Nolan of Bluesky International Marketing recommends
localizing your
site to make it more friendly to non-U.S. users. For
example you could
provide an international (not an 800) number or register your
site with
regional search engines and directories.
Keep track of growing internet use abroad and tailor your ads and
site to
foreign customers.
For the full articles:
http://www.clickz.com/archives/index.html
(December 1, 1997)
http://www.clickz.com/archives/index.html
(October 21, 1997)
AD BANNER PRICING
STT editor
Ad pricing is always a moving target. Chris Bertchie,
Advertising Director
for Town Hall, admits that there is no one exact method for
determining
advertising rates. Problems include the inability to
estimate page view
duplication and determining which rate model is
appropriate. In her
article, she sums up various rate models and the associated costs
including
CPM, results-oriented pricing, transactional pricing, per-lead
programs and
clickthrough pricing.
For the full article, see:
http://www.clickz.com/archives/112597.html
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