Paid Search Steps

Introduction to PPC

This module concentrates on techniques to optimize your profit from search PPC and contextual-based inventory. By the end, you will be able to:

• Prioritize within and across media types to ensure maximum return for your campaigns.
• Identify particular areas of interest and techniques.
• Compare and contrast paid search algorithms from Google Adwords and Microsoft adCenter.
• Review the type of metrics that will help you manage and optimize your campaign.
• Optimize your quality score through a knowledge of the factors that go into Google's Quality Score and Ad Rank.
• Appreciate the usefulness of campaign enhancements.
• Increase ROI with keyword targeted media.
• Identify the best strategies for optimizing retargeting opportunities available in addition to standard PPC via Google AdWords and Microsoft Advertising adCenter.

PPC Basics

Every day millions of people tell Google and other search engines exactly what they want. In this foundation module, we review the methodologies search engine advertisers can use to take full advantage of this behavior. By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• Develop an effective and optimized PPC strategy.
• Undertake competitor research to learn from competitors' success and avoid their mistakes utilizing either free or paid tools.
• Build your own keyword list to optimize the success of your campaign goals and objectives.
• Write effective advertising copy.

PPC Optimization

By the end of this module, you will understand:

• How to maximize the effectiveness of PPC search and contextual campaigns using a variety of means, including data analysis and improving upon current campaigns.
• The PPC providers available to deliver contextual traffic, including Google and Microsoft adCenter, and the best ways to set budget caps.
• How to run reports to analyze your keywords and phrases, and how to add negatives to those that aren't relevant and exact matches to those that are performing well.
• How to optimize content networks and your quality score for ad rank using Google, and how you can check your ad's status and quality score using the Bid Simulator.
• How to use strategic bidding based on time of day and day of the week using API-based tools or Google's GUI (graphical user interface) tool.
• The value that each click or impression adds to your top line, or bottom line, and how to figure out what will deliver the biggest campaign improvement.

AdWords Editor

By the end of this module, you will know:

• How the AdWords Editor interface works and how to adjust the settings and functions to customize the views of your campaigns.
• The usefulness of the AdWords Editor features and functions, including:.
• Offline capacity
• Advanced search functionality
• Negative keyword management
• Geo-cloning
• The benefits of geo-targeting from conversion rate differences to higher spenders and life-time value (LTV).
• How to copy/clone portions of a campaign.
• How to back up your campaign using the AdWords Editor snapshots.

Implementing Your PPC Strategy

By the end of this module, you will recognize:

• What you can do to structure your campaign and how to be successful by using the optional campaign settings, including the daily budget and geo-targeting.
• The different Google Match types and the right mix to use within your campaign.
• How to find the negative match keywords as you gain more coverage for your campaign.
• The opportunities available in the AdWords extensions in the search engine results page, such as PPC Sitelinks, Products Ads, and Plus box ads.
• That session-based ads are hard to control in Google if you are running a broad match search and how you might go about identifying these, and how big a problem or opportunity this is for you.

Content Networks

By the end of this module, you will appreciate:

• When contextual based advertising is appropriate for your campaign.
• How to set up Google Display Network.
• Differences between searchers and surfers.
• How to structure a contextual campaign and how to find placements.
• How to use the Google Ad Planner.
• Negative placements and placement exclusions.
• Retargeting and how to use cookies.
• How to use display ads and video.
• Optimization within the display network, including dayparting, geo-targeting, frequency capping, and how to use the other networks.

Landing Page Design

By the end of this module, you will understand:

• Why your landing page strategy should start at the search engine results page, and how to optimize your campaign for a good quality score.
• Why a fast load time matters and how to check yours.
• How emotional triggers can help you market your business.
• That the best strategy for landing page leverage is one where you test, optimize, and improve, starting from the highest opportunity areas such as finding the high keyword search impression volume using your search engine's toolset.
• What changes you should make once you have identified your landing page, and how to test any changes against the existing content.
• How unconventional landing pages can be useful for your ads, such as a distribution partner page and Google place pages.
• The list of tactical changes you can make to your landing page design, from trust marks on relevant pages, to proactive call-to-action copy and shorter or multi-step forms.

Beyond the SERP

By the end of this course, you will know:

• That with search and pay-per-click marketing, there are text and display advertising opportunities beyond the search engine results page (SERP). Search retargeting, Facebook, LinkedIn, and behavioral networks are covered in detail.
• About time-shifted search through retargeting your customers and site visitors (via cookies or through a third-party provider), and the factors you should consider to make retargeting successful for your business.
• How the Facebook self-serve advertising platform works and how to use the Ad Targeting tools to reach a specific audience using the site's user information.
• How LinkedIn's ad platform works and how it is profile driven rather than keyword based. This works well with one of LinkedIn's key objectives as a job hunting tool, since active users tend to keep their profiles very up to date, which will be beneficial when targeting your ads.
• That each click or impression adds to your top or bottom line, and how to prioritize across all your media types

Details: http://www.clickzacademy.com/elearning/paid-search-strategies.php

Link Building for New Website Or Business Owners

Friends & Family Members

When beginning a link building campaign, one very natural way of obtaining links is from friends and family members. I just opened up our family blog and counted all of the friends and family who we have added in our blogroll. The grand total… 41. How hard is it to simply call up (recommended – it’s more personal) or email your family and friends who have blogs or other sites, and ask them for a link to your new website? Not hard at all! In fact, because they are your friends or family members, they will probably do it without hesitation. You can do the same thing with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.

Add A Blog To Your Domain

Google loves blogs! Google loves fresh content! Google loves internal links! Internal links from other pages of your website are a guaranteed way to help you increase your rankings in the search engines. Adding a blog to your domain is a great way for you to easily add new content to your website on a regular basis. In most cases, adding a blog to your main domain is rather simple and can be done in as little as three clicks of your mouse. Web hosting companies like myhosting.com, Hostmonster, & Bluehost offer one click installations of blog platforms like WordPress or b2evolution.

Adding a blog, posting to it at least once daily, and linking back to your home page and other important pages of your website with keyword anchor text is a great way to gain a lot of internal links. When blogging, you should also link out to other websites that interest you and websites that are in similar industries. You might also consider adding images, videos, polls, etc. Mix things up! Make it look natural! Most important, have fun!

Local Organizations

Just about every city in the country has a local chamber of commerce; mine would be the Lehi Area Chamber of Commerce. Joining a chamber of commerce will not only get you a very good link back to your website, but also provides networking opportunities with other local businesses. Most times, depending on your business, you can generate new leads rather easily by getting to know other individuals and businesses in your area.

Local News

Developing relationships with local newspaper writers and always making yourself available for comments on news stories that involve your industry is a great way to build awareness about your company and get links back to your website (if the newspaper is published online).

Help A Non Profit Organization

You would be surprised how many non-profit organizations are operating in your city and your state. Every one of us has been given talents and certain things that we are good at. I guarantee that there is a non-profit organization that could use your help, whether it is with designing their website or painting the conference room of their new office building. If you offer of yourself and your services freely, you can most likely ask for, and get a link to your website from theirs.

Submit Your Site To Local & Industry Specific Online Business Directories

Anyone studying SEO can usually find a blog post about submitting your website to directories on the Internet. Yes, this is a valuable link building tactic, but before you go crazy and start submitting to thousands of directories, seek out local directories and directories that are specific to your business. Submit to these first and take your time filling out all of the information that they ask for. These will be some of your most valuable links since they are so relevant to your website and business.

Social Bookmarking

You have probably heard the term social bookmarking. You have probably heard that social bookmarking is a great way to build links. Well, it is and it isn’t… You can waste a lot of time social bookmarking if you are submitting to the wrong sites. I limit my social bookmarking to Mixx, Propeller and sometimes Kirtsy. The trick to social bookmarking is to not only bookmark your website, your blog posts, and other things related to your website, but bookmarking lots of different things that interest you. This will make your bookmarking profiles look much more natural to both viewers and the search engines.

Write An Article And Submit To Article Directories

Writing articles and submitting them to sites like Ezine Articles, Article City, and Go Articles, also known as article marketing, is a great way to get links back to your website. Take time to write a very detailed article about your industry and submit it to a few article directories like the ones I listed above. You will get links back to your website by properly using the author resource or bio box at the end of the article. You should tell a little about yourself and your company, while adding keyword rich anchor text links pointing back to your website.

Write And Submit A Press Release

Writing press releases and submitting them to places like PR Web or Web Wire is a great way to generate interest and buzz about your business and also to get links back to your website. This method of link building is a little more difficult than other links that you can get for your website. Writing a press release takes skill… a skill, which the average person, like me, does not have. Press releases have certain requirements that must be met, a certain format that must be followed, and in most cases, need to be super interesting. Not having any of these elements can almost guarantee that your press release will either be outright rejected or not distributed to other news related websites.

Build A Hub Page Or Squidoo Lens

Building a Hub Page or Squidoo Lens is a fun way to get links back to your website. To date, I have built 73 Hubs and 25 Lenses for my own personal websites and hundreds for clients that I have managed. The most effective Hub Pages and Squidoo Lenses are those that have at least 450 words of text about a certain topic or subject, videos, pictures, polls, and other gadgets that are easy to add. You want to make the page as interactive as possible so it provides value for anyone who happens to read it. You are allowed two links to other websites from your Hubs and a handful of links (be conservative, don’t spam) from your Lenses.

Building links isn’t pretty. But, in order to rank well in the search engines, it is absolutely necessary. These are ten excellent ways for new companies or new website owners to start building links to their websites. There are many others and I encourage any of our readers to add to this list by commenting on this post.

Read more: Details

About Backlinks

What are Backlinks?

A back link is an inward link to your site that may or may not be reciprocated with an outward link back. If page A links to page B then a back link would be a link which goes from page B back to page A.

A backlink is just a link back to your site. In fact, if people called them "link backs" or just "links", we'd probably have a better idea of what is being discussed. A link just means that a site is embedding the url (address) into one of its pages, so that readers can click through from that site to yours.

Example: Site A links to Site B. We'd call that Site B having a backlink from Site A.

Why Backlinks Are Important

Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines like Google, give more credit to websites that have a large number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query.

Therefore, when search engines calculate the relevance of a site to a keyword, they not only consider the number of backlinks to that site but also their quality. In order to determine the quality, a search engine considers the content of the sites. When backlinks to your site come from other sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these backlinks are considered more relevant to your site. If backlinks are found on sites with unrelated content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of backlinks, the greater their quality.

For example, if a webmaster has a website about how to rescue orphaned dogs, and received a backlink from another website about dogs, then that would be more relevant in a search engine's assessment than say a link from a site about car racing. Therefore, higher the relevance of the site linking back to your website, the better the quality of the backlink.

Search engines want websites to have a level playing field, and look for natural links built slowly over time. While it is fairly easy to modify your webpages to make them more SEO friendly it is a lot harder for you to influence other websites and get them to link to your website. This is the reason search engines regard backlinks as a very important factor. Further, search engine's criteria for quality backlinks has gotten even tougher, thanks to unscrupulous webmasters trying to achieve these backlinks by deceptive or sneaky techniques, such as hidden links, or automatically generated pages whose sole purpose is to provide backlinks to websites. These pages are called link farms, and they are not only disregarded by search engines, but linking to a link farm could get your site banned entirely. 

Anchor Text

When a link incorporates a keyword into the text of the hyperlink, we call this anchor text. A link's anchor text may be one of the most powerful resources a webmaster has. Backlinks from multiple websites with the anchor text "orphaned dogs" would help your website rank higher for the keyword "orphaned dogs". Using your keyword is a superior way to utilize a hyperlink as against having links with words like "click here" which do not relate to your website. The 'Backlink Anchor Text Analysis Tool' is a tool which will assist you find your backlinks and the text which is being used to link to your website. If you find that your site is being linked to from another website, but the anchor text is not being utilized properly, you should request that the website change the anchor text to something which incorporates relevant keywords. This will also help boost your rankings.

List of Search Engine

 

Useful note of off page link building to improve in SEO

What Is Link Building?

Link Building is the process of creating and/or facilitating inbound links to a given website. In SEO-speak, link building can be described as building relevant links to a website in an effort to rank that site for specific terms while also building trust, value and equity to that website.

Search engines utilize various information about inbound links to your website in order to make certain assumptions about your website - what your website is about and how much to trust it. Some of the things they look at:

• To a search engine, the more people that link to a page, the more noteworthy it must be. Therefore, more links equal more trust over time.
• It's not enough just to get a high volume of links to your website, you're going to need links from highly reputable sources (i.e. high PageRank, etc) if you want to solidify your trust within the search engines.
• Think about it. If your website has absolutely no text, titles, or any other information, how will a search engine be able to make any assumptions as to what your website is about? Anchor text. They keywords that people use to link to your website will help search engines understand your site's themes and can be a valuable way to establish high rankings for certain phrases.

So What Is Google PageRank

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

In other words, a PageRank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it ("incoming links"). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page.

Building Links Naturally

A few types of natural links:

• One-Way Links - Simple enough. These are links from Site A back to Site B. These are far more valuable from an SEO perspective. The way search engines see it, if someone links to you without receiving anything in return, then the web page or content MUST be of some value.
• Reciprocal Links - This is when website A and website B agree to link to each other. Many natural links occur this way, and it can be mutually beneficial to both parties when the websites are related in some way (same topic, etc).

A few short tips for building natural links:

·         Be Link-worthy. Develop content that people like, develop content that people trust, make it easy to link to. Give people a reason to "buzz" around your website/brand, and give them a reason to link to you. I believe this is called "link-baiting".

·         Ask for them. You'd be surprised how many people will link to you if you simply ask them to, but don't be an ass about it!

·         Do Link Exchanges. Reciprocal links can be good ways to get high-quality backlinks to your website. Don't discount the value of a good old link exchange. However, keep in mind that it is better if you're linking to websites that are similar in topic, and that are also of high-authority.

·         Comment on blogs and in forums. Although some blogs still utilize "nofollow" tags on outbound comment links, it is not a trend that I foresee continuing as long as comment spam protection keeps improving. Therefore, I recommend leaving high-quality insightful comments on other blogs, which will create a backlink and could entice blog owners to link back to your site in the future. Also, you have a far better chance of acquiring a back link if you've contributed something to someone else's blog first.

·         Link Out. Don't be afraid to link out, and don't hoard links. If linking out helps your website's visitors, then search engines will trust you more. In addition, linking out to somebody may increase the likelihood that they'll link back to you.

·         Write a Guest Post. Writing guest posts can be a great way to build quality backlinks, especially if you're guest posting on a popular blog. It's a really great way to gain some valuable exposure and backlink opportunities.

Website Submission

Submitting your website to various niche, local, and general directories can be a great way to accumulate high-quality backlinks, and some great sources for referral traffic. In addition, taking advantage of several content syndication services can also serve to help build additional high-quality backlinks.

General Directories

These directories (again) can serve as another group high-quality backlinks ("vote") that will create more trust for your website over time. I recommend have a nice presence in these more general directories if possible.

• DMOZ. One the the web's oldest human-edited directories.
• Craigslist. Not a directory, but you can post information and links which can lead to lots of traffic.
• IPL2. Another very old and respected general directory.
• Rate It All. Social ratings and review directory for consumers.
• JoeAnt. Well respected general directory.
• The Good Web Guide. A UK consumer review directory.

Niche Directories

Niche directories are valuable as they may be more closely related to your site's theme, while still maintaining the trust of a high-authority website (if you pick them right). Some examples of niche directories include:

• Dining Guide. A directory specific to restaurants.
• Hotel Guide. A directory specific to Hotels.
• Dexigner. A directory for designers.

For Blogs
If you have a blog, there are some additional directories and options that may be open to you from a link building perspective. Here are a few that I've found useful:

• AllTop. Aggregator of blogs from many different sources; covers a wide variety of topics.
• Blog Catalog. A high-quality blog directory.
• MakeZine. Aggregator of technology-related blogs.
• BlogTopList. Another directory specific to blogs.
• Today. User-generated blog directory.
• Technorati. One of the most highly-trusted blog directory.

Content Syndication & Hubs

If you have a blog with lots of articles or Whitepapers or PDF's that aren't online, content syndication and/or hubs may be a good way to build high-quality backlinks to your website. Here are some common places where people can submit their articles or unpublished content to acquire backlinks:

• Digg. User submitted content from around the web.

• Ezine Articles. Article submission and archival.

• Mixx. Popular aggregator of user-submitted content.

• Reddit. Another aggregator of user-submitted content.

• Sphinn. Aggregator of content related to the technology industry.

• Squidoo. Create lense hubs to publish content.

• Hubpages. Another hub in which to publish content.

Social Media as a Link Building Tool

Many people claim that social media links hold no value because they are usually accompanied by the "nofollow" link attribute. While this may be true, certain aspecs of social media can bring a TON of value to your link building campaign.

• Social Media Profiles. Having profiles on websites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn can be among some of the most high-quality backlinks you'll be able to acquire. These websites are very trustworthy, therefore they are prime real estate for you to add a link back to your website.

• Buzz. In a nutshell, social media can create buzz around your brand, which in turn can make your brand go viral, which typically leads to backlinks. Simple enough.

• Recurring traffic and exposure. Just like all of the other sources, whether some of the links are "nofollow" or not, they are a good source of recurring traffic. If this recurring traffic based likes your content - then they're likely to link to it. More exposure usually equals more links, which is a good thing.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites offer another great chance to gain high-quality backlinks, and takes it a step further with the ability to generate buzz. This is similar to what can be seen within the social media world, which is often an effective way for backlinks to happen more naturally (but quickly).

Some popular social bookmarking websites include:

• Delicious. Simple but effective site for managing your bookmarks.

• StumbleUpon. Social bookmarking site in which users stumble through various websites.

Continue

Best SEO tips by product pages

 SEO aids of product pages can often be disregarded, with many just contribution basic product details and a brief description.

·         Product Page Title Label

The title label of the product page is something that's easy to get disordered about.  Do you put your site name first, then the product name?  Or do you even need your site name in the URL?

The best way to solve this is to think about what you're doing and how it will appear to searchers.  The page title is what will be shown as a link to your page on the search engines in the organic rankings.  So you should think about how you'd like your link to look.  You have two routes here.

Site.com - Widget A
Widget A - Site.com

·         Exclusive product descriptions Evade simply reproducing the manufacturer’s product description as several other sites will probably be using it already. It may be easier but will not help you move up the rankings as search engines will mark it down as duplicate content.

An exclusive product description should not only help your conversion rate, it should also allow you to attract more search traffic.

·         Use customer product reviews

Customer appraisals can not only help encourage shoppers to make purchases, they can also be very useful for SEO.

·         Use keywords in URLs Many online sellers, expressly those with large product ranges, use dynamic databases, which can produce some ugly, lengthy URLs which bear no relation to the product.

 
 Brand sure product pages are just a twosome of clicks away

This is good practice anyway as it will allow customers to find products more quickly, but it also makes it easier for search engine crawlers to access these pages.


  Enhance your images for SEO
With the overview of worldwide search, more and more images will be cracking up in the search results, so every image on your product pages should be improved.

Product Linking

Linking to other relevant products from within your descriptions can really boost your keyword relevance for that product.  For example, on the product page for "Widget A" you might want to mention that Widget A makes a great add on to Widget B while linking to Widget B. 

The HTML Header Tags

HTML Header tags are used on pretty much every website today, and are heavily used in standards based sites of recent years.  Most people know that the purpose of the Header tags is to define header with text, but not everyone knows of their significance with search engines, especially Google.  To search engines, the header (if used properly) should define what the page is about, and since there are up to 6 HTML header tags, you can describe the page pretty clearly to the search engine by simple using the header tags and they will in turn provide a boost in keyword relevance to the words wrapped in the header tags.

Image Alt Tags

Simple yet often overlooked, there isn't a better way to increase keyword relevance and density on your e-commerce product page while than taking advantage of image alt tags.  As if the SEO benefits weren’t enough, the purpose of image alt tags is to make your site more accessible.