It may seem daunting trying to figure out how to advertise online. After all, the Net is a big place. Fortunately, you have two things working for you: Web tracking statistics and dominating forces on the Web. First let’s look at Website tracking. By simply looking at the referring URL’s in any given time period, one can get a sense of which search engines are driving traffic to their site. It will probably fall out like this: Google #1, Yahoo! #2 and MSN #3. This is because these three search engines, for some time now, have been the dominating search engines across the globe. Thusly, it would make sense to optimize one’s Website for these search engines and also advertise with these search engines should the budget allow.
Now, I always advocate that my clients spend their time creating valuable content on their sites if they want to be truly successful in driving traffic from the search engines. But some sites are new, some have difficulty getting up there in the ranking even with good wordage and some sites just lend themselves better to online ads than they do search engine optimization. Therefore, I do recommend in these instances that one advertise with these three main search engines.
Now that we have determined which search engines to advertise on, the question arises: What keywords should I buy? This is where two very important tools come in: search engine keyword suggestion tools and once again, your Web tracking statistics. Just go on to each of these search engines and type in keyword suggestion tool. Inevitably, its own tool will be at the top of the results page. These tools work primarily like this: you type in a keyword or phrase, i.e. bicycle. Then the suggestion tool does its job and brings back many words to choose from, i.e. new bicycle, boys bicycle, huffy bicycle, ten speed bicycle, mountain bike, boys mountain bike, boys huffy mountain bike, new boys huffy mountain bike, etc. And each keyword or phrase has the estimated number of users that will view the page that the ad is on, the estimated number that will click on that ad and the estimated price one will have to pay per click to be #1 on the page.
Now that we have determined which search engines to advertise on, the question arises: What keywords should I buy? This is where two very important tools come in: search engine keyword suggestion tools and once again, your Web tracking statistics. Just go on to each of these search engines and type in keyword suggestion tool. Inevitably, its own tool will be at the top of the results page. These tools work primarily like this: you type in a keyword or phrase, i.e. bicycle. Then the suggestion tool does its job and brings back many words to choose from, i.e. new bicycle, boys bicycle, huffy bicycle, ten speed bicycle, mountain bike, boys mountain bike, boys huffy mountain bike, new boys huffy mountain bike, etc. And each keyword or phrase has the estimated number of users that will view the page that the ad is on, the estimated number that will click on that ad and the estimated price one will have to pay per click to be #1 on the page.
Now all one has to do is look at the results, compare that to their budget and begin Pay-Per-Click Advertising. The types of keywords you buy should be the types of keywords that your customers are searching on. How do you know this? Your Web tracking stats will tell you this. Each detailed visitor report contains the referrer (search engine in this case) and the keyword string they typed in order to get to your site. So after examining your Website stats, if you see that the majority of your visitors are typing in a brand name such as Huffy, it would probably behoove you to start with Huffy in the search engine’s keyword suggestion tool. If more of your visitors are typing in bike attributes such as ten speed, mountain bike or bike with baby seat, these are the types of words you would start out with when you get to the suggestion tools.
As a side note, make sure that you point your ads to the correct page on your site. No one wants to search Google for Huffy mountain bike to see your ad and be pointed to your homepage where they will have to search for Huffy mountain bike again. Send them directly to the Huffy mountain bike page of your site. This will make the user happy and therefore increase your likelihood of getting a sale.
As far as portals go, it really varies by industry which ones are the best to advertise with. Web portals are like Internet directories, or fancy yellow pages that direct their users to the most appropriate Websites based on their stated needs. Companies pay to be included in these portals because the portals have a higher advertising budget and because there is power in a collective movement. In other words, yeah you will be advertising along with your competition, but because of the shear volume of companies advertising here, the user will look here first.
Examples of B2B portals are ThomasNet.com, GlobalSpec.com and VertMarkets.com. There are many other portals for both B2B and B2C companies. Type in the phrase ‘web portals’ in a search engine and see who comes up. Do your research. Ask them for references, ask for their number of registered users, their number of unique visitors per month, find out what titles in companies they see the most activity with: i.e. engineers, operations managers, sales managers, etc. Make sure it’s the same titles you are trying to reach. Also ask if they have a Web tutorial or presentation. These can help make it very clear if the portal is worthy of your advertising dollar. And these presentations are often interactive, so you can ask questions as you go.
Copyright 2005-2009 | emarketingprofs | All Rights Reserved
Copyright 2005-2009 | emarketingprofs | All Rights Reserved
The blog for e-marketing and e-business professionals
Copyright | emarketingprofs | All Rights Reserved
Web Portals
Everyone has an Advertising budget. Some are big and some are small. Internet advertising basically consists of your Website, Pay-Per-Click, Banner Ads or other online ad, and Pay-For-Placement in Web Portals. As we know, Web portals are search engines that specialize in either B2B or B2C and contain lots of companies, in which many are in direct competition with one another. The key thought here is that a Web portal is like a popular highway exit. Most of us choose highway exits that are convenient and have lots of choices for food, gas and maybe lodging. Portals work the same way. People use them because of the shear number of similar advertisers. But what is a good portal for you?
Again, look through your Website tracking stats and see what keywords your visitors are typing in on the search engines. Type these same keywords in to the search engines. Whoever is coming up on top is obviously doing a good job. If you can advertise with them it might be a good bargain. Why? Because lets say you sold lead pipe for the plumbing industry. And let’s say that even after optimizing your site you can’t get on top of the search engine natural rankings. And let’s say that you looked into pay-per-click and it’s $5 per click to be number one on Google for lead pipes with an estimated click total of 2,000 clicks per month. That would be $10,000 per month to do pay-per-click on that keyphrase alone. And let’s say that this was too much for your budget. I know it’s a far stretch isn’t it?
Now let’s say that with a portal like ThomasNet.com, you can be number one on their site for the phrase lead pipes for only $3,000 per year. So what? “So let’s dance” J So, if ThomasNet is coming up number one on Google for the search phrase lead pipes, and you are number one on ThomasNet under the category lead pipes, then it stands to reason that you can literally be number one in the world on Google under the phrase lead pipes by advertising with ThomasNet. Sure, your name is an extra click away, but you just accomplished the same basic goal for thousands less.
Why can’t you just copy the portal and become number one yourself? Because successful Web portals have thousands of advertisers spending thousands and tens of thousands of advertising dollars with it. This gives the portals lots of cash to do one thing, advertise! You see, you’re in business to make something or to provide a service. A portal is in business to advertise itself in order to get people to see your ad and eventually drive lots of people to your site. So let it. If it has a proven track record of success, it must be doing something right. And after all, if it isn’t doing the job, you can witness its performance via your Web tracking software and kick it to the curb.
Copyright 2005-2009 | emarketingprofs | All Rights Reserved
Copyright 2005-2009 | emarketingprofs | All Rights Reserved
The blog for e-marketing and e-business professionals
Copyright | emarketingprofs | All Rights Reserved
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