Is Advertising on Yahoo and MSN Really Worth It?

Prior to 2004, advertisers didn't have many options, but to depend upon Google for advertising their products and services as Google till now has remained the undisputed king in the online advertisement arena. But now with Yahoo and MSN jumping in the advertising bandwagon, the advertisers have got more choices than just banking upon Google. But, hey wait a minute. Have you ever checked or wondered how Yahoo and MSN advertise your products and services? Search engines definitely generate a substantial amount of revenue with advertisements. One interesting observation is that the top ranking sites in Yahoo and MSN get regular click throughs when the keywords are not very competitive for ad placement. But this is just an observation and may be wrong. The quality of traffic coming to your site from Yahoo and MSN may be something to consider as for every visitor that you receive, what is the ratio for that which you lose to a sponsored result? This also leads us to another question to ask ourselves whether it is worth it to optimize our pages for such search engines. The moral of the story is not to trust every search engine that has entered the advertising world without first experimenting and finding out its reliability. The idea is to assure that by enjoying a good ranking on a search engine, you are also getting good amount of visitors that you had hoped for after advertising.

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Are You Creating Effective Landing Pages?

A landing page is where the visitors 'land' when they click on your site from the email or online ad. Basically a landing pagetells the visitors about your ad. So give them what they want. Suppose you are advertising about web designing services offered by your company. But clicking on your ad., the visitor is taken to your site's home page. Though your homepage does have a link to your services page, but why not directly take them to what they are looking for? This way, you have wasted the visitors' time and irritated them unnecessarily. Treat your landing page as the place which can make or break your business. You may keep harping about the excellent products and services that your company offers in your ads., but what counts in the long run is what visitors see once they click on your advertisement.

Be Crisp and to the point-Offer information related to what you advertised and don't divert from the point. People are looking for some fast action and information. Don't test their patience with unneccessary detail or information.

Don't confuse the visitors-Keep the look and feel of your site as consistent as possible. Don't boggle the visitors with too much contrasting images, colors, and content in the advertisement and the landing page. The landing page should look like a mirror image and extention of your ad.

Make the visitors take action-Provide a link or button that takes the visitors deep into your site for a closer and detailed look into how their problems can be solved by using you products and services. This is called 'a call to action'.

Providing a privacy policy link-This helps because this informs the visitors how and when you plan to ues their personal data. Getting too personal with the visitors, asking for a lot of personal details may not be a very sensible thing as not many people like to divulge their personal details. So a simple follow up of people who have clicked on your site will help you find out about those interested in your products and services.

Submit your landing pages to search engines-Search engine spiders have a weakness for content-rich, focused, to the point landing pages.

Designing the landing page-the landing page must be very powerful, attractive, and effective in its design in order to attract people's attention. After all it is the first page where people will go after looking at your ad.

Pampering your landing page as much as the home page and other pages of your site is very important for good results. A well designed landing page can make all the difference to your online visibility and rankings.

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Seo Forums: A Great Platform To Remain Abreast With SEO Topics

A forum may be defined as a discussion, meeting, debate, medium, opportunity, or environment where people get to share their views and opinions on a specific topic with others. An online forum is a kind of a message board where group discussions take place online and a kind of online discussion thread gets established which is maintained thereafter. These forums are monitored and moderated by the experts in the industry concerned who not only have a wealth of knowledge in their respective fields but also hands on experience with the topics concerned. Though the forums allow you to view the message without registering, but for posting your views, you need to register and become a member.

Seo forums wield immense power in many ways. First of all, they act as powerful tools for the SEO professionals to stay in touch with the happenings and trends in the industry. They also act as guides of webmasters to optimize their websites. Besides this, they are a great platform for experts and newcomers alike to come and share their thoughts and knowledge with others. When you post to SEO forums, you network with others in the SEO industry and also foster confidence in your clients that you are keeping yourself updated with the latest trends and techniques in this industry.

Every new invention, discovery, or innovation has its pros and cons. So do the SEO forums. They may contain false information, rumors, speculative material, etc. So it is important that you research everything that you read, on your own. One way is to research the SEO tips and strategies mentioned in a page by page fashion and then monitor the results.

SEo forums may overwhelm a novice in the begining with so many topics and threads coming, but once you get the feel of a forum and identify your key area where you would like to contribute, you will find posting your views quite a comfortable thing.

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Another Player In the PPC Race: MSN to Launch its Own Advertising Program

Till now it was only Overture and Google who very actively involved in PPC advertising. But now they have more competition coming by the end of 2005 as Microsoft's MSN is planning to launch its own PPC program having some new features to target specific demographic and behavior groups. The launch will take place in Singapore and France and the service might be introduced into Canada, UK, and the US well before the end of 2005. Considering the fact that MSN (Microsoft's leading website property) is the third most visited 'portal' after Yahoo and Google, the launch of PPC advertising may give Yahoo and Google some tough time and sleepless nights. Right now, the advertising in MSN was coming via Overture which is known to be web's largest online advertising network as far as revenue generation is concerned. Because MSN was till now dependent upon Overture for advertising was indirectly a major boost for Overture's popularity. Now the million dollar question is whether MSN will be able to match up to the expectations of people? Well, that needs to be seen with time, but the fact remains that not everyone can be pleased. So is the case with PPC advertising. Behavioral and demographic targeting may be done in a very organized and well planned manner, but some people will always disagree with it.

For curious readers, you can check-up Microsoft's press release where the announcement of the PPC advertising launch program is made.

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Press Release Tips That Can Bring Valuable Traffic to Your Site

Press Releases Online can be tremendous visitor pullers for your website, products and services, provided the press releases are written after some serious research and very carefully.

Remaining Focused - It is important that you remain focused while writing a press release. The idea is to cover one thing at a time. Every press release should focus on one theme at a time. If you try to club too many ideas or news in one release, you may confuse the readers and the impact may not be as good. So the key to better viewership is to have a crisp and interesting theme for each press release.

Keyword Research - A press release too needs to have keywords that optimize it for the search engines to find it easily and get higher rankings. Choosing moderately popular keywords that are not being used by too many websites, you will have better chances of ranking well in the search engine results.

An Impressive Headline - A press release catches the attention of audiences for a very short span of time. So the headline of your release has to be very crisp, impressive, and interesting to hold the attention of the audience instantly. It should leave an impact immediately and it is always better to use your keyword(s) in the headlines.

Formatting Your Press release - If your press release is formatted carefully and well, you stand a chance to get better PR score in some of the PR services like PRWeb. And a better PR score means faster and better chances of your release bing found by leading news outlets.

Selecting the PR services Wisely - You have to select the PR service very smartly and carefully. There are some amazing PR services online that can provide your release the required coverage by paying a very small amount. One of them is PRWeb. There may be many more like this that you need to research and find out about.

Keping in mind these tips, you can garner and generate a substantial amount of web traffic to your site. Press Releases are one of the simplest and most effective ways of getting targeted traffic.

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Spammers Beware of Google's New Patent Application

Spammers never had to run and hide from Google as eagerly as of now. Google is on its moral patrol again with the filing of a United States Patent Application 20050071741 on March 31, 2005. According to the patent, a system identifies a document obtaining history data associated with that document, thus generating a score for the document based on this historical data. In a way, Google can and does use your web page updates to determine the ranking of your site in SERPs. With this patent filing, Google records and scores the following web page changes to determine how fresh a web page is:

1 How frequently the web page changes
2 Whether the change is genuine or superfluous
3 How much is the keyword density changed or altered
4 The number of new web pages linking to a web page
5 Whether anchor text has been changed
6 The number of new links to a site that is not much trusted by the search engines for having too many affiliate links on one web page

Though Google doesn't disregard the importance of decayed or stale results, but it also insists on adding fresh content to get good results. According to section 0128 of Google patent filing, the focus of multiple pages shouldn't be changed at once. So the moral of the story is to keep your web pages themed, relevant, and consistent. If you can't establish a reliable rapport with the search engines, you are finished. Any multi page content change required should be implemented over time in chunks. Basically, the webmasters need to forsee the future and accordingly plan their domains. Google may check the information of a name server in various ways. It may record information regarding the length of the domain registration (more or less than one year), address of the web site owner (for the purpose of returning higher relevancy local search results and giving accountability to the domain), admin and technical contact information, and the stability of your host and their IP range (checking if your IP range is associatedwith spam).

Google believes that genuine and honest domains are secured many years in advance as against spam domains that are not secured for more than a year. It is important to secure a reputable host to get good rankings in Google. The idea is to show Google your seriousness about your site by registering your domain several years in advance with a reputable provider.

The story doesn't end here. According to the patent filing, Google may record the discovery date of a link and the link changes over time and use historical information to determine the value of links. So now sites may be penalized for rapid link acquisition.Google will be recording the anchor text and discovery dates of links to see the countdown period of the aging delay, more value to long term life span links, coming and going of a link over time, inbound links from fresh pages, etc.

Even, the click through rates will be monitored for seasonal changes, fast increases, increase/decrease in trends, the volume of searches over time, web page's ranking changes, finding out the preferrence of fresh or stale pages for a search query, monitoring of traffic to a web page, monitoring user behavior for changes and trends.

What becomes clear from this patent is that now manipulating Google's new ranking criterion may not be so easy, and the webmasters are going to have a tough time achieving or maintaining the highest of rankings from now on.

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Why Some Webmasters Shun SEO?

Those who are well versed with the concept of SEO very well know the importance and benefits of this magic wand kind of a service that can transform your not so known website into a gold mine. But the sad part is that not many webmasters seem to be very comfortable or even aware about the benefits and advantages of SEO. It appears that even today many webmasters spurn and shun SEO as something as if it maligns their business practices or hurts their egos that their websites are incomplete or not so good without SEO. I wonder why they behave in such a manner. May be they feel that employing SEO services or practices means undermining their expertise, knowledge, or creativity as far as website design is concerned. Or may be they go by the old adage that if you have made something good and interesting, there is no need of SEO or anything else.There may be many of those who are of the thinking that SEO is all crap and a moneymaking business that has nothing to do with higher rankings or better conversion rates.

Well, to dispel all such obnoxious thoughts and feelings, I just have one thing to say that SEO is here to stay. So all those who have their reservations against it need to change their views and outlook and view SEO in a new perspective. It is one of the most wonderful things to have happened to the internet industry. I don't think there is any harm in following the basic guidelines of SEO in order to get better, wider, and more targeted coverage for your website and business. And to employ SEO practices is not at all unethical or out of principles as long as you follow it the right way. SEO is nothing but a way of making you understand the mechanisms and workings of the search engines and to optimize your site accordingly to garner better and wider viewership. It's the same as the director of a movie visualizing his/her target audience while making the movie so that the kind of audience he had expected, comes to see his movie. It's that simple!

So, all of you out there who dislike or turn away from SEO like turning away from a bitter medicine, need to do some serious introspection. Because no matter how bitter the medicine is, after all it is the cure to your disease and illness. So treat SEO as a medicine for your website's illness.

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Sensible Web Marketing Makes Your Business Boom

In today's world dominated by aggressive advertising and marketing, how can the world wide web remain untouched by this trend. Every business- however small or large- has to advertize its products and services in order to survive in the market. As business world is also governed by the jungle rule, "survival of the fittest", web marketing has come to aquire an ever increasing important role in our lives. With the IT driven atmosphere becoming the driving force or backbone of every sphere of life, web marketing has become an inseperable part and parcel of our lives. From a small candy shop to a big business enterprise-all have a website today, such is the extent and reach of the internet world's involvement today in every sphere of our lives. People are looking for inexpensive, better still, free of cost, and instant access to information, and the internet is providing this information to them within seconds. Gone are the days when people had to depend upon T.V., radio, or newspapers for getting information.

It's the age of internet and quite a large proportion of population today is internet savvy. People know exactly what they want and how to get it within seconds without spending a single penny or wasting their precious time. Today, services and products can be easily bought and sold online without the hassle of physically visiting a store or business enterprise with the click of a mouse. What more can one ask for? In such a wonderful scenario as this, web marketing is bound to flourish as it has made our lives so much easier and comfortable with uncountable number of online advertizements and websites offering different products and services appearing on the internet every other second. It's a dream come true for not only the advertizers but also the customers.

So enjoy this joyride named "Web Marketing" till it lasts because that's the smartest thing to do today in order to get the most out of your investment in terms of time, money, and other resources.

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Your Website's Front Page Conveys a Lot To your Audience

As they say, 'first impression is the last impression', your web site's front page also acts like an introduction of your products and services to the visitors concerned. Your site's front page can make or break your credibility, visibility, and usability. So pay extra attention while designing the front page.

No diversions please!

Remain focused and hit the target bang on. It is always better to concentrate on a narrow and niche market than pulling too many strings at one go. Understand your niche market, know your target audience, and then design the front page. People coming to a search engine are looking for a particular kind of information and don't have the time or patience to search or see the entire site. So focus is the key here.

Adhere to the KISS principle

Don't confuse the visitors with the information on your front page. Tell them exactly what you expect them to do after reaching your site's first page. The Keep It Simple and Straightforward principle will come in handy here. You can't afford to be vague in telling your audience what exactly they should do in your site, otherwise you'll lose them.

Clarity of thought always wins

Cluttering of thoughts leads to confusion, and contradictions. Your front page should be picture perfect with very clear, short, and to the point information. The headings and sub headings need to be very powerful and attention grabbing that highlight the major benefits of your site to the visitors. Give them a reason to browse your site.

Make simplicity the hallmark

There is no point putting overwhelming and out of this world graphics and glitz in your front page that dazzles the visitors to the extent of blinding them to the central point of your site. It is better to stick to simple, yet effective content that drills the main benefits in the minds of the visitors. You may be able to entertain with your amazing layouts, but that means more loading time, lesser scope of action for the visitors, and running out of patience on the part of the visitors.

Professionalism is the key to success

Just like your first appearance and conduct tells people about the level of professionalism you have, similarly your front page also leaves an impact on the visitors. Whether that impact is positive or negative depends upon the way you present information on the front page. The color scheme, fast loading graphics, consistent use of fonts, and relevant information, and the right message will lend a professional touch to your site.

Though the first page is not the only page that needs attention, but for making the audience take action and excite them about your products and services, this page needs special attention as it acts as that area of your house which gives a view of the rest of the house. If the view is not convincing enough, people may not feel like taking a tour of the house.

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