Marketing Mars

Search engine optimisation (SEO), email marketing and paid search
tactics remain the most commonly used online lead generation methods, a
new report reveals.

Research conducted by E-consultancy, undertaken alongside Clash Media, revealed lead generation through the web is an increasingly important tool for firms.

However, the study found more is being spent on paid search tactics than organic search.

This
is despite 52 per cent of respondents asserting natural search is “very
effective”, while 48 per cent said the same of paid search.

“However,
given that the perceived effectiveness of SEO doesn’t correlate with
the budget for online lead generation, perhaps SEOs need to do a better
job of persuading companies to buy their services,” E-consultancy
suggested.

Recently, Dorothea Arndt, manager of new media for
the British Red Cross, remarked that charities have a “duty of care” to
use SEO to reach new consumers and potential new supporters, mad.co.uk reported.

She
made her comments during a seminar, adding that such online marketing
tactics can help smaller organisations compete in a wider market.

Online marketers frequently struggle with the question of how to compete when Google fails to look positively upon a particular website. In this article, I will focus on how to build rankings and drive traffic to your website, using Google and the other search engines.

What Motivates Google’s Algorithm

Over the years, many have tried to claim, even in court, that Google was unfairly keeping their website out of the top of Google’s search results. But, the truth is that Google is not beholden to the needs and desires of the webmasters who want to be on page one of Google’s natural search results.

Instead, Google is beholden to its stockholders and its need to earn profíts. Google has determined that the best way to keep profíts high is to keep Internet users flocking to its websites. Google accomplishes that by giving its users the kind of information they are looking to find, and Google weights its search algorithm towards what Google believes its search audience wants to see in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).It is important for online marketers to understand that it is not always in Google’s best interest for our websites to rank well in Google.How Important Is Google In Search?Worldwide, Google is currently providing 78% of all searches.But in 2007, Google only provided 52% of my website’s total search traffic. Yahoo, Windows Live, Ask, and MSN provided the next 42%. The remaining 6% of my website’s search traffic came from another 55 smaller search engines.On my website, only 48.8% of my 2007 traffic actually came from search engines. The remaining 51.2% of my website’s quarter million visitors came directly from article placements on other websites, recommendations from other people, forum posts, and from people who have bookmarks for my website.

Tips For Ranking Well For Specific Keywords

It has been my experience that it is easier to rank in 1) MSN / Windows Live, 2) Yahoo, and then 3) Google, in that order. Quite frankly, I have always ignored the role of Ask in the search market. While MSN is the easiest search engine to rank in, it only delivered 4.6% of my total search traffic in 2007.I read a question in a forum, where the poster was asking how he could get his website to rank well in Google for the search term, “software”.

The truth is that it is nearly impossible in nearly every search engine to rank well in the natural results for such a singular keyword as “software”. In a nutshell, if you want to rank well in Google, you need to build inbound links (IBLs) to your website with your targeted keywords in the links.

But, you don’t want to put all of your links together with one keyword phrase. One of Google’s red flags is when they notice a link to a particular website appearing more than 60% of the time with one specific keyword phrase.Utilizing a variety of long-tail keywords will actually serve you better in the search-engine ranking puzzle, in more ways than one. After all, when I do a search for software, I don’t type in the search word, “software”. I type in search phrases like: “accounting software”, “small business accounting software”, “windows software accounting small business”, “windows image editing software”, “windows software image editor”, “windows xp photo album manager”, etc.

People searching the keyword “software” have yet to figure out that they are looking for specific kinds of software. Once they do an initial search, they are going to type in more specific search terms to find what they actually want. So, once you start targeting a variety of long-tail keyword phrases, then you will start seeing more success in your search marketing efforts

Start Your Search Engine Optimization Journey by clicking here

Written by Bill Platt, owner of http://www.thephantomwriters.com

You know, I’ve been meaning to put up a list of this of my own, until I came across Neila’s blog - It hits the nail right on the head! Since there’s permission to re-print, I’ll put it down here, but I suggest you head on to her blog too for some great insights too

What Every Good Marketer Knows:

• Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
• Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
• Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
• Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
• Marketing begins before the product is created.
• Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
• Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
• Conversations
  among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or
  not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
• Products that are remarkable get talked about.
• Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
• You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
• If
  you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing
  marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an
  investment.
• People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
• You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
• What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
• Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
• Traditional
  ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail)
  are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of
  spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan
  clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
• People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
• Good marketers tell a story.
• People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
• Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
• Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
• Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
• A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
• Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world.
• Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
• Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
• Good marketers measure
  
• Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
• One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.
• In the googleworld, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
• Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.
• There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
• Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.
• You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.
• You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.
• Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

Obviously, knowing what to do is very, very different than actually doing it.

Looking for an advertisement of a particular product, log on to Buzzar.tv

At first glance, all you shall find is a collection of advertisements of brands that you get bored of watching, every time they happen to interrupt your regular shows on TV. What impressed me about the site is that they have maintained very good video quality and have put up advertisements of a hell lot of brands, considering the fact that it’s been recently set up. The sections that one might find on the site are Mobile Phones, Fashion Accessories, Financial Services, Kitchen Appliances, Household Products and the likes.

For more info on this site, click here watblog.com

People have always wanted to stay connected to each other. Even back in ancient times, people used messenger pigeons not just to send messages to each other, but to stay in touch. Friends always want to keep in touch and update each other on significant matters or mundane topics such as family, work life, even favorite meals.

The Internet is the latest innovation in this type of connectivity. With it, people can stay connected and keep everyone updated through blogs, e-mail, and personal websites. Still more recently, people can now stay updated with the latest craze, known as Twitter.

Twitter is a relatively new service that provides people the means to social network and micro-blog. Twitter lets people post updates through instant messages, e-mails, and SMS within short (140-character long) messages. You can post updates conveniently either through Twitter ’s website or through some new applications, such as my personal favourite; Twirl.

These short messages, known as “Twits,” let users easily post very frequently, even posting moment-to-moment updates. Because Twitter ’s messages are short but highly informative, they have become of great interest to Internet marketers. Several of them have thought of ways that Twitter could help with Internet marketing, me included.

Twitter as a service is still fairly new. It was launched in March 2006. However, many people think that it ’s a hot new trend that may entice hundreds or even thousands of visitors to come to one ’s own website, if used for marketing.

Perhaps Twitter ’s greatest strength is its simplicity. Because messages are only 140 characters, you don’t need to be wordy or use fancy language to get a message across. It ’s easy to tell your friends that you’re going to watch a movie tonight, just as it ’s of no effort to say that the latest Harry Potter movie is out in theaters this week.

This is definitely going to be a great new opportunity to reach a target market and advertise more directly. For Internet marketers, the best thing about Twitter and its “twits” is that you can include links in your updates. This can help encourage people to visit a particular website. Besides this, you can use Twitter in even more ways to help with Internet marketing. Here are some ideas:

1. You can infiltrate communities.

Because Twitter is very much concerned with social groups, it caters to people ’s desire to belong. You can foster relationships with potential customers by joining these communities as well. When you join communities and become part of these social groups by making friends with members, you may not only get more visitors, but you may also help entice others to invite more visitors as your twits appear on your friends’ homepages.

2. You can encourage your visitors to return with twits.

Besides adding friends yourself, people can also add you as a friend and tag your website with “badges” or “Twittering Widgets.” What this means is that a visitor who makes friends with you is updated as to what ’s happening on your website. This encourages them to visit your home page again and again because it becomes more convenient for them to do so.

3. Make your twits enticing and interesting to read.

If you want to attract more people to your twits, send good twits in the first place. You should only send twits that are interesting to your readers. If you say something that people either find boring or useless, they’ll stop reading them. They might even take you off their lists. However, if you keep sending amusing, funny and catchy twits, people will look forward to reading them. At the same time, you may even be able to encourage them to do something that will help you in your marketing.

There are lots of other ways to use Twitter for your Internet marketing needs. Because Twitter is fairly new, there is no doubt there ’s going to be lots more ways to be creative and take advantage of its newness. If you’re looking for a new way to reach your target market, take a look at Twitter. It might just be what you need.

Everyone who receives an interesting percentage of pageviews from social media sites as
Digg, Reddit and others nows how difficult is to retain visitors for
more than just a few seconds. In addition, it is extremely hard to
increase pageviews from them. But this does not mean that it is
impossible…
Tips for Increasing Pageviews from Social Media Visitors:
Use Internal Links in the Body of the Post

Of course you can place links at other places on your blog, but the
links within the post are the best, since they will get the most
attention.
You may insert links to other posts of your blog or site, specially
when you expect a big ammount of traffic: readers click on it and it
may derive you more traffic to your own site. So look for the
opportunity to link to older posts!

Link to Related Posts A plugin to include a short
list of related posts at the end of each post has not so much value,
but it could help. Again, it’s worthier to link inside the text, but
you should not be underestimated.

One good option is to create a manual list of related links. Thus, you
have better control over the posts selected, and since readers don’t
see them on every one of your posts, they will see they are being
recommended by a human, not by a plugin.
Keep Navigation Simple
Now that you have much more content and maybe traffic, your previous
theme may not be suitable. You should not lose focus on this and try to
make navigation through your other sites or other posts easy.

With blogs, it’s best to stay close to the standard, since visitors
tend to look for standard navigational elements. Many bloggers
effectively promote their most popular content in their sidebar or in
their header. This can be effective when marketing with social media:
by this way, you will reach a large number of new readers. These new
readers will be more likely to be converted into repeat visitors or
subscribers if you can get your best work in front of them.
Be Consistent
When marketing with social media, to stray off-topicfor a specific
audience is not effective in building repeat traffic and pageviews,
although this is a proven method to lure new visitors.
So keep your content focused, so that your visitors can appreciate most
or all of your posts rather than just one. Posting on consistent topics
will allow you the best opportunity to use internal links, to use older
posts and a series that can be linked to increase your pageviews.
Submit to the Proper Category
Use the most appropriate tags and categories when you are submitting
your own posts to social media. Many social media users only pay
attention to specific categories that they are interested in, so this
can bring you an increase in the number of pageviews.
Limit the Number of Outbound Links
Visitors tend to leave when they see a lot of outbound links, and this
can be a hard negative punch to your blog when you’re receiving
thousands of visitors.
If an outbound link will improve the value of the post for readers,
include it. However, always try to use internal links to keep some of
those visitors to yourself.

Webmaster are being encouraged to use video and audio all the time so we are seeing a huge jump in the number of videos being used on web pages and blogs. Search engines cannot ‘watch’ a video so the text surrounding it needs a strong dose of search engine optimization work.

As with any graphics placed on a page, the text in close proximity will be assessed by the search engines, particularly Google, for relevance. For example, a video of Ms Spears in an article on dangerous driving would flag an irrelevance. Good search engine optimization strategies would see the video renamed to something like ‘Spears drives dangerously’, or better yet, ‘driving dangerously - Britney Spears style’.

You can use search engine optimization strategies like including keywords in the URL, meta description and H1 tags as usual. If you have created the video yourself, you can add Meta data to the video during the encoding process.

Sitemaps are a normal part of the search engine optimization process so use Google Webmaster tools to upload a sitemap of your videos. This will help Google get more videos into their organic search results. Submit your video sitemap to Google through webmaster tools to inform Google of your video locations.

Video is a highly popular method of getting your messages to the masses. The more search engine optimization work on those pages, the more the search engines will index them and consequently, the better they will rank.