1. Update the pages on your website frequently. Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. You can even put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated.

2. Offer additional value on your website. For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and products and ask them to do the same for you. You can also advertise their books or videos, if these products relate to your industry and are not in competition with your own product.

3. You can allow customers to ‘opt in’ to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite customers to ‘opt in’ to get a monthly newsletter or valuable coupons.

4. Add a link to your primary page with a script ‘Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites’.

5. Add a link ‘Recommend this site to a Friend’ so that the visitor can email your website link, with a prewritten title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.

6. Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page.

7. Create a ‘Our Policies’ page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your customers. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site.

8. Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. This helps to resolve most of the customers doubts in their first visit to your site.

8. Ensure that each page on your website has appropriate titles and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site if they lose the book mark.

9. Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails. Later if they decide they want to ‘opt out’ of the mailings, be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site’s Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example: Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

B2B Solutions Related posts

• The Importance of Search Engines
• Search Engine Optimization Consideration
• Search Engine Optimization - Google Sitemap
• Develop A Link Strategy. Step 4 How many sites link to your selections so far and how good are they?

Start your own work at home business, by building your own Affiliate Website. Here is a free 10 step program that will guide you through the steps to build and publish your own website. Follow these easy 10 steps, and grab your part of the $54 million dollar internet boom. You can own an incredible affiliate website of your own, and take advantage of the many outstanding money making opportunities on the internet.

What is an Affiliate?

An affiliate promotes products and services on their website for a commission. They choose merchants that fit within the context of their site’s offerings. If you have a website devoted to Automobiles, for example, you would select merchants that sell automotive products. You can build websites that specialize in anything you prefer, such as travel, shopping, automotive, sports, gifts, food, gambling, casinos, and just about anything you are interested in. Affiliates enter into an agreement to place links on their websites that lead to the merchant, for the purpose of promoting goods and services. In return, affiliates can earn commissions on click-through leads, or purchases made through their sites.

10 Steps To Becoming A Successful Affiliate

Affiliate websites are both challenging, and profitable. If you are willing to devote some time and energy into creating, and promoting your own website, it can be very rewarding. It takes time, and a lot of hard work to develop a successful affiliate website, but the rewards are phenomenal. Thousands of Merchants have realized the tremendous value of having affiliates sell their products, and are actively seeking new ones. It does not cost anything to become an affiliate, but some merchant programs are better than others. Can you trust them to track your commissions correctly, and pay on time? Do they offer dynamic, current, and proven sales aids to help you make sales? If you are going through all the work to create a dynamic and appealing website, to attract customers and make sales, than you need to know that you can trust them to hold up their end of the bargain. This is after all, a partnership between you and the merchant, and you need to work well together. It’s not enough however, just to sign up as an affiliate with a merchant. You need to build a website that will create sales, and know how to promote your website so customers will visit it. I have created a 10-step program for the novice that will take you from the beginning research phase, to optimizing your finished site for maximum exposure. I cannot guarantee you will be successful, only you can determine that. I can assure you however, that if you follow this 10 step program, you can build (without any previous experience), an affiliate website that will make you a lot of money.

#1 - Website Marketing

Before you do anything else, get yourself some good books on Web Site Marketing. There are a lot of good ones available on the Internet. Most are not very expensive, and many are free. You can find a list of free and inexpensive eBooks you can download (http://www.affiliate.budsbestbuys.com/eBooks.htm). You can find more if you like, by searching on one of the search engines like Google, or Alta Vista. It’s important that you do this first, because you will save yourself a lot of time and aggravation if you learn from the experts what you should be doing, before you build your website.

#2 - Build Your Website

It is best to build your own website. Most hosting sites have a built in website builder that you can use free. Read step #3 (Web Hosting Companies), to learn more about these options. If you prefer to purchase your own website building program, Dreamweaver and Front Page are probably the most popular programs available. They both offer free 30 day trials, and can be downloaded. Download Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 at http://www.microsoft.com/office/frontpage/prodinfo/trial.mspx and you can download Microsoft Front Page 2003 at: http://www.microsoft.com/office/frontpage/prodinfo/trial.mspx This Site Building Tools page, will help you find a variety of tools and software to help you build and customize your website: http://affiliate.budsbestbuys.com/website%20building%20tools.htm You will soon find out that building your own website can be interesting, exciting, and challenging. It really is not all that difficult, and if you apply yourself, before long you can become an accomplished Webmaster. There are many prebuilt sites available, but you are somewhat limited in what you can do with them. They are not very expensive, so if you tried one to get your feet wet, and practiced promoting it, the experience can’t hurt you. The problem with most of the prebuilt sites is that, what is on them, is what you’re stuck with. A good website should always be improving. To find Prebuilt Websites you can purchase, please click this link: http://www.affiliate.budsbestbuys.com/website%20building%20tools.htm

#3 - Web Hosting Companies

Find a good web hosting company. There are an awful lot of web hosting companies competing for your business, and you should spend a little time researching some of them. Print a list of each sites feature, and compare them. Web site statistics are a must. It enables you to see where your traffic is coming from, and which ads are drawing in customers. Technical support that is open 24/7 is also very important. If you plan on using your hosting companies website builder, you will want to check it out to see if you feel comfortable with it. I use IX Web Hosting at https://www.ixwebhosting.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=kitsolutions and have always been satisfied with them. Site Build 1.6 software, which is easy to use, and produces a very professional looking site, is included in their package. You can find a complete list of Web Hosting Companies at: http://www.affiliate.budsbestuys.com.

#4 - Get Your Own Domain Name

You will need your own domain name. There are hundreds of companies that will help you select a domain name, and register it, for a nominal fee. Check with your web host first. Most offer to register your domain name for you with their package. You should always own your own domain name. Do not use a free domain name. Many sites such as Geocities, or Yahoo will offer you a free domain name, but it does not belong to you. It just doesn’t make any sense to spend months or even years building name recognition for your site, only to lose the domain name if the company who owns it changes policy, or goes out of business. You can register a domain name for as little as $8.88 per year. Domain names need to be reregistered every year.

#5 - Content for your Website

Content is King. Remember this when building your site. People browse the net for information, and you must have good content to attract and keep the attention of people visiting your site. Fill your pages with interesting content about your websites subject. If your website is about shopping, than write about things that pertain to shopping. You can get free articles to paste on your site from a variety of places. This Content Source http://www.affiliate.budsbestbuys.com/content%20sources.htm page lists free articles that you can use on your site. You can also get much of the content you need from your merchants, or you can write your own. Use link text and articles to link to your merchants, as much as possible. Banner ads are very good, but you should try to limit the number on each page. A page full of mostly banners can be annoying, and will chase potential customers away.

#6 - Sign Up For Affiliate Programs

Once you have your website built, its easy to get merchants that will pay you a commission on sales referred to them through your website. Affiliate programs are available from individual merchants, and from Affiliate Program Companies, that offer a variety of merchant affiliate programs on one site. They supply you with, banners, text, and advertising information that you can use on your site. Many of them offer tutorials, website building tips, and marketing advise to help make you successful. From this list of Affiliate Programs http://www.affiliate.budsbestbuys.com/Affiliate%20Programs.htm you can select the merchants you would like to sign up with. The merchant sites will guide you through the signup process.

#7 - Site Promotions

Promoting your site is the one of the most important parts of owning a website. A website without any visitors is useless. Once you’ve built and published your site, you need to promote it properly to attract a steady flow of traffic. There are a lot of Enzines (internet Magazines) and inexpensive or free classified Internet ads that work very well. Most Affiliate programs will offer advise on promoting your site, and they can be a great source for information and advise. Take all the advice you can get. The best I have found, and the one I use the most is Adland Pro (http://www.adlandpro.com/partner.asp?ref=247637&pg=ls), and I would check them out when your looking.

#8 - Optimize and Submit Your Site

Next, but by far the most important, you need to optimize your website and submit it to the search engines. There are a lot of services available that you can purchase, that will optimize your site, and offer to get you rated on the search engines. Be careful when looking at one of these services, and remember, if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is. There are also software programs you can buy for a lot less money, and do it yourself. I definitely recommend buying your own software. It will cost you a lot less money in the long run, especially if you start building more websites, which most of us do. Here at (http://www.affiliate.budsbestbuys.com/website%20optimizers.htm Website Optimizers) you will find the latest list of the best and easiest to use software available.

#9 - Link to Other Sites

There are a lot of ways to get good ratings on search engines, and you should read everything you can find to get advise, but the most important thing to remember is you need to link to other websites. I can’t stress this point enough. The search engine robots place a lot of importance on how many links you have coming into your website. You can make your own link directory, but it is difficult, and you’re a lot better off with a professionally made one. One of the best on the market is Zeus. It’s the one I use, so you can look at my link directory at http://www.budsbestbuys.com to check it out. You can get the basic one free, and it may be all you will need. I recommend you get the free one first. You can always upgrade later if you think you will need the extra features of the pro model.

ARELIS - http://www.Axandra.com/go.to/kitsolutions

ARELIS is a top rated software program that helps you to build a powerful business network quickly and easily. Reciprocal links add value to your web site, and you’ll get targeted traffic from clicks on your links at other web sites.

ZEUS - http://www.cyber-robotics.com/cgi-bin/creditgo.cgi?kdasselin@comcast.net

Zeus creates traffic to your web site in numbers beyond your wildest dreams and will give you TOP positions in all the Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and AltaVista. “Trading Links with other web sites brings you qualified traffic, period! The more links you have, the more successful your web site. The more you use Zeus, the more successful your web site.”

#10 - Shopping Carts and Accepting Credit Cards

All of your merchants will have their own shopping carts, accept most major credit cards, and they handle all sales. They keep track of your sales activity, and send your commission checks to you. If however you want to sell your own merchandise or e-books, on your web site, you will need to set up a shopping cart program, and accept credit cards. There are a lot of shopping cart programs you can purchase, and if you have a very large store you are setting up, they may be worth looking into. If you were just planning on selling a few items of your own on your affiliate site however, it probably wouldn’t be worth the money.

PAYPAL - https://www.paypal.com/us/mrb/pal=E5WPK5QSYNXGS

Use PayPal to receive payments easily and safely. Start accepting credit card payments in minutes. PayPal offer an outstanding shopping cart program that is free, and hard to beat. You can place items on your own shopping cart, and if your customers belong to PayPal, it doesn’t cost you anything. If they buy through a credit card, there is a small percentage fee they charge you, to handle the transaction.

PayPal handles all of the transactions for eBay, and most people know the name and are comfortable with them. Usually your web host will offer a shopping cart program you can use, but most of them charge extra for this service. You can also find dozens of shopping cart companies competing for your business on the Internet. We highly recommend PayPal. Free is always good.

Good Luck

About the author:
Ken Asselin, Waterford, MI, USA
Visit Buds Best Work at Home Business at:
http://www.affiliate.budsbestbuys.com
Ken Asselin is webmaster for the “Buds Best” series of online shopping websites. His 40 plus years experience in retail marketing, bring a fresh outlook to website development and promotion. You can visit his Buds Best “Shopping Sites” at: http://www.shopping.budsbestbuys.com
mailto:ken@shopping.budsbestbuys.com

Ken Asselin

As a network support technician, I get a ridiculous and infuriating number of requests for help deleting temporary Internet files. Working on a help line, I am not allowed to field those calls, but in my private network consultant business, I deal with those issues all the time. It is amazing how much people worry about junk files. Internet temporary files are some of the most dreaded and misunderstood aspects of the personal computer experience. It isn’t just that people don’t understand computers well, although that is part of it. Just as many people who own cars don’t know the first thing about the mechanics of an internal combustion engine, so many people who own computers don’t know the first thing about the way an operating system works. Even so, there is more to it than that. Temporary Internet file hysteria definitely has a root causes beyond human ignorance and stupidity.

Of course, one of the biggest problems is the media. Outside of the blogosphere, the media has never bothered to become tech literate. Between Internet virus scares, e-mail scams, identity theft, and a half-dozen other issues, most people are terrified of their computers to some degree or another. It is a true testament to the usefulness of the personal computer that they are still used. And no matter what the issue, temporary Internet files are always Given more than their fair share of the blame. Deleting cookies and temporary Internet files is almost seen as a panacea for inexplicable computer ills.

Yet the problem goes beyond the media. It involves the way that Windows is set up. Because 9 out of 10 personal computers use Windows nowadays, design flaws introduced through shabby Microsoft programming play a large role in the misunderstandings people have about computers. Basically, Microsoft Windows often mismanages temporary files Internet as well as other junk files. They can become fragments, cluttering up your hard drive and slowing things down. They can contain compromising information that can be conceivably harvested if your computer is hijacked. Although clearing off temporary Internet files is no substitute for the real solution – switching to Linux – it can still give people a false sense of security. People don’t understand that their computer software is deeply flawed. They get conned buying programs designed to delete temporary Internet files (which they could do themselves) in the hope of providing greater security. In the end, who can blame them?

My first experience with video web conferencing did not leave me with a very good impression. The boss of the shop I was working for was very impressed with the video conference system, in the same way he would have been impressed with any high-tech toy or gadget he had. Video conferencing allowed us to talk to every shop across the nation, giving us access to thousands of working stiffs just like ourselves learning an abridged version of the heating and cooling trade. The place I was working for was not an honest shop. Basically, we were given minimal training and sent out into the field to sell people whatever we could. The videoconferencing was just another way that they could try to pressure us into making more sales, something that was hard for us to do with only a vague idea of how the heating business worked. Then, to top it all off, the video conferencing equipment broke at the end of the meeting.

When, years later, one of my business partners suggested using audio video conferencing, I was diplomatic but firm. I had no interest in a videoconference.  In my opinion, video teleconferencing is one of the great broken promises of the high-tech age – second only to virtual reality. In theory, it seems like a great idea that will revolutionize business. In practice, however, it is totally unnecessary and a waste of time. There is nothing that you can tell someone over a video conference link that you couldn’t send an e-mail about, or so I thought.

Nonetheless, the partner was insistent, and soon we set up a video conferencing meeting room to try the system out. He was generous enough to furnish the system himself so we had nothing lost to the venture. I had expected online teleconferencing to waste exponentially more time than e-mail. The E-mails people sent were stupid, but contemplating the endless things that they would say in an international meeting involving hundreds of different representatives from six different businesses was nightmarish. I figured that I would never get out of the video conferencing meeting alive.

In fact, it wasn’t half as bad as I had thought. It might be that some people are still scared of the technology, but as it was only the key members of each business who had anything to say. Everyone else just sat there quietly and listened, and we got business done pretty fast. Although I wouldn’t switch to video conferencing over more traditional means of communication, I am definitely more open to it than I was before.

How to increase your business profitability by hundreds of
percent

Websites are ubiquitous these days and everybody is trying to
get a better
web site ROI. With millions upon millions of sites all trying to
appeal to the same traffic, what can you do to improve your web
site ROI?

What’s In A Name

You can use Google Adwords to very quickly and cost effectively
improve your business profitability
by a significant amount - hundreds possibly thousands of
percent. It all depends on where your site is starting
from.

How?

Great question, you get a mere 4 lines of text to
play with in Adwords so every single line counts. Even more than
that every single letter counts (even the Capitalisation of
letters will make a difference to your click through rates
believe it or not).

But what’s in a name?

Your name in your ad is of course your URL. When crafting an ad,
most people spend a
lot of time concentrating on the headline (well worth doing as
it is the most important part arguably) and on the ad text (also
a good thing but not as important as you’d think).

After the headline, the next thing that prospects eyes are drawn
to
is…

Yes you’ve guessed it - your name - your URL!

But what can I do with my URL I hear you say?

Just because you have 1 domain name doesn’t mean you need to use
it. There is nothing in
Google’s T&C’s that prohibits you from using a different display
URL to that of your destination URL (although you will have to
own the display URL and it must resolve to a pertinent page -
i.e. If you’re advertising pet food, it must be about pet food
and not resolve to www.pdqprospects.com for example.

Hundreds of percent more profitable…

There is nothing stopping you using as many domain names as it
takes to give you a better web site
ROI.

We have conducted tests outlined above with some of our
clients. Results have ranged from 46% through to 76% more
profitable domain names.

These results are applicable to your
bottom line profitability - remember 76% more traffic will
result in a like for like increase in bottom line profits and
your results are equally applicable on and offline, whatever
grabs attention online giving you a better web site ROI will do
likewise in offline advertising media.

We have also seen a 113% improvement on one of our tests (with a
small sample) but we
stopped the test early because our results were statistically
significant and waiting for a larger sample was a moot point -
we knew we had a winner.

Pop Quiz

One of my clients Jonathan Stanley has graciously allowed me to
show you the results of our
tests with him. Consider the following adverts and their display
URL’s:

*www.talkingleadership.com
*www.thisisleadership.com
*www.leadsuccessfully.com
*www.myleadershipcenter.com
*www.leadingeffectively.com

Which of the above domain names was the winner and which do you
think was the loser?

Well, the results are as follows from worst to last:
MyLeadershipCenter.com9 clicks
LeadingEffectively.com17 clicks
LeadSuccessfully.com 18 clicks
ThisIsLeadership.com21 clicks
TalkingLeadership.com37 clicks

Who would have thought it? I certainly wouldn’t but then that’s
the point you will never know until you test.

My thanks to Jonathan Stanley once again at
www.TalkingLeadership.com for allowing me the use of this
example.

And what else can you do with your text?

And even if you want to use your existing domain there’s plenty
you can still do - remember CAPITALISATION?

And then there is subdomains or even appended directory names.

All it takes is a little creativity and you’ll find a much
better web site ROI!

About the Author

Tom O’Brien is a certified Google Adwords Campaign Management Professional and helps web sites get better ROI. For further tips/tricks on using Adwords effectively, visit:
http://www.pdqprospects.com/index.html

ROI (Return on Investment) is probably the most important
calculation one needs to make to ensure the long-term viability
of their business. It is not enough to build in a profit margin
on the product or service being offered. One must track with
proficiency the amount of dollars being invested into attracting
sales and how much ROI those dollars put back into the business.
If the investment meets too little return, a product line is
doomed to fail in the long-term.

THE BASIC ROI PERCENTAGE CALCULATION

Many experts seem to agree, “calculating an accurate return on
investment (ROI) is not an easy thing to do.”

I do not intend to give you a thorough analysis of the ROI
calculation process. Calculating an accurate ROI is hard to do,
but explaining the full scope of ROI calculations in less than
1000 words is far more difficult.

As such, this article is only intended to introduce you to the
basic concepts behind ROI calculations. Here is a very basic
equation for calculating the ROI:

ROI = [(Payback - Investment)/Investment)]*100

Your payback is actually the total amount of money earned from
your investment in your company. Investment relates to the
amount of resources put into generating the given payback.

You should run ROI calculations on both monthly and yearly
timelines.

IMPROPER CALCULATIONS BY MANY SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

The actual amount of investment into a business is often
misunderstood by the business owner. As a result, true ROI
calculations for most small businesses are skewed.

Most small business owners make their mistake in this most
necessary calculation, because they do not properly value their
own time. Please note that when I previously defined
“investment”, I stated that it relates to the “amount of
resources put into generating the payback.”

Indeed, “resources” includes cash money. But, it also includes
“human resources” or “time”.

If most small business owners would value their hours at the
minimum wage, and calculate their time into the investment
equation, they would soon realize that their small business is
running in the red!

Some small business owners will finally run ROI calculations
including the human resources, and suddenly realize that they
could make more money working a job. If the small business owner
has been running their business for a really long time,
struggling to make ends meet, they might see this calculation
and close their doors once and for all.

PLEASE DON’T LET ME DISCOURAGE YOU

I do not share this revelation with you so that you will close
your business down. Quite to the contrary. I share this with you
so that you can see the big picture and start running your
business in a way that will actually generate a real profit for
you and your business.

If you are within the first two years or five years of the start
of your business, then running in the red should not be thought
of as a bad thing. However, if you are ten years into your
business and earning less than minimum wage from your business,
there is a serious problem afoot that needs to be addressed
immediately.

STARTING OUT

When you are just beginning your own business, you have plenty
of time on your hands. This is the reason why most small
business owners do not properly count their time in the ROI
equation. They just look at cash expenditures and incoming
monies, and they are satisfied with that calculation.

It is often said that people generate the kind of results that
they believe they can achieve or the kind that they want to
achieve. Seeing the goal is the first step to achieving the
goal. Expectations will always bring results equal to the
expectation.

Having been down the business startup path before myself, I too
understand the desire to calculate ROI without consideration to
the time invested in the enterprise.

However, I also understand the importance of placing a value on
my time and working that into my final numbers.

In the beginning, I ran two types of ROI calculations: all
resources exempting my time, AND all resources including my time.

Of course, I actually set a higher expectation for my own income
level. First, I had decided on ten dollars an hour for my time.
Later, I adjusted that amount upward.

Starting out, even though I ran two versions of my ROI
calculations, I relied first on my resource excluding my own
time. Once I had achieved this goal, then I refocused my
attention to reaching the ROI which took into account my own
time.

Now, that time has passed, I can go back and look at my yearly
ROI and see that I have earned enough cash to pay for those
early days of famine.

THE SECRET OF TURNING ROI CALCULATIONS INTO SUCCESS

Every step in your business startup is a calculated guess as to
what you believe you can achieve.

Measuring your results is essential to making your business
profitable. ROI measurements are imperative to measuring and
understanding the results you are achieving with your new or
existing business.

Take into account all factors relating to the profitability of
your business and don’t smudge on the facts to make it seem more
profitable than it really is. It is important to approach your
business and your business results with absolute honesty. Be
honest with yourself and face the facts of your task.

An honest examination of your business at regular intervals will
help you get on and stay on track to keep the doors of your
business open. You will thank yourself later.

About the Author

About The Author:
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Massive Residual Profits. Get Details And Signup Today At:
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Because most of the PPC search engines out there do not allow affiliate links your strategy from the get go is a little different from the average site owner. We suggest that you make a very well informed website full of rich content related to the product you wish to promote. On this site you will suggest the product you are selling with your affiliate link to the customer.

You can also download our branded stores and host the website on your own domain. Since the branded version has no visible affiliate links you will not have a problem getting the site listed.

Pay-per-click (PPC) search engines can be a powerful, instant source of qualified traffic for your website—provided you do your homework and invest a bit of time in managing our campaign. In fact, many website owners who’ve mastered keyword targeting and know the “insider” bidding strategies tell me that more than 90 percent of their traffic comes straight from the PPC search engines!

So I’m going to show you the strategies and tools these folks are using—so you can duplicate their success. I’m going to explain hot new targeting options and bid-management tools being offered by the PPC search engines that you can use to increase your traffic while keeping bidding costs low.

A lot of people think the only way to develop a successful pay-per-click campaign is to get the highest ranking with a popular keyword in the top two PPC search engines, Overture and Google AdWords.

Now it’s true that a top-ranked ad with either of these two industry giants will guarantee your site a lot of exposure—as long as you’re bidding on keywords that a substantial number of people are searching for. The problem is, you often have to pay more for these No. 1 spots. And in the case of the more competitive keywords, this can means bids of $1.50 to $5.00 (or more!) per click.

If you want to be successful with the PPC search engines, you need to bid on keywords that attract clicks from “qualified” buyers (as opposed to “tire kickers” who’ll drive your costs up) while keeping your bids as low as possible.

Here are seven tips that will help you accomplish that:

1. Figure out what you can afford to bid. This might sound obvious, but it needs to be said: Don’t bid more than you can afford! A lot of businesses make this mistake.

Before you pay for advertising of any sort, calculate the value of a single visitor to your site. Once you know what one visitor is worth, you’ll know the maximum amount you can afford to pay per click.

2. Being “No. 1″ isn’t always best. You don’t always need to be ranked No. 1 for certain keywords to attract visitors. Sure, it helps if your ad appears in the top 10 results. But people click on listings featured on the second and even third page of results for competitive keywords.

So run some tests. Vary your bids so that your listing appears higher and lower on the page and see what effect the ranking has on your profits. You may actually find that for more costly keywords, a slightly lower ranking is more profitable.

3. Bid on low-cost variations and common misspellings of particular keywords. Frequently, you’ll see businesses bidding as much as $5.00 per click for popular keywords—while nobody is bidding on common misspellings and similar keywords that cost just pennies per click. Use Wordtracker to locate keywords that relate to your business and are frequently searched by your market, but that none of your competitors are bidding on.

4. Bid on highly targeted phrases with less traffic. Rather than bid on a handful of “general” keywords, which tend to be more expensive because they get the highest number of searches, bid on dozens—or even hundreds—of highly “targeted” keywords, which tend to be cheap. For example, instead of bidding on “pet supplies,” you might bid on “red dog leash,” “oversize dog kennel,” and “cat toys with bells.” You’re sure to see better sales conversions on the more targeted keywords because they attract more qualified buyers. And since no one is bidding on these keywords, your advertising costs associated with this traffic are extremely low.

Another benefit of this strategy is that you can direct these qualified visitors to a page that gives them exactly what they’re looking for. In the above example, your listing for the keyword, “oversize dog kennel” could link directly to your dog kennel catalog page, rather than to just the home page of your pet supply store.

5. Bid on keywords in the lesser-known PPC search engines. Overture and Google are the PPC industry leaders, but some of the smaller PPC search engines are worth checking out as well. The most popular ones are:
# Findwhat
# Kanoodle
# Enhance Interactive
# LookSmart
# Espotting (for the UK & Europe)

These engines won’t get you the same exposure you might get with Overture and Google AdWords, but you can still generate a respectable amount of traffic with them. And best of all, they’re much cheaper.

6. Create separate ads for each product or service you sell. This is an extremely effective strategy, but very few businesses are using it: Write ads specific to each keyword and phrase you bid on. For example, instead of writing an ad for “sporting goods,” write one for “quality leather soccer balls,” another for “discount ladies’ tennis shoes,” and so on.

These customized ads will attract more attention (and clicks!) from qualified buyers. And of course, you’ll be able to convert more of these visitors to buyers if you direct them to a page on your site with the exact product or service they’re searching for.

7. Get listed in relevant specialty PPC search engines. Did you know that there are specialty PPC search engines that target different markets such as brides, pet owners, antique collectors, car owners and so on?

Check out PayPerClickSearchEngines.com to see if there are any relevant to your business that might be worth getting listed in.
Targeting Your Campaigns
PPC search engines are constantly looking for new ways to improve their services—and your results. After all, they want you to keep purchasing advertising from them and not their competitors.

Here’s an overview of some great tools they’re offering to help you better target your ads and keep your campaign costs down:

1. Keyword Matching Options (offered by Overture and Google AdWords). Both of these search engines offer options that allow you to fine-tune the way your keyword is matched to the phrases people type into their engines. Their options differ slightly, but here’s a rough breakdown:

# Exact match. A listing is triggered by the exact keyword phrase and nothing else. Example: “fishing rods” will match “fishing rods” but not “fancy fishing rods.”
# Phrase match. A listing is triggered by the keyword phrase as it’s written, though it might be included with other terms as well. Example: “fishing rods” will match “antique fishing rods and reels” but not “rods fishing.”
# Broad match. A listing is triggered by the keyword phrase or slight variations of it, even if the words are out of order or separated by other words. Example: “fishing rods” will match “Rod’s Alaskan Fishing Adventure” and possibly even “Rod’s Fish & Chips.” Warning: The broad match option can work well for highly specific queries, such as brand names or serial numbers, but can result in a lot of poorly targeted click-throughs for general terms, especially terms that have more than one meaning, such as “dolly,” “tackle” or “nails.”
# Negative match. When words identified as “negatives” are typed into the search engine along with the keyword phrase, the listing will not appear. Example: “fishing rods - cheap” will match “fishing rods and tackle” but not “cheap fishing rods.”

2. Contextual Targeting (offered by Overture, Google AdWords, Kanoodle and Enhance Interactive). Contextual targeting places your PPC listing on websites where the content somehow relates to your ad. Obviously, this can be a great way to increase the exposure of your ad.

If you decide to try contextual targeting, however, be sure to monitor where your ads are being placed because the effectiveness of contextual targeting can vary widely. Your ads may end up featured on websites that have little to do with your advertisement—and therefore attract unqualified click-throughs.

For example, a recent USnews.com article about starting a business had a series of “Hermosa Beach Vacation” Google Ads listed beside it—because the first person interviewed in the story happened to live in Hermosa Beach! These wasted clicks can quickly drain your bank account if you aren’t careful.

3. Geotargeting (offered by Overture and Google AdWords). Geotargeting allows you to choose which countries or geographic regions your ads appear in. This feature is best suited for businesses that offer local services or products that are useful only in specific regions.

For example, if you’re a landscaper who lives in Washington state, you probably don’t want to pay for click-throughs from out-of-area visitors. After all, Texas-area residents aren’t likely to request your services.

4. Day Parting (offered by Kanoodle). Right now, Kanoodle is the only search engine we know that offers this option. “Day parting” allows you to choose the time of day your ads will appear in different regions, so they’re only available during “prime viewing times.”

For example, if your market testing shows that most people click on your ads to make a purchase in the early evening, you can make sure your ads appear only at that time in the different regions where your potential customers live.

5. Keyword Research Tools (offered by Overture, Google AdWords, FindWhat, Kanoodle, LookSmart and Enhance Interactive). The most popular keyword phrases are always the most expensive. Keyword research tools help you find common variations and misspellings of the more popular keywords so you can keep costs down while still generating traffic.

More sophisticated keyword research tools let you see how much you need to bid to achieve a particular ranking (for example, the No. 1 spot, the No. 7 spot and so on) prior to finalizing your bid. They may also provide you with traffic estimates for the different keywords and phrases you bid on.

6. Multiple Ads for the Same Keyword (offered by Google AdWords). Google AdWords allows you to “split test” different ads for the same keyword so you can see which ad attracts the most paying customers. This can save you a lot of time, and enables you to make sure your ads will yield the highest possible return on your investment.

7. “Autobid” Software (offered by Overture, Google AdWords, FindWhat, Kanoodle, LookSmart and Enhance Interactive). Autobid software is a bid management program that tracks the bidding activity on your different keywords and automatically adjusts your bidding amount so you can maintain your ranking. The more sophisticated bid management programs allow you to “cap” your bids so you never spend more than you want.

They also eliminate “bid gaps” that occur when the bidder below your listing drops their bid—your bid is automatically reduced so you maintain your position without spending more per click than necessary.
Final Thoughts
If you haven’t tried a PPC search engine campaign yet, I’d recommend doing it soon. There are still tons of cheap, targeted keywords waiting for your bids—but they may not be around much longer. More and more online businesses are realizing that—done right—a PPC campaign can be a fabulous source of cheap, instant, highly qualified traffic.

The best advice I can give you is this:

# Bid on lots of cheap, targeted keywords and phrases, including misspellings, and avoid the expensive general words that everyone is bidding on.
# Never bid more per click than what a single visitor is worth to your site—it’s the best way to make sure your ads remain profitable.
# Get listed in the “other” PPC search engines. You may be able to bid on popular terms you can’t afford in Overture and Google AdWords.
# Whenever possible, get ranked in the top 3 listings in Overture and Google AdWords. These ads appear on an extensive network of sites (including Yahoo!, MSN, AltaVista, Excite and more) and can reach up to 80 percent of all active internet users, so you get more bang for your buck.
# Target your ads as much as possible. Write “custom” ads for each keyword and use the various bid management and targeting tools offered by the different PPC search engines to reduce your costs and increase your clicks.
# Design your landing pages so they convert qualified visitors to buyers. If your ads promise “cat toys with bells,” make sure they actually direct visitors to a page where it’s easy for them to buy these items.