Because Google keeps changing the rules!

If you invest solely in SEO and not in holistic web marketing, your company’s profitability is strongly tied to its relationship with another company – Google. A pretty high risk strategy! Google’s new ideas, like personal search, will keep making life hard is SEO is your only marketing avenue.

Because if you depend on search, you neglect visitor engagement
if you’re constantly thinking about getting new visitors and visibility through the search engines, it takes the focus off engaging your current customers and visitors through blogging, newsletters, etc. Warm marketing costs 7 times less than getting new customers.

Because popular sites get traffic without search engines
Do you think people Google for Facebook nowadays? No. The same is true of many popular sites … and you want to be one of them!

Is there an army of uninterested clickers on the other side of your PPC ads?

What is click fraud?

Click fraud is conducted by a variety of groups for a variety of reasons. However, the common theme is that people click on your PPC ads that have no interest in your company or intention of buying your products.

Am I a victim of click fraud?

Here are some telltale signs that your internet marketing efforts are being exploited for the purpose of doing dastardly deeds …

• High costs on your PPC program with almost no results. Of course, this can also be due to badly managed campaigns, so read on.
• A large number of clicks coming form the same IP address
• Very low time spent on site – a high ‘bounce rate’ for PPC ads
• Many ad clicks occurring within a short time frame

Of course, hiring an expert web marketing firm to oversee your PPC campaign is an excellent way to prevent click fraud occurring to your company. It has the potential to cost you thousands, and can be hard to trace … don’t take chances!

Who’s Roxy?

Roxy is the women’s clothing brand owned by the Quiksilver company. They make swimwear, clothing and accessories for surf, snow and skating situations, as well as general purpose wear. They are a fairly high end brand.

Roxy internet marketing implementation

Roxy has developed a ‘Style Squad’ – a group of around 900 girls nationwide between the ages of 13 and 23. Each of these girls was handpicked in stores across the country,, and each of them gets benefits for being a part of the Style Squad:

• Welcome pack with the latest clothing designs
• Free access to new items
• Discounts in store

The Panel Manager of the Style Squad posts questions on message boards when there is a business issue such as thoughts on a new design, how the girls respond to advertising, etc. It can be used for both qualitative and quantitative market research.

How you can follow Roxy’s internet marketing example

• Create your own community of brand ambassadors, asking people to become part of the community in your physical stores, and offering significant benefits for doing so.
• Make sure there are ongoing benefits for remaining part of the community
• Create an online forum – social media like a Facebook page, Myspace account, or Twitter account that your members should add.
• Whenever you are wondering what your customers think about a change in your business – a new idea, a new promotion, a competition, a new page on the website … ask them! When people feel valued, they are happy to give their opinion.
• Use the information to improve your brand in the eyes of your customers.

The keys to success for Roxy’s web marketing strategy are offering significant benefits to the members, and them implementing enough new strategies and changes to make the effort worthwhile! Don;t forget that this sort of marketing has a direct effect on your SEO, by encouraging backlinks and pushing your traffic (and therefore your Google rank), skyward.

Text Speak in Domain Names

Using the number 2 instead of the word ‘to’, the number 4 instead of the word ‘for’, etc is a great way to create a snappy-looking domain. In reality, though, they’re a pain in the backside. Every time you spell your domain out for somebody, you’ll have to say ‘number-4′, or ‘letter-U’. It’s very clunky.

An additional problem is that to experienced web users, these domains look a little sleazy … and often akin to virus-laden or spam-creating sites. Not very professional.

The hyphen – hot or not?

Last week we teased you with a few funny domain name examples that could easily have been saved with hyphens … Pen Island could have rescued their site www.penisland.net with nothing but a little dash, and so could www.expertsexchange.com. Hyphens are sometimes strongly recommended!

However, when you have a full business name in your URL, hyphens just add to the length. Also, they aren’t part of many computer users’ ‘defaults’ – if someone can’t remember your website, they are unlikely to try with hyphens between the words. Only use in cases of hilarious misunderstanding.

Should I use a business acronym?

Many businesses are known both by their staff and clients as an acronym of their proper name – for example, NAB for the National Australia Bank. Should you use the acronym as your domain name, though?

It all depends on how commonly you use your full name, or your acronym. Full names may have a little advantage in terms of SEO (giving the search engines keywords to feed off), but if your customers are more likely to search for ‘www.nab.com.au’ than ‘www.nationalaustraliabank.com.au’, you should make things easier for the humans whenever possible.

Buying an existing domain

Sometimes you’ll have the opportunity to buy an existing domain name that fits your business. They cost A LOT compared to getting a new domain, but sometimes have quite a bit of money invested in them, in terms of SEO. Have a web marketing expert check on the domain’s Google performance – if it has a good SEO basis, it might be worth the extra expense.

Selecting your domain extension

The most recognizable extension is the dot com, although most users will also try your country code extension if they can’t find your site immediately. It is always worth registering a dot com, and a dot com dot AU, or CA, or TH, or whatever the case may be… even if you intend to use .org or .net as your primary website. Otherwise, people who don’t remember your address properly might land at a competitor’s website at the .com, instead of yours.

If you will be serving international visitors on your site, a simple .com extension makes the most sense – having a country code could scare away some visitors who believe that you don’t deliver or serve global customers. If you purchase both, you can direct interntional visitors to your .com, and local visitors to your .com.au site. You can be a global business, but still inspire local confidence.

Using your business name

Using nothing other than your business name as your URL is simple, and will help people that are trying to find you for the first time. However, it is not always the best SEO strategy. If your business name contains no indication of what you actually do, you are missing out on the most valuable element in the Google algorithm.

Using your keywords as your URL

While using your keywords as your URL is ideal for SEO, it carries its own set of problems. Users often expect businesses to be named after their URLs (or the other way round!), and may mistrust a site where this doesn’t ‘add up’.

Solving the dilemma – three strategies

Obviously, there is a dilemma to deal with when deciding whether to go with your business name or keywords for your URL. Here are a few possible solutions:

• Use your business name PLUS your keywords, if it doesn’t make the URL too long
• Use your keywords and your businesses initials only
• Change your business name to include your keywords, if you’ll be primarily web-based

Next week we’ll look at some of the less pressing, but still common problems in domain name selection!

In web marketing, creating news may something be a different tool. Perhaps, it is even a difficult online marketing strategy. Its degree of difficulty is nothing compared to the vast amount of traffic and quality inbound links it can deliver for your website. That is why; some reputed internet marketing businesses also employ this technique.

There are lots of things to consider if you want to get included in Google News. If you are a newbie in this marketing technique, you would get confused where or how to start. That is why this write up is made for you to be guided in your venture. Google News has editorial guidelines and organizational requirements.

In editorial guidelines, there are content requirements. It is believed by the internet experts that a news blog should be totally unique/original. News scrapers are not supported by Google News. If your site contains news that are just gathered from different web sources, then it’s definitely not for Google News. Your blog site that you have fashioned to be a source of news related to your market niche should contain quality and originally written pieces of articles that are, of course, newsworthy.

Continue reading here: Getting Listed in Google News (Part 2)

~oOo~

Contact Web Marketing Experts (www.webmarketingexperts.com.au) for more useful SEO tips and other relevant points of view.

The main advantages that Google has over Yahoo are the more refined search results and more frequent updating of its search algorithm to give the internet users with more relevant web listing. Today, Google has surpassed Yahoo in terms of the number of users. Yahoo’s Search Marketing, originally Overture, is also defeated by Google’s advertising programs like Google Adwords and Google Adsense. It was reported that 90% of Google’s revenue comes from its advertising programs. Several people who are doing internet marketing prefer Google because of its lower bidding price compared to Yahoo.

Due to Google’s dominance in the internet race, Yahoo admitted its loss and made some changes in its focus. The Yahoo management focuses more on their strength where they earn much such as its advertising programs, which contribute a lot in the growth of web marketing industry.