There has been a lot of discussion lately about organic search results. What are organic search results? Simply put, they are naturally occurring, nonpaid listings that you would find on Google or Yahoo when doing a search. They are gathered by the aforementioned search engines as they crawl the internet cataloging new sites and detecting changes to previously indexed web sites.

Although organic search results are important, they often take longer to materialize than do Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine results that are found on Google and Yahoo. These paid listings have a direct relationship with many other search engines that will take the paid results from Google or Yahoo and use them in their own results. You see, you are getting much more than just paid listings on Google. You are feeding other engines that will eventually increase your web presence and ranking.

For example, while Google supplies Netscape and AOL with primary unpaid search results as well as paid search results, it also supplies paid search results to IWON.com and ASK.com. Pay Per Click is generating twice the exposure and that exposure will lead to an increase in organic rankings.

Now let us take a look at Yahoo. It feeds paid and organic results to alltheweb.com, Lycos, and AltaVista. Although it would seem logical that Google would merit a large chunk of a web sites PPC budget due to the fact that Google supplies paid results to twice the search engines than it does organic results, that is not the only reason. Google represents over 80% of all search engine traffic and this alone should warrant doing business with them but this in way means using Google instead of Yahoo.

Yahoo has 2.4 billion searches conducted on its web site every month and 47 million people use Yahoo every day. This is no small number and even though it is not as strong a competitor as Google, it should be receive a portion of your marketing budget. As a general rule of thumb, ad dollars that are spent on Pay Per Click Advertising should be divided between Google with 60% going toward Google AdWords and 40% toward Yahoo Search Marketing.

A strategy for success should include PPC as well as organic SEO. The idea is to generate leads and convert those leads to sales. As business men and women, we must leave no stone unturned.

Increasing the visibility of your company’s web page can be achieved by implementing a Web 2.0 strategy. What is Web 2.0? Web sites such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia as well as technologies that provide blogs, podcasting and RSS feeds all comprise a part of Web 2.0.

Many of these technologies are driven by a young demographic but to ignore them would be foolish. Increasing the exposure of your web site should be a consistent ongoing campaign. Many of these teenagers and 20-somethings will eventually grow up and require a service or product that your company provides.

Creating a MySpace page for your company can help you gain an entirely different audience. This page can still be professional due to the flexibility of the MySpace Administrator Interface which allows nearly complete customization. Having this page can generate more links to your page as well as more traffic.

Creating a 30 second video advertisement can be placed on YouTube and also help gain exposure. This advertisement can explain exactly what services your company provides. YouTube is currently free and has had more than 59 million visits from web surfers. A successful featured video on YouTube can generate substantial traffic to your site as well as put a face on your company. Your site can link to this video and increase it exposure by attracting search engines that pickup on the fact that your site features video.

An About Us page on the wiki-based web site aboutus.org can help get your company name and web site out there as well as adding a link back to your site. LinkedIn.com can also be a valuable way to promote your company’s site and is also a wonderful way to network with other professionals.

1. Name all files in accordance with the topic that is presented on the page. For example, if you sell cars, name the pictures of the cars on your site by their respective names. Instead of naming them “Pic1.jpg” and “Pic2.jpg”, name them “1973-Camaro.jpg” or “New-2008-Mercedes.jpg”. The search engine will take note of this and you will attract more attention.
   
2.  Make sure that your images have descriptive alternative text. This allows browsers that do not show images, cellular phones that do not display graphics, or Search Engine Spiders to see what the image is supposed to represent.
   
3. Make sure site description and keywords listed in your Meta Tag are relevant to your site. Your description should say what your site is about. For your keywords, try to use localized phrases and not just single keywords. Instead of the keyword “lamp” for an antique lamp store in El Dorado Hills, try the phrase “Antique Lamps and Lighting in El Dorado Hills”. This wider approach will not be as popular when researching keywords but will more than likely get pertinent, localized results that may generate leads or sales.
   
4. If you have printed brochures or datasheets, obtain an electronic version from your printer. They should be able to produce a copy of it in PDF format for a minimal cost or maybe even for free. Put these electronic versions of your brochures and datasheets on your web site.
   
5. Submit your web site to Google and Yahoo once a month. It is free and it will ensure that the Search Engines find your web site sooner than later.
   
   
   
   

Creating a visually pleasing web site is nice. Creating a content-rich web site using modern advertising methods is better. This is where Search Engine Optimization and internet marketing come into play. It is not enough to have a great site and hope that people will find it. This philosophy may have been acceptable in 1996 but with the amount of information available, products being sold, and services being offered on the World Wide Web, it is crucial that your web site have the proper exposure on Google and Yahoo using SEO technology. This means formulating a marketing strategy for success on the Internet that will lead to improved search engine ranking. This can be achieved with a combination of strategies that are listed below.

• Analyze the current web site and determine what needs to be added or modified.
• Determine what keywords and phrases people search for that relate to your company and that would lead them to your web site.
• Analyze your top 10 competitor’s web sites and use that information to improve your web marketing strategy.
• Make adjustments based on analytical information provided by the initial analysis as well as using specific, traffic generating keywords from your competitor’s analysis.

Pay Per Click (PPC) is paid advertising on Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines. The way it works is simple. Advertisers bid on keywords or phrases. Depending on what the advertiser is willing to spend, their web site receives targeted placement on the search engine. The higher the bid, the better the placement. When a potential customer searches on Google for a product or service that your company offers, PPC advertisements are at the top or right side of the browser window. This type of advertising is often clicked on first due to its preferential placement over unpaid search engine results. Depending on the keyword, the cost could be from one cent per click or sometimes as much as a few dollars. The picture below has been color coded to show where the organic results (unpaid search results) and the paid advertising (Pay Per Click) are located. The green shading shows the organic search results and the red shows the Pay Per Click(PPC) results.

Depending upon how much your company has to budget for PPC per month, high ranking on Google can be almost instantaneous. The Pay Per Click system works allows companies to bid on the amount of money they are willing to spend per click. The higher your bid, the higher your web site is placed when searching for a particular keyword or phrase.

The simplest definition of Analytics is “the science of analysis”. Wikipedia

Analyzing the data from your web site will allow us to adjust and modify, in real time, your web site which will increase its visibility on search engines like Google and Yahoo. Observing where customers go and how long they stay on a particular page can help market your web site more effectively. Finding out what works and what doesn’t work will ultimately lead to a higher search engine ranking as well as more exposure thus leading to more leads and increased sales.

Monitoring how a potential customer arrives at your site will allow us to determine what marketing campaign, targeted keywords, search phrases are effective. There is no more wasting time and money hoping customers will come to your site because of particular keywords or Pay Per Click (PPC) ad campaigns. All information is reviewed daily, weekly, and monthly and changes are made to your campaign accordingly.