Web Moves Blog

Communicating with Case Studies
A few weeks ago, a couple of colleagues and I discussed a new business idea. But, we had trouble expressing how this new business would provide value.

And, out of our discussions came the idea of writing a case study. If you’re not familiar with them, case studies are histories of business initiatives.

They’re like articles, but they put the reader into the shoes of a person making a difficult decision. Other professions also use case studies; you’ve probably heard of medical case studies, for example. Medical students get a set of facts about a patient, and perhaps some background or context, and then must diagnose the patient’s condition or disease.

Business case studies have proven popular at many university business schools (with the profs, at least). In some senses, the case study is the next best thing to being involved in a real case.

Now, how is this relevant for you? Well, if you have to persuade others to adopt your point of view, or buy your products, or vote for you, then you might find a case study useful.

In fact, you may be doing something like that already. Whenever you tell a story that’s designed to make a certain point, you’re using a form of case study.

During my brief foray into life insurance sales, for example, I learned that emotion sells policies, and not logic. That’s why people in the business have a raft of stories about people who did or did not have protection when they died.

The moral, of course, is that you should not only have life insurance, but you should have the right kind, and in the right amount. Now, if you sold life insurance, you would quickly find that no one listens when you explain the logic, but they will listen — and act — if you have your case studies (your anecdotes).

So, having gone through all that, is a case study just a fancy name for an anecdote or story? Yes, to a certain extent it is.

But, when you think of a case study, think of it as a more elaborate and more logically constructed story. And, it’s usually a real-life story. To illustrate the idea further, let’s go through the steps involved in creating one.

Your case study starts by identifying a person and an organization, along with relevant information that provides context to the issue addressed in the case.

It also introduces the decision or dilemma. In many cases, the writer sets out two or more possible options. One of those options may be to do nothing, to maintain the status quo. Another option may demand significant changes, and yet a third option would require more modest changes. However you set the options, they should offer distinct choices to the reader. Don’t allow a muddling-through solution that involves easy compromises.

Now that you’ve set out the choices, provide the basic facts and opinions the reader will need to make a logical choice. Like the writer of a mystery novel, you need to provide all the critical information without giving away the solution. And like a mystery writer, you may introduce a few false trails.

As you develop the case study, keep in mind that you’re trying to convey that the person or company in the case had to make a difficult decision. And the more the reader feels that difficulty, the more effective the case.

Finally, provide an outcome if possible. Let the reader know which option the person or company chose, and how that decision worked out. After all, you’ve been telling a story, and your audience will want to know how it ended. Ideally, you would not give the reader access to the outcome until after he or she makes that decision.

In summary, you can make your point more powerfully by creating a case study, a specially constructed story that puts the reader or listener in the shoes of a decision maker.

Author Bio:
Robert F. Abbott writes and publishes Abbott’s Communication Letter. If you subscribe, you will receive, at no charge, communication tips that help you lead or manage more effectively. You can get more information here: http://www.CommunicationNewsletter.com

The ESA/T Marketing System
The reality of online marketing is getting harsher every day. Ad prices are up, conversion is down. Visitors don’t buy. Pay per click bids are insane’ but only the top ten advertisers in each category care. The rest get barely any traffic at all.

It is time to go back to the business basics. You need to focus on accountability and improving the return on your marketing investment (ROI). What’s needed is a system to help you spend less money on traffic and consistently convert more clicks into sales. Enter the ESA/T marketing system.

ESA/T, which stands for Enhance, Select, Analyze, and Test, has been used with great success for several years by a select group of online marketers.

The four-step ESA/T cycle works like this:

1. Enhance the visitor’s experience of your web site. This will ensure the traffic being driven to the site can be converted into sales and actions.
2. Select traffic sources and marketing strategies wisely.
3. Analyze your website statistics and ROI tracking data using metrics appropriate for your business.
4. Test and tweak to improve performance. Using your metrics, find what isn’t working and fix it.

These four steps can be repeated over and over in a dialectic spiral towards optimum marketing performance.

Step 1. Enhance
Before spending another dime on driving traffic to your website, you need to make sure that your visitors will land in the environment that is professional, relaxing and does not make them think twice about doing business with you.

Good website usability is a process, not a state. Never stop improving yours. If you can’t afford an industrial strength usability makeover, use baby steps. Asking your grandmother to buy something on your website and watching her do it is an excellent budget alternative. You just need to put your mind to it.

The Neilson Norman Group studied the effects of usability on e-commerce conversions. They found that web sites that went from paying no attention to usability issues to making significant usability improvements doubled their sales or more.

Step 2. Select
The next step in ESA/T cycle is ‘S’ ‘ Select your advertising sources.

Let’s look at the possible marketing and advertising strategies. These may include: Pay Per Click (PPC), pay per action, paid search inclusion, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), link exchanges, email newsletter ads, sponsorships, article writing, press releases, affiliate programs, forum postings, and offline promotions.

Your goal is to develop the marketing mix that’s just right for you. The blend that brings you the right amount of sales for the right price.

Be creative and methodical. Try an advanced search on Google to find the sites linking to your competitors. This will seed your list of possible places to advertise.

Next, develop a list of your company’s internal resources ‘ advertising budget, human resources, and time. Based on that, create a plan for working with the traffic sources from your list.

Step 3. Analyze
The next phase of the ESA/T cycle, Analyze, is about tracking and analyzing the visitor activity that’s relevant to your bottom line.

There are plenty of metrics to choose from. Be sure to avoid the ‘information glut’ and use only the metrics that will help you improve your website usability and traffic quality. Some of such metrics may include: The number of orders placed, average dollar value per order, average revenue earned per visitor, number of registrations, number of specific page views like product detail pages, time elapsed between first visit and first order, visitors’ paths through the site, and so on.

Cumulative statistics for all visitors on your site are extremely important, but in order to be truly of value, stats should be tallied for individual traffic sources so you can compare and contrast their performance.

Step 4. Test
Remember the last time you wanted to buy something online and gave up? Remember the reason why? It was likely because the checkout process was confusing, didn’t answer your questions, or just took too long.

If that website’s marketing manager used ESA/T, especially Test, you likely would have completed your purchase and would be enjoying it today. Instead, that business not only lost a sale, but likely lost you as a customer forever.

Plot a bar chart showing the number of unique visitors and page reloads at each step of your checkout process. Suppose you observe a sharp drop in the number of visitors who moved from the second to third step of the checkout. At the same time, you note a high number of page reloads at the second step. This information could mean, among other things, that there is a consistent problem with the form validation algorithm — the system keeps on throwing visitors back to the previous step in the process.

The testing and tweaking you wind up doing to improve your site, your marketing campaigns, and ultimately your ROI, will be just as individual as your business and the metrics you choose to apply to it.

Even though we presented the four stages of ESA/T in sequence, you should return often to recheck and tweak any areas that need it. Your e-business will continue to evolve so constant monitoring of its vital signs is imperative.

As you can see, improving your ROI isn’t rocket science. It’s a simple matter of understanding these four steps and applying them to your daily marketing efforts. Those already using this system are reaping the rewards.

Author Bio:
About the author: Dmitri Eroshenko is CEO of Clicklab, an advertising ROI tracking service that gives you customizable metrics, usability testing capabilities, and click fraud protection. Sign up for our complimentary online ROI Marketing Mini-course: http://www.clicklab.com

A Powerful Structure to Search Engine Marketing
In today’s extremely competitive markets, sometimes search engine marketers try to “cut corners”, in an effort to save time and a bit of money. This is perfectly understandable, given the conditions they sometimes have to face, such as tight deadlines, limited budgets and overall difficult market conditions. However, neglecting to build a strong search engine marketing structure can seriously hinder any online ad campaign.

To be truly successful, plan for an initial trial period, followed by some benchmark testing, where you will be able to carefully measure each result of your online ad campaigns.

Any company, independently of its industry, should have a carefully prepared business plan where your search engine marketing foundation is accurately reflected and equally well spelled out, down to the last detail.

To truly achieve the best overall ROI and create the most impact, both with first-time visitors to your site, as well as repeat buyers, the four most important steps to the success of any good search engine marketing structure are:

1. Mission statement
2. Unique selling points
3. Targeting the right market
4. Finally, a strong call to action

Neglect any of these four important ingredients and you are wasting your time and your resources, while giving your competitors a chance to beat you to market.

Carefully writing your mission statement
A powerful mission statement that has a lot of “punch” can be summarized as explaining your single most important benefit to a prospect or client. An easy way to write this would be to accurately describe what your company does, using only one or two sentences.

A good example to this could be: “Our company produces powerful accounting software helping Fortune 500 companies get more work done in one day, while at the same time saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars every year”. Another good example could be: “Our company designs and manufactures highly accurate automated robots used in the automotive industry”.

Note the words that are the most important in each message are highlighted and in bold. Those are strong words that will remain in your prospects memory.

What’s important to note here is that anybody that receives such a mission statement could be a potential client or industry partner. It may not be right away, but some time down the road. The important thing is that he or she gets the right message, the first time.

You should always try to keep your mission statement short and to the point. If some of these people need more information, they will ask you.

Unique selling points
In writing your unique selling points, try to think of a unique fact or feature that truly places your company above all the others. Is your product or service really superior from the ones offered by your competition? Is it offered at a lower price? Maybe the warranty lasts longer or the product can be shipped the same day.

Using powerful facts similar to these will make your prospective client realize how different your company is, and will entice them to buy from you.

What’s also important is to prioritize all your strong selling features, beginning by the ones you think are the most important.

Targeting the right market
Try to mentally select what you think would be your ideal clients or customers. You might want to look at your current ones, or maybe look at your competitor’s clients, if you are a new company.

Important demographics such as age, marital status, sex, job title or geographic region of the country can play a significant role in this critical step at targeting the right market for your products or services.

For example, if you are a real estate broker and if you are trying to sell a house to a young couple just starting out in life, chances are that their needs will be substantially different than a middle-aged couple nearing retirement.

The more information you can find out about your potential clients, the better prepared you will be at accurately targeting your right market. Always remember that strong relationships play a key role in your first sales, as well as in repeat customers. It also becomes important for referrals, since these can be the best testimonials and, what’s more, they are totally free.

A strong call to action
This last step is one of the most critical, and usually the one that many online and search engine marketers often forget. Ask yourself the ultimate question: “What do you want your visitors and prospective clients to do on your website?”

When I ask this question to people that are rather new to search engine marketing, most site owners or online marketers will usually answer they want them to buy something. While this is great and certainly very satisfying to most business owners, sometimes another call of action would be to subscribe to your free online newsletter, or perhaps to send in a request to get more information, either by mailing them a brochure or having a sales representative call them.

Finally, you should carefully review your call to actions both before, during and after you perform a keyword research, either using Wordtracker or other keyword research tools. Remember that for each call to action, your ad copy, your keywords used and your landing pages can all be changed to permanently improve your online ad campaign’s performance and ROI.

Conclusion
A good structure or solid foundation to a well-planned search engine marketing campaign can make a big difference in the overall ROI of any online marketing efforts, and will continue to yield long-term benefits if done the right way.

Planning any ad campaign without the four basic and important steps mentioned in this article would be to take unnecessary risks, both with your ROI as well as the outcome of your work. You should carefully review these four steps, both with your marketing or sales department, as well as your SEM firm if you outsource your search engine marketing to professionals.

Reference: “Search Engine Advertising” by Catherine Seda. 347 pages.
New Riders Publishing. Indianapolis, IN. 46240.

Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales

Choosing the right keywords for maximum ROI
Today, for a company or ad agency to be truly successful in search engine marketing (SEM), choosing the right keywords that people are actually typing into Overture or the other search engines can mean the difference between a very rewarding online ad campaign, or one that fails miserably.

However, it is fortunate that selecting the right keywords that will drive targeted and qualified sales leads to your website is a fairly simple exercise. Using Overture, Google’s AdWords or any other similar PPC program, marketers can easily delete keywords that don’t produce the desired results, add new ones or modify the ones that currently exist, by simply accessing their accounts at any of these search engines. Companies can even experiment with certain keywords if they so desire, in an attempt at producing the maximum ROI.

Nevertheless, the initial start-up phase still needs close observation and requires a careful monitoring of the first results. The wrong set of keywords can seriously hamper the overall success of any online ad campaign, not to mention the frustration and the waste of time and resources. Additionally, launch an ad campaign with the wrong keywords and your PPC costs can quickly drive up a bill to levels you never taught possible. If an initial campaign only attracts casual browsers or “lookers” and not serious buyers, you should carefully review all of the keywords you originally selected.

In search engine marketing, keywords fall into two very distinctive and main groups:

1. Generic keywords
2. Branded keywords

How to manage generic keywords
As a rule, managing branded keywords is usually simpler than managing generic keywords, although this doesn’t mean it’s impossible, on the contrary. If your site visitors or prospective clients aren’t familiar with the brand names or trademarks of your company, then you will have to concentrate on generic (or organic) keywords for your website.

For companies or subsidiaries that wish to expand into new market segments, even they will need to concentrate in promoting keywords that will be directly connected with their business, but that may not be names of specific trademarks, service marks or traditional brand names.

The secret in managing generic keywords is to avoid keywords that are too broad. For example, if you are in the travel industry, the keyword ‘travel’ would much too broad. Is it air travel, by car, by boat, what? You would need to narrow it down further, in an effort to avoid what is called ‘junk traffic’. Junk traffic is determined by traffic that has no value to you, but that you will still need to pay for if you rely on pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-for-performance (PFP).

Generic keywords by topics

Most likely, your website is about one single topic or subject. Usually, in any corporate website, you have one major topic, along with a few subtopics, or secondary themes. Let’s take the example of a company offering travel packages to sun-filled beaches in the south. One effective way to group subtopics and make them keywords that you can advertise could be: Caribbean Travel, Pacific Travel, Florida Travel, Gulf of Mexico Travel, etc.

What’s important to remember here is, when writing up your keywords, think of what people would type in a search engine to find that nice sunny beach. A great tool to help you with this would be Wordtracker, or the free keyword suggestion tool at Overture.

How to manage branded keywords
The best way to manage branded keywords is to start with your company name, its products, services, trademarks, service marks or brand names if you have any. Since your company is the only one using a specific trademark or brand name, a good idea is to only bid the minimum price asked by the search engine you are using. There is no sense in bidding more for it, since your brand or trademark should always be unique and exclusive to your company.

In fact, since no other company is competing for the same search terms you will be using, this just explains why well-known branded keywords deliver such high returns on investment (ROI). Still, you should make certain that your branded keywords are really being searched by people, again using Wordtracker or the free keyword suggestion tool at Overture.

Trademarks and brand names

Surprisingly, a large number of companies don’t bid on their own trademarks or brand names. In fact, I still hear a lot of executives at large Fortune 500 companies say their brand is well recognized and they don’t need to bid on them. This is a very big mistake, since they are loosing out on very targeted traffic, and what’s more, that traffic costs very little, since they should be paying the minimum acceptable bid for it.

If you don’t believe me on this, try typing some well-known trademarks or brand names in Google or Yahoo and notice the large amount of them that don’t even appear on the first results pages, in the generic (or organic) listings.

Domain names

Sadly, it may not always be possible to register a Web domain name (URL) that matches your company name, trademark, service mark or brand name. To protect your own brand, you should register all domain name extensions. For example, you should register the .com, .net, .org, .biz, etc. extensions and have them all point to your website, using a 301 re-direct command.

For example, I know for a fact that many large chemical companies usually register their domain names, as soon as a new chemical product or trademark is about to be marketed. Additionally, if they have two or three sub-products they are manufacturing, and all those sub-products will carry different brand names, they will also register all of those domain names too.

Conclusion
Choosing the right keywords in search engine marketing isn’t difficult and can be done rather quickly once you understand the basics. What’s more, carefully selecting the right keywords that real people type in search engines will significantly increase your ROI.

Gain valuable market share at the expense of your competition, and boost your sales and increase your profits by implementing the right keyword strategy in your search engine marketing. If you follow the advice offered in this article, you should be well on your way of achieving these goals.

Reference: ‘Search Engine Advertising’ by Catherine Seda. 347 pages.
New Riders Publishing. Indianapolis, IN. 46240.

Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales

What lies ahead for local search engine technology?
No topic has received as much coverage recently as that of �local search� – the ability to find search results that are targeted to a users geographical preference. Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves are all making impressive advancements with local search, but there is another company that is vying for the local search crown.

InfoSpace is best known for its search engine brands like Dogpile.com and Webcralwer.com, but the company is building a reputation for itself as a provider of local search results, while at the same time building useful applications for the mobile user. As part of Andy Beal�s continuing look at �the future of search technology�, Andy had a chance to ask Arnaud Fischer, previously AltaVista product manager from 1999-2001 and currently leading search product planning for InfoSpace’s Search & Directory division, some questions about how local search will develop in the future.

Online yellow pages and white pages
[Andy Beal] InfoSpace recently re-aligned itself to serve online yellow pages and white pages customers. Can you tell us what most excites you about this space?

[Arnaud Fischer] I am most excited about the “local search” opportunity. Inktomi, Google, and others already serve country-specific search results today and geo-targeting at a more granular level will unlock a tremendous amount of value for local advertisers, in addition to serving more relevant content to end-users. The traditional yellow pages market is roughly a $25 billion a year global industry. Many small businesses are awakening to the efficiency and predictability of online marketing, increasingly shifting marketing budgets to Web search and Internet yellow pages. Unlocking that opportunity is no easy task, though.

Internet yellow pages sites such as InfoSpace.com and Switchboard.com are working hard to deliver an end user experience that will bring more of the billions of annual print YP (yellow pages) look-ups online. With the penetration of broadband, always-on Internet connections growing and increasing adoption and use of ‘data-friendly’ mobile handsets, the print yellow pages appear to be on the verge of becoming obsolete.

Some of the challenges
[AB] What are some of the challenges search companies face with local search?

[AF] Search engines are developing ways to disambiguate and adequately address location-specific queries. Geo-targeting Web search content, both organic and paid, requires search engines to better understand users and queries, inferring local intent by extracting geo-signals and leveraging implicit and explicit user profiles. Taking local search marketing services to market is also very different than selling paid listings to online businesses. The vast majority of local businesses still don’t have a Web site, nor the time and expertise to invest in managing sophisticated auction-type listing campaigns.

Paid inclusion services
[AB] There’s been a lot of discussion recently about paid inclusion services, where do you see advancements coming in this area?

[AF] Search marketing should keep evolving very fast this year. Although pay-per-click platforms have expanded match type flexibility, campaign targeting is growing beyond keyword analyses to include geo-targeting and day-parting. Search engines are leveraging smarter linguistic technology, concept extraction and contextual categorization, to optimize targeting of paid content, improving on relevancy, conversion rates and increase advertisers’ ROI. While advertisers might be losing control over guaranteed placement over time, paid search has made budgeting for traffic-generation programs increasingly predictable. Effectiveness metrics are evolving from impression counts, and click-through conversion rates to more sophisticated return on investment (ROI) methodologies. Some engines already provide advertisers with tools to calculate conversion rates from impressions to orders and ROI metrics.

Overture and Google go one step further, suggesting forecasted traffic levels and cost estimates for specific keyword combinations, match types and bid amounts. In a yield-driven context, where content targeting gets more sophisticated and matching more scientific, Paid Inclusion and Paid Listing programs will eventually merge into more automated bid-for-traffic models. Ultimately, advertisers will target impressions by dictating an ROI level acceptable to them such as “8% over advertising spend”. To meet these requirements, search engine marketers will increasingly rely on automation tools to target the right content to the right users at the right location at the right time.

Beyond the next few months
[AB] Let�s look beyond the next few months, what advancements do you see in the coming years?

[AF] One of the most significant developments currently underway in web search is the integration of search capabilities within a broad range of other services. Increasingly, this trend in creating a new competitive arena in web Search that is forcing established providers to adopt new strategies and creating new market opportunities.

As the #1 web application, search is becoming more ubiquitous as technology and business models mature. We are seeing more ISPs adding search capability to their portals; we are seeing more newspapers and community-type portals integrating local search and Yellow Page offerings as well, in order to retain users on their properties, and leverage what has become a very profitable business model.

InfoSpace has long offered its web search and online directory capabilities on a private-label basis that allows our distribution partners such as Verizon, ABCNews, FoxNews, and Cablevision to deliver these services under their own brand. The increasing level of search activity occurring at popular destination sites like these has been a key component of InfoSpace’s growth over the past year. In January, we announced that distribution revenue accounted for over half of InfoSpace’s search-related revenue in the fourth quarter of 2003.

The next big thing
[AB] We hear in the news that desktop search is going to be the next “big thing”, who do you see as being the key contributors to this area of search?

[AF] Both Microsoft Longhorn and IBM WebFountain will eventually make search a lot more transparent and integrated to end-users’ broader task-centric activities.

The Microsoft Longhorn operating system will have a significant impact on the overall information retrieval discipline and how users search. Microsoft is building centralized storage architecture around the next version of Windows that will make it much easier for end-users to retrieve locally stored information, no matter which application was originally used to author it. The subjective nature of users’ intent when formulating queries is complex. A better understanding of the task surrounding a search could make strides into serving more relevant results. The desktop and associated applications add a level of understanding of the user context that a browser cannot match. You could envision a world where users working on a document in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, get presented relevant related content leveraging text analytic technologies extracting concepts and themes of the document being worked on in real time. This is query-less search, relevant, in your face, all the time, without user interaction.

IBM has also been quietly working on the next generation of search technology focusing more on text analytic solutions, leveraging what some call the “Semantic Web”, including natural language processing, statistics, probabilities, machine learning, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence. IBM’s WebFountain technology goes beyond crawling and indexing the Web for the mere purpose of returning relevant links for a given queries. The technology actually tries to make sense of massive amounts of structured and un-structured content, extracting knowledge from the Web, Intranets, chat rooms, message boards, blogs, to isolate insightful and timely information that is not readily perceptible or available today. Applications could include identifying trends, monitoring brand perception, competitive activities, and monitoring other concept-specific “buzz”.

Commercial searches and informational searches
[AB] Let’s look at commercial searches and informational searches; do you see the two becoming distinct categories?

[AF] No. A central theme behind classical information retrieval theories is that users are driven by an information need. More granular search log analyses over the past years have attempted to categorize queries as “transactional” (Commercial), “informational”, and “navigational”. The immediate intent behind “navigational” queries is to reach a particular site; “informational” queries aim at acquiring information assumed to be present on web pages; while “transactional” queries usually result in some activity such as an online purchase. Andrei Broder, while chief scientist officer at AltaVista in the late 90’s demonstrated that queries at the time were roughly split equally among each category.

We don’t live in a binary world where queries (or content) are either inherently commercial or purely informational. The commercial-informational dichotomy looks more like a spectrum to me, where understanding user intent and the psychology of purchasing cycle is critical. The definitions behind commercial and informational content are fuzzy and personal; content perceived as purely commercial by some might be informational to others and vice versa. Clearly, the query “1819 treaty manuscript” could be considered “informational” in nature, but leading to a book purchase at Amazon about the United States-Spain treaty of 1819, or even the schedule of a trip to Spain or Florida.

[AB] So what’s the answer?

[AF] In focus groups, users have told us unequivocally that they would much prefer a search engine display an array of content types that may be relevant to their query, rather than try to guess what their intent was. Users also appreciate having tools available to help them narrow their results. Based in part of this feedback, InfoSpace worked with Vivisimo last year to deploy a ‘Refine Your Results’ feature on our three owned and operated search properties — Dogpile, WebCrawler sand Metacrawler. The feature automatically organizes and groups results by category for every search, providing a comprehensive view of web search results and allowing users to more rapidly get to the information most relevant to them. For example, a search on “flowers” groups results into subcategories such as delivery, gardening, arts and crafts, and more.

Reduced privacy and search habit monitoring
[AB] If search engine users gave up a little of their privacy and allowed their search habits to be monitored, would this allow the search engines to provide better, customized results?

[AF] There is no doubt that sharing personal data with search engines would result in better individual search experiences. The quality of search results is a function of two sets of variables: i) the user query and ii) the content indexed. Search engines are constantly crawling and indexing more web pages, more often, leveraging better entity extraction and concept recognition techniques, inferring document relationships in smarter ways. An enhanced understanding of user intents would certainly unlock more value from this semantic understanding of Web content.

Link analysis and other “off-the-page” ranking criteria have played an increasing role in relevancy algorithms over the past years. Monitoring navigation behavior at a user-level could conceivably be the basis to developing an understanding of users’ individual interests over time, in essence personalizing the equivalent of Google’s PageRank scores. If you consistently browse music-related content, search engines should become smart enough to understand that your query “Prince” most probably relates to the singer than to the royal family. Personalizing search relevancy algorithms presents some major scalability and performance challenges, though. It takes days, if not weeks to process link analyses and compute authority scores for individual Web sites after a crawl.

Privacy fears
[AB] Do you think search engine users will balk due to privacy fears?

[AF] Privacy concerns are certainly legitimate to some extent. I actually see some parallel between users� reluctance to using their credit card online in the early e-commerce days and giving up personal information to search engines today. It�s a constant trade-off between privacy concerns and the added value extracted from that data.

In the meantime, IP-sniffing technology might take search engines a step closer to personalizing search results without requiring users to compromise on very personal information. IP-analytic software associate internet-connected devices to geographic areas, domains (.com, .edu, and .gov), ISPs, connection speed and browser types with some level of confidence. Analyzing click popularity at an aggregate level along IP-associated parameters could be leveraged to extrapolate personalized ranking for clusters of users exhibiting similar behaviors. This technique would not be unlike Amazon�s implementation of collaborative filtering technology, in essence also reaching similar goals than social networks such as Eurekster.

Search on cell phones?
[AB] InfoSpace also offers wireless data applications. Do you think that search has a future on a cell phone?

[AF] Sending local content such as yellow page listings, directions, maps and business ratings to mobile devices just makes sense. I remember looking up on my cellular phone the nearest ice-cream parlor from the park a couple years ago with my kid. It worked! The experience was far from optimal, though, scrolling through about 10 to 15 screens I could barely read. Personalization features, geo-based services, faster networks, better handset resolution and color displays should significantly improve the experience over time. The navigation schema, whether search or browse modes, will be critical to make cellular phones a viable platform for both end-users and IYP advertisers. About 90% of mobile phones will be Web-enabled by 2006, making it a more attractive platform for content providers, developers, and information architects to invest time on.

The opportunity to deliver Web search and online directory information to mobile devices is something InfoSpace is well positioned to capitalize on. InfoSpace was a wireless data pioneer in the US and our mobile division today powers wireless data applications for every major US provider with the exception of Nextel. Going forward, we see a significant opportunity to increasingly combine our mobile and search and directory assets to accelerate the adoption of thee services on wireless devices.

[AB] Thanks Arnaud for taking the time to share with us your thoughts on the future of search!

Author Bio:
Andy Beal is Vice President of Search Marketing for WebSourced, Inc and KeywordRanking.com, global leaders in professional search engine marketing. Highly respected as a source of search engine marketing advice, Andy has had articles published around the world and is a repeat speaker at Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Strategies conferences. Clients include Real.com, Alaska Air, Peopleclick, Monica Lewinsky and NBC. You can reach Andy at andy@keywordranking.com and view his daily SEO blog at www.searchenginelowdown.com.

Is Your Search Engine Optimized Content Working?
In the past, most savvy website owners recognized the value of strong, compelling content; they appreciated the importance of copy that commands attention and persuades visitors with reason and with art to buy something or take a particular action.

But there’s a change happening. With the growing importance of search engine optimization, many e-businesses have shifted their content priorities. Satisfying the needs of human visitors has taken a back seat to keyword cramming and the scramble for higher search engine positioning.

And this has lead to some stilted and dysfunctional web content.

Search engine copywriting should help improve rankings, deliver traffic, AND convert it. Too many website owners employ search engine copywriting with the sole objective of driving traffic to the site. Period.

Then they cut that traffic loose to fend for itself. All those eager-to-buy prospects are dumped on the doorstep, facing a home page that offers them:

-No enticing headline.
-No benefit-driven, you-oriented sales message.
-No pitch explaining what makes this product or service superior.
-No irresistible call to action.

These visitors are clearly not getting the information or the motivation they need to make a buying decision. What they get instead is keyword-stuffed text that screams out, “Hey Google, spider this!” As a result, the site may get traffic but minimal or no increase in sales.

When it comes to search engine copywriting, doing half a job is worse than not doing it at all because you’ve wasted money on traffic that isn’t generating revenues and the substandard copy is damaging your company’s credibility in the process.

If you want to ensure that your web content is optimized correctly and that you will actually be in a position to convert some sales, here is a checklist to run on your copy after the keywords have been written in:

1. Does your optimized content offer useful information that’s compelling, informative, and easy to understand?

2. Does it flow naturally or are the keyword phrases stuffed in beyond the point of sense and sensibility?

3. Does your content obey the first commandment of good copy: “Thou shalt put thy customer before thyself.” In other words, does it talk benefits (“This is how we can help you”) or just glitzy features (“Look at me, look at me!”)

4. Could a first-time visitor arrive at your home page and be clearly guided to the information he/she seeks without getting lost or confused? Content is vital to successful usability.

5. Does each web page include enticing headings/subheadings and clear, persuasive body copy, wrapped up with a strong call to action (a link to another page, an invitation to make contact, or a buy button)?

In short, your optimized web content should adhere to the standards of good marketing communications that were selling products long before we became fixated on search engines. Because professional search engine copywriting never forgets that humans – not spiders – make the buying decisions.

To find out if your search engine copy is working at both levels, contact me for a complimentary website content analysis.

Author Bio:
Get a FREE website content analysis on your site with customized tips to make your content more compelling and search engine friendly. e-mail to heather@thewritecontent.com or visit http://www.thewritecontent.com/freereport.html

Value of a Keyword
A ‘keyword’ or ‘keyword phrase’ is a word or combination of words that people type into search engines to find what they are looking for. The search engines search the Internet for webpages containing that particular keyword or keyword phrase. The pages are then ranked and scored using a mathematical formula and with the results displayed to the user as a list in order of most relevant to least relevant.

Properly utilized keywords can provide a great Return on Investment (ROI). Thus, it is very important to gauge the costs associated with marketing a keyword to its potential value to your business. Money spent on a keyword should be proportionate to its perceived value (either monetary or knowledge based) to your company. You do not need to spend a lot of money on a keyword phrase, but its value to you and your competitors is proportionate to its potential income. Some companies generate large amounts of revenue from specific keywords.

Determining the value of a keyword ahead of time is very difficult, and its value will change as your markets and competitors change. A quick guide would be to take the average bid of the top 5-listings on Overture or Google Adwords. These are a good starting point since both are very popular and a higher percentage of businesses make money by using them. There are also tools available that can you can use to get a more accurate gauge for the value of a keyword but most of these can only be utilized once you have some listings for your keywords.

The following formula can be used as a guide to calculating keyword value:
((estimated number searches per month) X (average cost per click on Overture) X (average click potential percentage)) = (keyword value for 1-month) Unfortunately, there are a number of flaws with this calculation as the first 3-variables are estimations/ judgments. Nonetheless, it can be used to compare one keyword against another to gain a grasp of its worth.

Profits and Visitors
Increasing the number of visitors does not guarantee increased sales. Thus, getting high rankings based on generic keywords may not actually be beneficial to a business. Keywords need to be specific to your business so that the right customers are directed to your website. Generic keywords deliver a higher level of value to certain businesses and much less to others. For example, a search for “community college” would result in higher keyword value for colleges that have campuses all over the US or offers on-line courses than for a local college in say, Grand Rapids, Iowa or any other local college. The reason is simple; very few people living outside of the local college’s specific region will actually be looking to attend there.

In the above example, the keyword phrase “community college Grand Rapids” would hold a much greater value for the college because it is more focused and directed towards the people who are mostly likely to attend the college. This becomes apparent when you look at the actual conversion rates of visitors to the website. The rates will show that the greatest numbers of conversions were for the people who lived in and around the Grand Rapids area. As such, the college stands to reap greater profit from the targeted keyword than from the generic one. Hence, it is very important to look at the value a keyword holds for your business than just the number of people searching for it.

This is what the numbers look like if we apply the previously mentioned formula to the case of the above college. Say there were 13,956 searches for “grand rapid community colleges” on Overture with an average bid of $0.10 per-click. Its calculation would be (13,956 X $0.10 X 5% = $69.78 per-month). For “community colleges” there were 80,244 searches on Overture with an average bid of $0.85 per-click. Its calculation would be (80,244 X $0.85 X 5% = $3,410.37 per-month). Now, that value looks ridiculously high! Could it possibly be worth that much? That’s difficult to say, but it could be -to the right business.

When you consider that there are hundreds of colleges in the US, it is easy to understand that the conversion rate for the keyword phrase “community college” is going to be fairly low while its marketing cost is going to be much higher. On the other hand “grand rapid community college” is very targeted making its conversion rate much higher and its marketing cost much lower. Therefore, it would cost less to promote the targeted keyword, and at the same time get better conversion rates than using a generic keyword.

Keyword Relevancy Is The Key!
Promoting the right keywords is essential to attaining a good ROI. Finding the right keywords to promote requires research, and the development of proper content to support them. Once again there are tools available to help do your research but there coming up with the good content is up to you. Or you could work with a search engine optimization (SEO) firm that can work with you to develop a SEO strategy for your business. Promoting specific and relevant keywords allows businesses to promote more keywords and make more profit and that�s why the value of a keyword is something that should not be taken lightly.

Author Name: Chris Genge
Company: 1st on the List Promotion Inc

Author Bio:
Chris Genge is the President of 1st on the List Promotion Inc, a professional website promotion firm. He writes on current and emerging search engine marketing theories. Chris has been involved in the SEO industry since its very early days, and has since 1997, focused on researching and implementing the most effective search engine optimization techniques.

A Network Of Web Sites Is Not Enough!
The big thing these days is your ability to capture the market. So how do you do that?

Do you…

1) Use spam tactics?
2) Have a massive banner campaign?
3) Spends lots of money of PPC Advertising?
4) Build a huge web site?
5) Link to everyone in the world?

or do you…

6) Own a network of more than one web site? – Thinking that your network will help your search engine rankings since you can control your own link popularity!

#6 is starting to be the norm out there. Companies are just consuming a mass amount of domain names in order to increase their chances of being found online.

But does it really increase their chances? Let’s see…

Since recently, Google has been crawling through “DNS”information in order to sniff out who owns what. So for instance, if you own 20 web sites, google will find that out by the information you have on all the registered domains.

Given that you own these 20 web sites, doesn’t that give you the ability to create your own high page ranking, link popularity building campaign? Answer is yes, so what happens from that? Absolutely nothing. Nothing happens to increase your rankings I mean.

For instance, let’s say you are trying to build everything off of one mainly large web site of yours. Let’s also say that you intend to link to site #2 for this key phrase “Boosting Rankings”. You’ve done a lot of work to add that title and link pointing to site #2 on all of your pages within your one, main, larger site. Here’s what happens to your rankings for both of them.

It is known now that google has come up with this “Sandbox” effect. This is simply known as keeping an eye on certain network of web sites and the targeted key phrases they are after.

So your site #1 isn’t the target of this sandbox effect, it’s your smaller, networked web site that is. Instead of getting any type of rank for the phrase “Boosting Ranking”, this site is added to a pool of web sites that are doing the same thing. The catch is that this “pool” is nowhere to be found, unless you know how to look for it.

On the other hand, your main, large web site will now take over the ranking for “Boosting Ranking” and will probably do pretty good within a search!!!

So does owning a network really help you? NO, not unless you know how to better your “smaller”, network web sites so that they don’t get caught in this “Sandbox Effect”.

So how do you do that?

Simple, instead of relying on your network to boost your page ranking, outsource some of that strategy elsewhere. See, “Google” is only saying, if we don’t do this to your network, then it gives you the sole ability to control your search engine rankings for all your sites. We are merely stating that we know you have a network and worked really hard to build it but we also want you to promote other peoples sites as well.

It’s that simple. If you start today and keep building more links on other peoples web sites with your network, your entire network should see a big difference within 30 days of starting.

I hope this article helps you out!

Author Bio:
Martin R. Lemieux Smartads – President Affordable Web Site Design & Web Site Marketing Web Site Awards & Webmasters Playground Food for your mind & Entrepreneur Traits Read over 200 articles on advertising!

Building A Mailing List
In most every business building a loyal client base is important to the overall success of your business. Internet marketing is no exception. In order to build your client list you need to capture email addresses from prospects that either sign up to receive your newsletter or buy a product or service from your website.

One of the most important elements of building your mailing list is that you build a trust relationship with your prospect. According to The National Sales Executive Association 80% of sales are made after the 5th contact with a potential client or customer. So this should tell you that you need to have quality content in your newsletter so the prospect will stick around to receive your newsletter past the 5th attempt. Another good thing about building your mailing list is that you can notify your prospects about up coming events or special offers you may be working on or know would be of interest to the prospect.

Let�s examine some of the different ways in which you may be able to build your mailing list.

Pop Up Ads
If you have surfed the web for anything you have undoubtedly found a site or two that use pop up ads to promote various ideas and opportunities. Most internet marketers use pop ups to capture prospects emails for there newsletters or promotions. Recently, a new type of pop up is being used, it�s called a pop over or hover ad that just appears on your site and will not be blocked by various pop up blockers that are installed in the google toolbar and the like.

These type of ads are very good for promoting your newsletter. The prospect signs up using there name and email address and are automatically add to your autoresponder.

Website Forms
If for whatever reason you do not want to use a pop up ad you can create a subscription form on your website that will accomplish the same purpose. Write up an ad that promotes your newsletter and the benefit to your prospect and give them the opportunity to sign up that way. Using subscription forms and pop ups are great if you have a lot of targeted traffic to your website.

Lead Services
Lead and subscription services offer you the opportunity to get a prospects name and email address. These are usually people looking to start a home business. You write an ad about your newsletter, advertise it with the subscription service and prospects sign up to receive it. There are plenty of companies that offer these types of services for various amounts of money. You buy a certain amount of prospects each month and they get delivered to your autoresponder where you have your newsletter. I would suggest trying as many of these services as possible. It is to hard to say which company offers the best leads, so using multiple companies will at the very least build your mailing list.

E-Zine Ads
You may want to place ads in other peoples newsletters or e-zines. Depending on the number of subscribers prices range from $10.00 to over $100.00. Once again you write an ad about the benefits of your newsletter and submit it to an e-zine owner. You may be able to get your ad for free if you make a joint venture with an e-zine owner and swap ads.

These are just some of the ways you can use to build up you mailing list. However, none of these methods will work unless you offer a newsletter with unique content that a potential client will want to read.

Good luck!

Author Bio:
Dirk Wagner is CEO and owner of http://team4success.biz and the free, easy to install #1 home business toolbar with automated updates.A website dedicated to helping the home-based business entrepreneur start and succeed with there very own home-based business.

Writing For The Internet
Writing for the Internet, whether you call it e-copy, web copy, web text, or website content� is essentially a craft.

Ordinary Writing With A Job To Do
Most websites contain text copy written primarily for the benefit of the visitor. Websites however, really have two very different audiences: people and search engine-indexing spiders. Both require a different style of writing and yet both need to be addressed by the writing. While this may be best left to the talents of a professional web content writer, for now I will explore some basic rules that technical writers use for crafting their writing to serve both.

If it means business, then your writing should attempt to grab the reader’s attention quickly and it must be engaging enough to keep them reading until you have successfully led them take some form of action.

Writing For The Two Audiences
In reality, it is perhaps more important that your website copy satisfy the needs of the search engines. After all, in order to become visible to your second audience (the visitor) your website must first receive adequate ranking by your first audience (the search engines) and be listed near the top of the listing results� preferably within the first two pages.

Let’s first consider your website’s second audience, the visitor.
Most website visitors come looking for something specific and they want it fast so your website better deliver.

Writers must clarify their goals and understand the purpose of the website. The site’s “unique selling proposition” or USP, must be in line with the visitor’s purpose for being there. Writers must know the type of person being targeted and then write in a conversational style that is simple and direct.

Concise Writing & Clear Headings Help Visitors We tend to read differently from computer screens than from other offline print mediums. Basically we don’t read� we skim read, ignoring details to better our reading speed. For this reason website text content must be more objective, more concise and easier to browse through. The message must be written so it can be easily scanned.

Every word on the page must fight for its rightful place and stay true to that old adage “less is more.” The opening statement must first solve the visitor’s problem. The body of the page should then list the benefits, not the features.

Writers ask how the product or company features translate into customer benefits. What are the benefits for the visitor is choosing this product or service? Navigating through web page content must also be intuitive for the visitor. What works best are proven layout formats and conventions that most visitors easily understand.

Closing statements must offer an effortless “call to action” using the easiest, most direct route for the visitor to take, to get what they came for. The call to action must be clear-cut with rewards that are irresistible and reaffirms for the visitor why this is something they need.

Satisfy Your Site’s First Audience�The Search Engines For most, this is a hidden problem when it comes to crafting their writing. What the search engines want is completely different from what visitors are looking for.

Search engine indexing spiders work primarily with text, visible HTML text that is. They simply cannot read flash, JavaScript, graphical text, etc. Your web page text copy must therefore be placed within the html coding so that it is more accessible to the search engine spiders, more “search engine friendly” if you will. But just as text copy must be properly placed within the html coding in order conform to the needs of the search engines, the writing itself, also needs to be “search engine friendly”.

The writing needs to be keyword rich with relevant content that supports the keyword phrases being targeted within the page. When a searcher types in a “keyword phrase” the search engine tries to match up web pages in the order that it thinks is the most relevant to the searcher’s request. Essentially, the search engine scans through its database looking for web pages that contain the keywords used by the searcher. Using an algorithm (a mathematical formula based on hundreds of pre-set criteria) it then ranks the web pages from those deemed most relevant to those deemed least relevant.

Web page copy must therefore be written to satisfy the “keyword criteria” needs of the search engines in order to be ranked at the top of the listing results. Web pages that consistently maintain high rankings are usually constructed with excellent keyword rich html text on static pages.

“Search Engine Friendly” Copy -Giving Search Engines What They Want Professional web content writers understand this and write keyword rich text content that satisfies the needs of the search engines while still being valid for the visitor.

Once they research and understand what phrases visitors are using to find what a site is offering, they choose their keyword phrases carefully. Each page is then written to be content rich around a theme that supports a main targeted keyword. Inevitably writers will use variations of a keyword phrase (or other less compelling keyword phrases that relate to a particular theme) and work them into the copy as well.

Search engines look at a variety of criteria as they relate to keyword phrases including keyword frequency, weight, prominence, proximity and placement within the text and within the html. While each search engine has its own criteria there are a few accepted norms for keyword placement within the text content and within the html coding. It is the writers’ responsibility to understand and utilize these norms.

Spam techniques like hidden layers or hidden text should be avoided to protect your site from being penalized or banned all together. While individual pages should contain unique content they still must work to support the targeted keyword phrases throughout the site.

Conclusion
Use Writing That Makes Both People And Search Engines Happy Writing for the Internet is a craft that has its own style and set of rules and peculiarities� especially, when it is trying to address both people and search engines. As such, it is imperative that your content be well written/ crafted to satisfy these two distinctly different audiences.

Remember, before it can convert visitors into clients, your website must first satisfy the needs of its first audience, the search engines, and achieve top rankings with them so that it can become more visible to your second audience, the searcher� your customer.

Author Bio:
Chris Genge is the President of 1st on the List Promotion Inc, a professional website promotion firm. He writes on current and emerging search engine marketing theories. Chris has been involved in the SEO industry since its very early days, and has since 1997, focused on researching and implementing the most effective search engine optimization techniques.