Small Business Website Design & Marketing Help by ProNet USA

Tips from Google AdSense

2011-11-23T04:37:00.000-08:00

The below was sent to me by Google AdSense.

Hi there,

As the holiday season approaches, advertisers are preparing new campaigns and internet traffic is likely to increase. To help you take advantage of this, in this issue, we've put together the top tips for making your site more visible. You’ll also find updates on:

* Improving page load speed in DFP Small Business
* Using Google+ Pages for brands and businesses

Make your site more visible!

Be relevant
Do you know how users find your pages? Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed information on the top queries for which your site ranks in Google search results. Use this information to make sure that the content users find most interesting is most prominent.

Be social
As we mentioned in our last newsletter, by implementing the +1 button on your pages, you can give users an opportunity to share their opinion with you and guide you to what is most interesting for them on your site. Webmaster Tools now also allows you to track the search impact of +1’s on your pages.

Be fast
A faster site increases user satisfaction, so speed is an important factor in the Google search ranking. Page Speed Online analyzes the content of a web page and generates suggestions to make that page faster. Let Maile Ohye from the Developers Program Team tell you more about the importance of your site’s performance:
Site Speed Performance For Webmasters (VIDEO)

Check how fast your website loads !

UpDates:
Google+ Pages for businesses and brands
Google+ Pages are a way for brands and businesses to have a presence on Google+. Pages bring you closer to your audience, letting you have real conversations with the right people, connecting you face to face with your site’s visitors, and letting current fans recommend new ones.

Giving your business a home on Google+ lets you directly interact with your users, while giving them more chances to share your content with their friends. Create a page today and connect with your audience!

I hope the above information is of help to you.

Anthony,
Your Internet website marketing partner at ProNetUSA.com

Yahoo Site Explorer Coming Offline

2011-11-23T04:20:00.000-08:00

The below information as received from Majestic SEO.

Yahoo Site Explorer was launched in September 2005 to mixed acclaim but became the main source of link analysis data in the world for several years. It is now being retired as we speak and its architect, Tim Mayer laments its demise.

Majestic SEO does not – and never has – used Yahoo’s data. Whilst we expect an increase in the Free services that Majestic offers as a result of this closure, we have already planned for this eventuality within our infrastructure and see no issues in handling the increased traffic to our site.

Majestic crawls the web independently of any search engines and we surpassed Yahoo’s data set many years ago.

We would like to say thank you to Yahoo for Yahoo Site Explorer’s contribution to Internet Marketers everywhere.

I hope the above information has been of help to you.

Anthony,
Your Internet website marketing partner at ProNetUSA.com

Web Page tips from Google

2011-11-09T05:57:00.000-08:00

UpDates:
Google+ Pages for businesses and brands
Google+ Pages are a way for brands and businesses to have a presence on Google+. Pages bring you closer to your audience, letting you have real conversations with the right people, connecting you face to face with your site’s visitors, and letting current fans recommend new ones.

Giving your business a home on Google+ lets you directly interact with your users, while giving them more chances to share your content with their friends. Create a page today and connect with your audience!

Anthony,
Your Internet website marketing partner at ProNetUSA.com

Google+1 button will begin to appear on AdSense for Content and AdSense for Mobile Content

2011-09-21T18:43:00.000-07:00

As received from Google on 9-21-2011

"Hello,

In the next month, we'll introduce the +1 button and personal recommendations to display ads. The +1 button will begin to appear on AdSense for Content and AdSense for Mobile Content display ad formats -- image, animated gif, and Flash. +1s will be one additional signal to help determine an ad's relevance and we'll continue to show the ads that will generate the most revenue for you.

We previously launched the +1 button on Google search and for publisher sites to make it easier for people to share and discover content across the web. Soon, your users will be able to endorse specific ads and make the ads more likely to appear to their social connections. We believe that these recommendations could help your readers notice ads on your site more, leading to higher returns for you over time.

If you prefer not to show the +1 buttons on display ads on your pages, you can opt out in your account. For more information please visit the Inside AdSense blog.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense team"

+1 gets conversations going. Click the +1 button to give something your public stamp of approval. Then, if you want to share right away, add a comment and send it to the right circles on Google+.

The next time your friends and contacts search on Google, they could see your +1. You’ll help them find the best stuff on the web – and you might just start up another conversation!

Click here to go to Google+

Anthony,
Your Internet website marketing partner at ProNetUSA.com

Google Analytics Time on Site, Length of Visit and Bounces

2011-09-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

Bounce as described by Google;
“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.”

OPINION Comment
To know how long a visitor has spent on a web page Google needs two things:

1 ) The time you arrived on a specific web page
2 ) The time you requested another web page on the SAME website.
Read # 2 again… “The time you requested another web page on the SAME website.” You have Google Analytics installed on your web site but if the visitor leaves your website for another page for any one of the following reasons; entering an URL in the address bar, closing the browser, clicking on advertisement or an outgoing “self target” link etc… Google Analytics does NOT get triggered again and it cannot calculate the time on that page. So… it defaults to 00:00:00.
Therefore in theory someone could land on a web page and stay on that web page for 10 minutes and get the info they were looking for, then close the browser and Google will count as 00:00:00 time and that equals as a bounce.

How to view your BOUNCE RATE?
If you have a Google Analytics account connected to your website you can view the bounce rates for your website by going to the Bounce Rate report under Visitors > Visitor Trending > Bounce Rate.

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Time on Site as described by Google;
“Time on Site: Time on site is one way of measuring visit quality. If visitors spend a long time visiting your site, they may be interacting extensively with it. However, Time on site can be misleading because visitors often leave browser windows open when they are not actually viewing or using your site.”

OPINION Comment
This method of calculating Time on Site is also not 100% accurate because even the reported time on site is faulty to begin with. Time on Site is nothing but the sum of Avg. Time on Page for all web pages. And we know that the reported Time on Page is not 100% accurate because Google Analytics does not record time spent on page for exits and bounces.

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Length of Visit as described by Google;
“Length of Visit (Visitor Behavior): Length of visit is a measure of visit quality. A large number of lengthy visits suggests that visitors interact more extensively with your site. The graph allows you to visualize the entire distribution of visits instead of simply the ‘Average Time on Site’ across all visits. Keep in mind that ‘Average Time on Site’ is skewed by visitors leaving browser windows open when they are not actually viewing or using your site. You can see whether a few visits are skewing your ‘Average Time on Site’ upward or whether most visits to your site have a high average time.”

OPINION Comment
The only way for someone to register a visit for more than 0 seconds is if they go to a SECOND page. The reason for this is that Google Analytics can only tell how long someone has been there if they have more than one page view – it uses the timestamps (date and time record) of each page view and “subtracts” them to get the time that someone was on one page. For this reason; you will not know how long someone stays on the FIRST and only page visited and you will never know how long someone was truly on your site because you can’t tell how long they were looking at the LAST page they were on (in both instances there isn’t a next page for Google Analytics to subtract time from).

Till the next time,
Anthony,
Your Website Marketing Partner and Friend at ProNetUSA - WebSites and Internet Marketing

Website load speed affects search engine rankings ?

2011-08-02T11:11:00.001-07:00

Site speed - how long it takes a web page to load and show up for people in a web browser window - is now one of Google's ranking factors. That means Google takes site speed into account when deciding how high a site should show up in search results. Very slow sites will have a much harder time beating out its competitors.

If visitors have to wait too long for your site to load, they're more likely to leave quickly, and less likely to do what you want them to do - like buy your product or service, contact you for a quote, sign up for your newsletter, or download your e-book.

Check how fast your website loads !

You can test how long it takes your site to load with various tools. One favorite is Pingdom's site speed test, and Google also has the new Google Page Speed Online tool. If you use Google Webmaster Tools, look under "Labs" and click "Site Performance."

What's considered slow?

In my opinion, a website that loads within 2 seconds is doing well. A site that loads in 2 to 4 seconds isn't really fast, but is acceptable if you have a bunch of relative information on the web page.

A website that takes more than 5 seconds or more to load is likely to push potential visitors on to the next web page viewing option which could very well be your competitors, and may be suffer a lower ranking. If your site takes more than 7 seconds to load, you really need to speed it up.

For more information on how to improve your site speed,

read AboutUs's 6 Easy Ways To Improve Your Site Speed, for SEO.

Till the next time,
Anthony,
Your Website Marketing Partner and Friend at ProNetUSA - WebSites and Internet Marketing

External backlinks (inbound links for Google Page Rank)

2011-08-01T14:51:00.000-07:00

External backlinks are the most focused-on off web page aspect of SEO. Backlinks (or “inbound links”) are a fundamental pillar of search engine optimization. On-page optimization is limited in scope — there is only so much you can do with on-page optimization. The rest of your rankings will rely heavily on your off web page backlinks and how many pages and the quality of those pages that are linking into your web page(s).

Webmasters tend to keep track of Page Rank, which helps in measuring the effectiveness of backlinks to their website or blog. The biggest question is how many backlinks do you need to move your page rank up. It’s not only the amount of backlinks, but the quality of those backlinks as well

Although nobody can determine the exact Google PageRank values, the table below gives a fair representation of how many backlinks, of certain PageRank values are required to achieve a certain Google PageRank.

I know a lot of people don’t know what it takes to increase their Page Ranking using backlinks. Here’s a good graph to help explain to you how many backlinks are needed for that highly sought after page rank increase.

Till the next time,
Anthony,
Click here to page rank chart.

Encouraging Customer Reviews: Tips to Get People Talking About Your Small Business

2011-07-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

Small businesses have the opportunity to make a name for themselves as something really special. Soliciting customer feedback can play a crucial role in building this reputation. Here are some customer feedback tips to keep in mind as you encourage your own customers to review your business:

1)Give your customers a reason to review your business or service. Offer them a coupon or discount off their next purchase if they go to Google, Yelp, Citysearch, EZlocal or any other online internet directory and leave a review.

2)Link your business directory profiles from your own website to your specific directories. Don't count on customers tracking down your online directory listing. Add links to your website for each profile and further encourage customers to go leave reviews.

3) Encourage a constant stream of reviews. Keep the reviews trickling in, this serves two important purposes. First, it looks better. If you are visiting a profile whose reviews are all clustered around 3 or 4 dates, it looks questionable, a little bit planned and spammy. A constant stream of reviews spread across all dates looks much better and will build more trust with potential customers.

4) Don't discourage less than perfect reviews. We don't live in a perfect world and no one expects your business to bat 1.000. In fact, if your business has nothing but 5-star reviews across the board it might strike consumers as a bit suspect, is anybody that perfect? Also, negative reviews offer a golden opportunity for you to prove yourself, to go above and beyond. The Consumerist actually has an entire category dedicated to incidences where businesses stepped up and made things right after something went wrong.

The strength of small businesses often lies in customer service and attention to detail. If a bad review falls on your doorstep, rejoice—you have a chance to showcase your talents and turn a negative review into a positive experience, something they will be impressed with and tell their friends about. This word of mouth will prove to be incredibly valuable to your business.

Till the next time,
Anthony,
Your Website Marketing Partner and Friend at ProNetUSA - WebSites and Internet Marketing

Icann increases web domain suffixes / dot extensions

2011-06-20T07:33:00.000-07:00

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) plans to dramatically increase the number of domain endings from the current 22.

Internet address names will end with almost any word and be in any language.

Icann will begin taking applications next year, with corporations and cities expected to be among the first.

"Icann has opened the internet's addressing system to the limitless possibilities of the human imagination," said Rod Beckstrom, president and chief executive officer for Icann.

"No one can predict where this historic decision will take us."

There will be several hundred new generic top-level domain names (gTLDs), which could include such addresses as .google, .coke, or even .BBC.

There are currently 22 gTLDs, as well as about 250 country-level domain names such as .uk or .de.

Applications will start on 12 January.

It will cost $185,000 (£114,000) to apply for the suffixes, and companies would need to show they have a legitimate claim to the name they are buying.

Analysts say it is a price that global giants might be willing to pay - in order to maximise their internet presence.

The money will be used to cover costs incurred by Icann in developing the new gTLDs and employing experts to scrutinise the many thousands of expected applications.

A portion will be set-aside to deal with potential legal actions, raised by parties who fail to get the domains they want.

The vote completes a six-year negotiation process and is the biggest change to the system since .com was first introduced 26 years ago.

Icann said it was beginning a global communications programme to raise awareness of the new domain names.

Continue reading the main story
Existing Generic TLDs
.com : companies, now broader
.edu : educational institutions
.gov : government institutions
.int : international organisations, e.g. Interpol
.mil : military organisations
.net : networking technologies, now broader
.org : non-profit organisations
.arpa : first ever domain, now technical use
.aero : air travel industry
.biz : business alternative to .com
.coop : co-operatives
.info : information, but open for general use
.museum : museums
.name : personal names - johnsmith.name
.pro : professionals, e.g. doctors
.asia: Asian websites
.cat : Catalan language
.jobs : employment websites
.mobi : mobile phones
.post : postal services
.tel : telecoms
.travel : travel
Source: Icann

High standards

Companies and organisations seeking one of the new gTLDs will have to meet high technical standards, according to Bruce Tonkin, chief strategy officer at Melbourne IT, a domain registry service.

"You need IT robustness and you need intellectual property protections beyond what is available in the dot com space.

"You have to have 24/7 abuse team. You have to have mechanisms where a trademark holder has first right to get their name," he said.

The higher standards, said Mr Tonkin, meant the application process would be extremely rigorous.

"Using a real estate analogy, it would be roughly the equivalent of getting approval to build a sky scraper.

"There's roughly 50 questions, roughly 2-3 pages per question. Icann will then use experts in each field to evaluate them.

"The concern that some people have is that the standards of these buildings will be so high, that they will never get built. It will be too expensive," he said.

Article Credits given to the BBC

Till the next time,
Anthony,
Your Website Marketing Partner and Friend at ProNetUSA WebSite Marketing

Affiliate Marketing Compensation Methods, Pros and Cons !

2011-03-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

Merchants favor affiliate marketing because in most cases it uses a "pay for performance" model, meaning that the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are accrued (excluding any initial setup cost). Some businesses owe much of their success to this marketing technique, a notable example being Amazon.com. Unlike display advertising, however, affiliate marketing is not easily scalable.

Implementation options:

Some merchants run their own, in-house affiliate programs using popular software while others use third-party services provided by intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates (see outsourced program management). Merchants can choose from two different types of affiliate management solutions: standalone software or hosted services, typically called affiliate networks. Payouts to affiliates or publishers are either made by the networks on behalf of the merchant, by the network, consolidated across all merchants where the publisher has a relationship with and earned commissions or directly by the merchant itself.

Affiliate management and program management outsourcing:

Successful affiliate programs require significant work and maintenance. Having a successful affiliate program is more difficult than when such programs were just emerging. With the exception of some vertical markets, it is rare for an affiliate program to generate considerable revenue with poor management or no management such as "auto-drive".

Uncontrolled affiliate programs did—and continue to do so today—aid rogue affiliates, who use spamming,trademark infringement, false advertising, "cookie cutting", typosquatting and other unethical methods that have given affiliate marketing a negative reputation.

The increased number of Internet businesses and the increased number of people that trust the current technology enough to shop and do business online allows further maturation of affiliate marketing. The opportunity to generate a considerable amount of profit combined with a crowded marketplace filled with competitors of equal quality and size makes it more difficult for merchants to be noticed. In this environment, however, being noticed can yield greater rewards.

Recently, the Internet marketing industry has become more advanced. In some areas online media has been rising to the sophistication of offline media, in which advertising has been largely professional and competitive. There are significantly more requirements that merchants must meet to be successful, and those requirements are becoming too burdensome for the merchant to manage successfully in-house. An increasing number of merchants are seeking alternative options found in relatively new outsourced (affiliate) program management (OPM) companies, which are often founded by veteran affiliate managers and network program managers.[19] OPM companies perform affiliate program management for the merchants as a service, similar to advertising agencies promoting a brand or product as done in offline marketing.

More on affiliate marketing the next time we meet.
Anthony,
Your Website Marketing Partner and friend at ProNetUSA

Affiliate marketing

2011-02-18T06:58:00.000-08:00

Today I will take the time to explain what affiliate marketing is.

As defined by Wikipedia; Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand'), the network, the publisher (also known as 'the affiliate'), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third parties vendors.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.

Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.

Historic development

Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. According to one report, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone. The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005. MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs.

Currently the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling, retail industries and file-sharing services. The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors. Soon after these sectors came the entertainment (particularly gaming) and Internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors. Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from business-to-business marketers and advertisers in using affiliate marketing as part of their mix.

The Next time I meet with you on this blog I will discuss compensation methods, pros and cons etc.

Until then
Anthony,
Your Website Marketing Partner and friend at ProNetUSA

Google Instant

2010-10-09T11:31:00.000-07:00

Below is an article that was sent to me by InternetMarketing and was written by Noel Swanson about Google Instant. The article is lengthy but for advanced Internet marketing specialists well worth the read.

THE ARTICLE:

"Now at first glance, I began thinking this interface is pretty cool, but annoying, but really neat, and annoying, but still cool, and really annoying. You know what I mean.

It’s neat that it has suggestive searches. It’s neat that it displays search and paid ad results in real time. It’s very cool the technology and incredible processing horsepower this must take to be this quick. However it is bit annoying in how it makes a lot of assumptions on our behalf.

So it’s all very intriguing, but the big thing I wanted to know was if this was a positive thing for internet marketers, or not.

First impression? Yes AND No! Yes, if you are good at SEO – No so good if you don’t take your SEO efforts seriously.

But before we get to that…

… did Google Instant come packaged with a new algorithm?

Google says not, yet over the past couple of days since its release, many of our sites have not only seen a large increase in traffic, but rankings for some very competitive keywords have shot up dramatically. For example, the case of the short-tail keyword ‘stop smoking’ we rank for on one of our sites. It has literally jumped a HUGE number of pages in Google to the #5 spot since the Instant release. Good news to be sure.

As we heard back with the release of the caffeine algorithm, Google is going to be rewarding content driven sites more and more. And this doesn’t just mean on-site content, but backlink driven content as well, such as backlinks embedded in article resource boxes.

Whaddya know….this article marketing stuff really works!

So, a new algorithm or just coincidence? Who knows…simply stating an observation and including you in on my first random thought. Regardless, the increased traffic is always welcome!

So what’s next?

Is there anything about Google Instant we need to be concerned about?

Well, yes…

The one obviously negative about Google Instant is that it definitely takes up some valuable real estate. With the five ‘suggested’ keywords showing in the dropdown, it effectively removes one or two of the top organic search listings.

This means it is going to become even more important to be at the top of the search rankings. Before, we used to shoot for ‘Top 5’ listings, but with the decreased screen space now available above the fold, it now looks more like ‘Top 3’ is going to be the new sweet spot – depending on how many ads are showing at the top of the search results.

Conspiracy theories abound, and we’ll probably never know if it was intentional, but there is certainly no doubt that the elimination of available space certainly makes the paid ads more prominent as they now take up a larger proportional percentage of the screen.

But how does this affect us as marketers – especially SEO dependent ones?

Let’s look at an example.

To do this, we’ll look at a stop smoking review site we use to track the benefits of article marketing. First, a little explanation is in order. Yes, this is a real affiliate site and is set up as a normal WordPress website. The only reason we call it a ‘test site’ is that it is 100% promoted by article marketing. There is no Pay-per-click. No social media. No other methods of SEO. Purely 100% article marketing. This allows us the ability to create valid testing without the results getting skewed.

Let’s use the new Instant interface to drive down a couple of levels and see what we can find.

As we’ve already seen, when the letters ‘stop sm_____’ are entered into the search box, we are prompted with the suggestion of ‘stop smoking’, which as we know ranks our site at #5’.

But what about the next suggested Google Instant listing of ‘stop smoking aids’?

If we select it directly, it gives us a hard search result just like the old interface would have. Which I am happy to report, ranks our site at #1.

But if we don’t choose a suggestion and instead continue to type ‘stop smoking ai__’ here is what we get.

So the first question that comes to mind – is do we now target all these long-tail keyphrases shown in the Instant dropdown box?

As always, we have a definitive answer for you here – MAYBE!"

"We get a dropdown of 4 suggestions, as the fifth is only a partial. Now in this case, we know that we already rank #1 for the top two suggestions – ‘stop smoking aids’ and ‘stop smoking aids reviews’. So the question is, should we be targeting the next two keywords on the list – ‘stop smoking aids free’ and ‘stop smoking aids coupons’?

Again, the answer is maybe. SEO, done properly takes time, effort and money, so as savvy marketers, we need to decide whether to target these keywords based on research and NOT just because they show up in the suggested listings.

The first thing we want to consider is what is the commercial intent of the customers entering or choosing this keyword. Commercial intent or OCI is data collected by Microsoft’s adCenter Labs and gives an indicator in decimal form whether or not the keyword is commercially viable. Market Samurai also has this feature built in.

So we head over to the Microsoft labs and enter our keyphrase. It comes back with a 0.92 probability of non-commercial intent, which is what we’d expect because the keyphrase has the word ‘free’ in it. Not a great indicator of someone who is willing to spend money on your product.

Do we not bother with this keyphrase? Again, MAYBE. You knew that was coming didn’t you.

First let’s go looking for some more data. We follow the search through and find that our site is on page two at spot #11 for the keyphrase anyway. Pretty cool!

Just to digress a moment and make the point again about just how effective article marketing is, we do not specifically target ‘stop smoking’ or ‘stop smoking aids free’ yet we are ranking highly for them. By targeting the long-tail keywords with high commercial intent, we also get search ranking for similar and complimentary keywords.

Anyway, back to the task at hand. Do we target this keyword or not? In this case because we are already so close to the first page, why not. We’ll throw a few articles at it and get it ranked in the top three results.

But what if we weren’t on the second page? What if we ranked on the 20th page? For that we would need to pull out every business person’s most effective tool – gut instinct. The OCI data tells us that 92% of people searching for that keyphrase may not be willing to spend any money. So let’s look at search volume with Google’s keyword tool to see what else we can find. Market Samurai has this feature as well.

It shows that the monthly search volume for ‘stop smoking aids free’ is only 880. So if 92% (810) of people are not willing to spend money and only 70 are, then perhaps this is not a good keyword to target.

BUT…if you know your conversion and profit per acquisition for your site – and you should – then you can make an informed decision about whether to target this keyword. So assuming that 70 people per month could be buyers and we know our site converts at 3.94% (let’s call it 4% for easy math) and our profit per acquisition is around $50, then we can rightfully assume that we will sell 2.8 units per month for a total yearly profit of $1680 (2.8 units per month x 12 months x $50 PPA). Not too bad. Definitely worth it considering.

Now this is very top down thinking of course. There are a number of other variables to take into account such as the fact that the #1 ranking will only get 40% of the clicks and so on and so forth (this may change dramatically and give much higher click through rates to the top listings with the decreased organic real estate). But even at 40% CTR (click through rate), that still leaves nearly $700 a year profits less the cost of a handful of articles to get the site to rank #1 for this keyword. Still not bad.

Still the question remains, do we spend the time, money and effort to push our site to #1 for this keyword? In this particular case, because we can target more than one link in each article we send out, I would say yes. Matter of fact, I believe we will be targeting these two links heavily for the moment – ‘stop smoking’ and ‘stop smoking aids free’ for as exciting as getting 40% of 880 monthly searches might be, hitting #1 and getting 40% of the 550,000 searches that ‘stop smoking’ receives, gets me all excited!

The BIG plus

So the main downside to the new interface is simply a smaller piece of real estate for organic listings. Not a big deal, for as marketers interested in SEO, we are used to the competition. However, there has to be a huge upside here for someone, right?

There sure is. The people who own the top 3 listings should see a dramatic increase in traffic as it is only human nature for us to click on what we can see. And if you can only see three to five listings now, the CTR of those sites will definitely rise.

So how do you get rankings like this for hundreds and thousands of keywords?

Simple. We’ve been preaching it for years – CONSISTENCY and QUALITY!

Target a varying group of long-tail and short tail keywords for your niche. Write or get well written articles done for you via a service like MyArticleExpress. Keep sending out one or two articles per week for each of your sites.

Not trying to turn this into an advertisement for article marketing, but you can clearly see that this methodology is extremely effective to driving top search rankings.

And yes, you should be using video, podcasts and press releases as well as discussed in our free report on Organic Marketing That Sticks – Where to Start With Your SEO (PDF download).

So the magic formula once again is…

Target Long-Tail and Short-Tail Keywords – Write Quality Content – Submit Articles Weekly

And there you have it.

Thanks for sharing in these random thoughts with me."

Anthony
Your Website Marketing Partner at ProNetUSA

YaHoo and Bing AdCenter Update

2010-10-04T07:39:00.000-07:00

Below is the latest update as received on 9-30-10 from Bing / YaHoo merger transition team to my marketing department in regards to the recent YaHoo / Bing merger to become AdCenter.

"As you get ready to use adCenter to advertise on Yahoo! Search and Bing, you’ll be a step ahead of the competition if you get to know two things: the new features that enable you to better control where your ads are displayed, and the top tips for maximizing your ads’ visibility.

New adCenter features to help you control where your ads are displayed

Search network distribution
This feature gives you three distribution options, set at the ad group level, for your search ads:
• All Yahoo! and Bing websites and syndicated search partners (the default setting)*
• Only Yahoo! and Bing websites
• Only Yahoo! and Bing syndicated search partners*

*adCenter may discount clicks from the partner network by a certain percentage, depending on the quality of the traffic source, to help you meet your ROI goals.

Website exclusion
• Set at the ad group or campaign level, this feature enables you to select up to 500 websites from our partner network on which you do not want your ads to be displayed

Top tips for maximizing the visibility of your ads

Bid competitively, but keep ROI in mind
• Monitor bids frequently as more and more Yahoo! advertisers transition to adCenter
• Be prepared to adjust your bids if increased competition impacts
your position
• Enter a bid amount that meets your ROI goals, but expect some variability initially
• Set up separate ad groups based on your search network
distribution option

Enhance your ad’s “click appeal”
• Concisely describe the overall benefits of your product or service and give a single call-to-action
• Test and refine your ads with copy and keyword variations until you find what works best
• Remember that adCenter emphasizes conversions, so you may see your conversion rate go up, even if your overall click-through
rate is lower

Link to a highly relevant landing page
• Take users to a landing page that meets the expectations set up in your ad copy
• Prominently feature keywords on the page’s HTML text (rather than in images or animations)
• Be sure load times are quick, and back and close buttons
function properly

For more details, read the Ad Optimization article article.

Ad serving transition update
• Yahoo! ad serving is expected to gradually move to adCenter over the course of two weeks, beginning as early as October 11th.
• In advance of this, we will begin to increase our current testing percentage of 3.5%, to help ensure a smooth transition.

Important reminders
• Keep managing your Yahoo! Search Marketing account
throughout October
• Monitor your campaigns very closely once you begin using adCenter
• Make modifications as necessary to fine tune your results

We appreciate your business and look forward to helping you be successful on Yahoo! Search and Bing.

Sincerely,

Your search alliance partners at Yahoo! and Microsoft"

I will post more updates on this merger as they become available.
Anthony,
Your Website Marketing Partner at ProNetUSA

Finding Your Skills and Interest for Creating Relevant Internet Text and Content

2010-10-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

Generally speaking, when a person is interested or passionate about a certain topic or subject it will be easier for that person and enjoyable to write and possible become an online Internet expert on that topic or subject. When you generate text and information on a particular subject and post it on a blog and/or a website it will send search engine and referral traffic your way.

Search engines are always looking for and need relevant text and content information to help fuel the searchers' appetite for new and relevant information. The more you can write and post on a particular subject the more search engine traffic you will receive. The more you update that relevant information the further up the search engine ladder you will travel.

To help find your interest for possible Internet content, text and information for blogging, website text or SMO (Social Media Optimization) please feel free to use the questionnaire below. These questions are designed to get you thinking about what you are interested in.

QUESTIONS;

Do you play any sports? Which ones?

If you had a million dollars and a week’s worth of free time, what would you do? List the first activities that come to mind.

What websites do you visit when you’re just “surfing around” online? What topics do these sites cover?

Have you ever won a trophy or award? What for?
Have you ever been recognized for a contribution of services? What did you do?

Do you have pets? What kinds? If yes, did you train them a certain way? Shows? Clothes? Hunting? Tricks?

Do you have kids? What do you like best about being a parent? What do you find most challenging?

Do you have any specialized education? Have you ever taken a class in a subject like pottery or sailing?

Have you ever volunteered anywhere? What did you learn through this experience?

What lifetime accomplishment are you most proud of? What did you learn from this experience?

Do you have firsthand knowledge of any medical illnesses or issues? If so, which ones?

Do you collect anything? If so, what?

What television shows do you enjoy? What kind of music do you listen to?
Do you ever attend theater events or other events related to the arts?

Is there anything you’ve ever really wanted to do or learn about, but just haven’t had the time for?

At a party, when you’re talking to a stranger, what’s your “fall back” topic of conversation?

At work or with friends, on what subject are you the “go-to” person?

What is you academic background? Any degrees or certificates?

What was your favorite job? What was your role?

What would your best friend say you’re best at?

Have you done any renovations to your house yourself? Have you built or designed anything you’re proud of?

Questionnaire Credits to Chuck Anderson
Director of Marketing, IMC

Anthony
Your Website Marketing Partner at ProNetUSA

Business-Killing Facebook Mistakes

2010-09-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

With more than 400 million active visitors, Facebook is arguably the most popular social networking website. And while the website is known for the casual social aspect, many users also use it as a business and professional networking tool. With that kind of reach, Facebook can be a valuable tool for connecting to former and current colleagues, clients and potential employers. In fact, surveys suggest that approximately 30% of prospective clients and employers are using Facebook to screen potential businesses and employees – even more than those who check LinkedIn, a strictly professional social networking site. Don't make these Facebook mistakes – they might cost you a great opportunity.

Six Business-Career Killing Facebook Mistakes as listed on Investopedia by Financial Edge are listed below;

"Inappropriate Pictures
It may go without saying, but prospective employers or clients don't want to see pictures of you chugging a bottle of wine or dressed up for a night at the bar. Beyond the pictures you wouldn't want your grandparents to see, seemingly innocent pictures of your personal life will likely not help to support the persona you want to present in your professional life."

"Complaining About Your Current Job
You've no doubt done this at least once. It could be a full note about how much you hate your office, or how incompetent your boss is, or it could be as innocent as a status update about how your coworker always shows up late. While everyone complains about work sometimes, doing so in a public forum where it can be found by others is not the best career move. Though it may seem innocent, it's not the kind of impression that sits well with a potential boss."

"Posting Conflicting Information to Your Resume
If you say on your resume that your degree is from Harvard, but your Facebook profile says you went to UCLA, you're likely to be immediately cut from the interview list. Even if the conflict doesn't leave you looking better on your resume, disparities will make you look at worst like a liar, and at best careless. (Social networking can also be used as its own job. Learn more in Make Money With Social Networking Sites.)"

"Statuses You Wouldn't Want Your Boss to See
Everyone should know to avoid statuses like "Tom plans to call in sick tomorrow so he can get drunk on a Wednesday. Who cares that my big work project isn't done?" But you should also be aware of less flamboyant statuses like "Sarah is watching the gold medal hockey game online at her desk". Statuses that imply you are unreliable, deceitful, and basically anything that doesn't make you look as professional as you'd like, can seriously undermine your chances at landing that new job."

"Not Understanding Your Security Settings
The security settings on Facebook have come a long way since the site started. It is now possible to customize lists of friends and decide what each list can and cannot see. However, many people do not fully understand these settings, or don't bother to check who has access to what. If you are going to use Facebook professionally, and even if you aren't, make sure you take the time to go through your privacy options. At the very least, your profile should be set so that people who are not your friend cannot see any of your pictures or information. (These rules apply to Twitter as well, and you can also use Twitter to find a new job. Find out more in Tweet Your Way To A Sweet Job.)"

"Losing By Association
You can't control what your friends post to your profile (although you can remove it once you see it), nor what they post to their own profiles or to those of mutual friends. If a potential client or employer sees those Friday night pictures your friend has tagged you in where he is falling down drunk, it reflects poorly on you, even if the picture of you is completely innocent. It's unfortunate, but we do judge others by the company they keep, at least to some extent. Take a look at everything connected to your profile, and keep an eye out for anything you wouldn't want to show your mother."

Anthony
Your Website Marketing Partner

What is Link Building ?

2010-09-01T06:55:00.000-07:00

Link building refers to the quantity and quality of incoming links from other websites that point to your website. There are typically two types of incoming links: Internal and External. Internal links typically refers to the number of links or pages within your website and external links refers to the number of links coming from the other web sites or web pages. Incoming links and there popularity are used by most search engines as a factor in determining a website's search engine ranking. The more the active (used)incoming links to your web site the higher its search engine ranking.

As mentioned above, link popularity is gauged by the total number of incoming links to your website and the amount of times the links are used. Link importance is closely related to link popularity. It looks at the type of external links and assigns higher scores to high quality links.

Some of the more complex search engine algorithms (qualifications) consider both link popularity and link importance to assign a link popularity score. The score looks at two things: the number of sites that are giving you back links and the relative importance of those sites. For example, if Nike links to your site, that single link has more value than getting other 50 links from your friends' low volume web pages. In other words, a link on a very popular website gets you a higher search engine rating than a low volume website.

In order to achieve top search engine results, it is necessary to improve the relative link popularity of your website through back links. ProNet USA experts will help you to gain a higher search engine ranking, increase PageRank, enhance your website's trust ranking and most importantly drive potential customers. In order to drive sales on your website, you will need effective link popularity services that are well versed with all of Google's ranking factors.

Anthony
Your Website Marketing Partner

Seven Things to Remember With Keywords

2010-08-17T08:03:00.000-07:00

If you are determined to make money online, follow each of the steps below and your keyword research efforts will yield significant results that will help you make money online.

1. Start off with ONE word that describes your business or interest

For example: “rabbits”

2. Create a list of synonyms for that word

For example, “bunnies,” “rabbit,” “bunny rabbits”

3. Combine each synonym with “how” to generate problem statements

For example, “how bunnies,” “how rabbit,” “how bunny rabbits”

4. Record the “action word” phrases that appear in the keyword research results

For example, “how to groom rabbits,” “how to make organic rabbit food,” “how to build a rabbit hutch”

All these phrases have an action word in them and clearly describe a problem people are trying to solve. These are the keywords you’re looking for. They’re the ones that will help you make money online.

5. Analyze the “supply and demand” factor for each keyword

Using your keyword research tool, check to see how many searches are being done and how many competing sites there are for each of the “action word” keywords you recorded. You want to focus on keywords that have a lot of searches but not much competition. That way you know it will be easier for you to break into that market and compete with the websites already there. And that is what’s going to help you make money online.

6. Cluster the top keywords according to intention

As you drill down into your keyword research, you’ll find different phrases that basically mean the same thing. For example: “how to make a rabbit cage,” “rabbit hutch building tips” and “rabbit hutch design.”

Organize all these similar phrases into different lists. Now, here’s the awesome part: Each list represents a different niche market opportunity. The longer the list, the bigger the opportunity and the better your chances of being able to make money online.

7. Look for long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are phrases made up of anywhere from four to fifteen words. Here’s an example:

Short keyword: build rabbit cage

Long-tail keyword: how do I build a wooden indoor rabbit cage

Long-tail keywords enable you to make money online for a couple of reasons. First, they’re easier to get a top ranking for in Google and other search engines. Second, people tend to use long-tail keywords for searches when they are close to making a purchase. This means the visitors you attract with your long-tail keywords are far more likely to buy something from you than the visitors you get from your short keywords.

… So there you have it: our seven-step “Keyword Research Survival Guide.” Stick with this process and you’ll never be left wondering if that random collection of keywords represents a real opportunity to make money online or just another poorly conceived website that’s doomed to failure.

Anthony
Your Website Marketing Partner

YaHoo and Bing Search Engine Merger Update

2010-08-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

Below I have posted a recent update on the YAHOO - Bing Microsoft Search Engine Merger which was received on August 5th 2010 by my marketing/advertising department.

Anthony from ProNetUSA
Your Website Marketing Partner

" Dear Advertiser,

As your transition to the Microsoft Advertising adCenter platform approaches, we have more details to share to help you prepare for the changes to come.

Considerations for your upcoming transition

adCenter account
Soon, you'll need to either create a new adCenter account, or link an existing adCenter account to your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Later this month, you'll see an "adCenter" tab within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Clicking there will take you to the beginning of the account transition process, where we'll walk you through the simple steps to create or link accounts.

Budgeting
Once you create your adCenter account, it will be active and your ads will be eligible to serve on Bing right away. As a result, you'll be managing both your new adCenter account and your existing Yahoo! Search Marketing account in parallel until ad serving for Yahoo! traffic transitions to adCenter, so plan to budget accordingly.

Microsoft Silverlight
With Silverlight installed, you'll be able to see and address key differences between your Yahoo! and adCenter accounts as you transition. Download Silverlight now.

Organic search transition
Yahoo! organic search results will be powered by Bing as early as late August. If organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website, you'll want to make sure that you're prepared for this change. For more details, check out this blog post.

As we’ve stated previously, our primary goal is to provide a quality transition experience for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, while protecting the holiday season. However, please remember that as we continue to go through our series of checkpoints, if we conclude that it would improve the overall experience, we may choose to defer the transition to 2011.

We are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial for you as possible. We appreciate your business, and look forward to bringing you the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance.

Sincerely,
Your Partners in the Search Alliance, Yahoo! and Microsoft "

YAHOO - Bing Microsoft Merger Search Update

2010-07-15T12:30:00.000-07:00

Below, for your information, I have posted a recent update on YAHOO - Bing Microsoft Merger Search which was sent to my marketing/advertising department.

"As we continue to work closely with Microsoft to implement our search alliance, we wanted to provide you with an update on our progress, as well as call out some important, upcoming milestones to help ensure you are prepared for the changes to come.

Transition with Quality
Our goal remains providing a quality transition experience for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, while protecting the holiday season. We've continued to make good progress against this goal, and we regularly evaluate our progress. However, please remember that, as we continue to go through our series of checkpoints, if we conclude that it would improve the overall experience, we may choose to defer the transition to 2011.

Organic Search Transition
To date, we've focused most of our communications to you on the paid search transition to adCenter. However, another key aspect of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is the transition of Yahoo! organic search results (those found on the main body of the page). Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September timeframe.

If organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website, you'll want to make sure that you're prepared for this change:

• Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that drive your business, to help determine any potential impact to your traffic and sales
• Decide if you'd like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate
• Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Bing crawler, as Bing results will be displayed for approximately 30%* of overall search query market share after this change

For more specifics on the organic search transition, please refer to the Self-service Advertiser FAQs on the Yahoo! Transition Center.

Organic and Paid Search Testing
To help us deliver on our goal of transition with quality, we are conducting the necessary tests to ensure that all of the many complex, logistical pieces are in place. While there's nothing you need to do to prepare for testing, please keep in mind the following:

• Though much of our testing is already happening offline, this month we'll also test the delivery of organic and paid search results provided by Microsoft on live Yahoo! traffic
• Testing volumes will fluctuate during this period, with paid search volume in particular kept low enough to help minimize any potential impact to your account

Editorial Guidelines
Yahoo! and Microsoft have created joint editorial guidelines that will begin taking effect for both Yahoo! and Microsoft paid search advertisers in early August. We encourage you to review these now, so that you understand any potential impact to your ads or keywords. Notable changes include new guidelines for gambling and contests, and disallowed content. For a detailed overview of the editorial policy changes that will soon take effect, please read the New Editorial Guidelines article.

We are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial for you as possible. We appreciate your business, and look forward to bringing you the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance."

Anthony
Your Website Marketing Partner

Benefits of Using a Website Template

2010-07-10T12:54:00.000-07:00

One of the fastest and easiest ways to set up a website is by using a website template. Depending on your degree of knowledge and expertise many websites can be designed by you using a template. This is simply an "almost ready-made" website that you can use instead of trying to design one from scratch. It allows you to have many features of a great high quality web site without having to pay for a custom website. However; depending on the website template you choose there are certain limitations.

Due to the fact that you can get your site set up faster it will help you to increase production. You will have more time for other important details that need to be taken care of. Since there are so many different template designs available for you to choose from, it is normally easy to find the one that suits your business the best. It eliminates a lot of the hassles and aggravations that accompany trying to start up a website from the ground up. What's even better is the fact that many of the so called "bugs" have already been worked out.

As I mentioned earlier, some degree of knowledge and patience is required. If you purchase a web site template you will need to have it installed on your web host. Your business specific text, pictures and email etc. will need to be installed on the template as well as other items such as database, order forms and credit card payment processing.

If you need help with your template please remember ProNet USA services website templates.

Go to ProNetUSA.com and choose from one of the many templates from ProNetUSA's approved website template companies. We have screened these website template companies to ProNetUSA's high quality of service and professionalism.

Anthony,
Your Website Marketing Partner

WHY HAVE AN INTERNET WEBSITE?

2010-06-29T19:33:00.001-07:00

The Internet is a rapidly expanding personal and commercial community with millions of people searching daily for information, products, and services. Having your own Web site is the most cost effective means of advertising your business, while targeting a specific market. Exposure on the Internet immediately introduces your business to millions of potential customers. Word of mouth endorsements from satisfied customers travel fast on the Internet, also adding to the success of your business.

Depending on the specific nature of your business there may be many more advantages to advertising on the Internet. ProNet USA is a company dedicated to offering you a full range of affordable design and marketing services with a commitment to quality and value.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and REGISTRATION (SEO)

2010-06-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

According to a recent survey, up to 90% of your Web site's traffic can come through the major search engines; provided it has been registered correctly.

Don't take chances on not getting seen! Get your Website submitted to the top Internet search engines, and directories.

Make sure your Web site is submitted manually by to ensure proper registration.

Market trends and terminology are constantly changing. Therefore your Web site even if originally properly registered, may need to be updated. Market trends and terminology constantly change.

If your company's Web site does not rank in the top 10 positions of the top search engines' results, the chances that the searcher will become a customer are very slim. ProNet USA has assisted other companies to maximize the customer traffic that they attract from the major search engines, including: Yahoo, MSN (Bing), Google and others. The importance of search engine customer traffic cannot be overemphasized. Millions of customer visits are generated each day from the major search engines.

If you are not getting your share of this traffic, you are losing out on many potential business customers.

Anthony,
Your Website Marketing Partner

A website gives your business world wide exposure

2010-06-08T07:01:00.000-07:00

Many small business owners who do not have a website keep asking the question; "How will a website help my business?"

The Internet is a rapidly expanding personal and commercial community with millions of people searching daily for information, products, and services. Having your own Web site is the most cost effective means of advertising your business, while targeting a specific market. Exposure on the Internet immediately introduces your business to millions of potential customers. Word of mouth endorsements from satisfied customers travel fast on the Internet, also adding to the success of your business.

Depending on the specific nature of your business there may be many more advantages to advertising on the Internet. ProNet USA is a company dedicated to offering you a full range of design services with a commitment to quality and value.

A website creates a business image that is professional

2010-05-31T19:28:00.000-07:00

Many small business owners who do not have a website keep asking the question; "How will a website help my business?"

A website creates a business image that is professional. An extremely large number of small businesses are based in home offices, garages and buildings that could be classified as being highly unimpressive to any customer. A major advantage of having your website is that it helps you build a facade that makes your company look established, professional and able to perform at the highest level. Which will help you compete with your larger competition and out compete the competition at your level.

Reasons to have a Website

2010-05-21T13:33:00.000-07:00

Many small business owners who do not have a website keep asking this question; "How will a website help my business?" Before we start talking about the advantages of having a website for your business, it is important to make you aware about a very basic universal truth. Regardless of the advantages that you will get from having a website, a website has become as necessary as having your own phone and fax machine for a business. Not having a website makes for many missed potential sales. That said, let us look at some of the main ways by which having a website will help give your business the advantage over competition:

A website helps you expand your market. Gone are the days when a market was a certain geographical area restricted to your town, city, state or country. The fact is that if you do not expand your geographical market area your competition might and he might come into your area. Get to him first before he gets to you with your very own website.
Today, the whole world is your marketplace and one of the major advantages of having your website is that you will get to reach out to potentially millions of customers around the world. Having a website is a must and a great boost to your business especially if you are selling products that have a market outside your immediate geographical area region.

A website creates a business image that is professional and just as large as a major corporation. More on this next week!

How a Website Helps My Business

2010-05-08T10:56:00.000-07:00

A website establishes your presence as a serious business. All customers and clients expect businesses to have their own websites. If you do not have a website, you might be looked upon as being a non-professional.

A website is an extremely useful marketing tool. A website not only acts as your virtual office, it also helps your target customers in locating you and builds brand and product awareness that eventually increases sales. A website acts as your electronic brochure and provides information about your company, products and services to all on the World Wide Web. It is an extremely cheap way of advertising your products. Once your website is up and running, you can stop printing brochures or making CDs and simply direct potential customers to your website, this not only saves you dollars but lessens the impact on the Earth's natural resources.