As per one of the news items; EU is expected to clear Google / Double Click merger.

The approval is expected since long. The European Commission had decided in January not to object formally to the merger. The Commission which is EU’s competition watchdog, never disapproved any deal without sending formal objections.

The Deal is objected by Privacy advocates. It is feared that the deal will provide huge access to information regarding consumers and their behaviour . The Commission has clarified that privacy considerations are not part of scope of its authority for the merger.

The Deal will enhance Google dominance on Paid Search.

With the Search Engine it is also important to decide the preferred marketing strategy – Search Engine Optimization or Pay per Click.

These are two different marketing strategies working on different aspects of a website. Before setting on the preferred method it is important to know the underlying facts about each.

PPC familiarizes the user to your web site. If liked the user is then glued to your site. The more the user the better the Search Engines will like your site. This is one of the prime reasons of alluring huge visitors to your site. Search Engine Optimization gets more targeted traffic to your web site through the search engine thus; a lot of marketers would prefer SEO to PPC.

PPC is text-based advertising on a Search Engine whereas SEO has a lot to do with page rank and link popularity. In PPC will have to bid money in order to be listed first but SEO will require content, design and links to make the site linked.

Though it is difficult to manipulate, studies show that PPC brings stability and predictability to some extend whereas SEO involves a lot of tedious task. On the other hand SEO can be done free and you have to pay for PPC.

Needless to say, people should constantly look for new and unique ways to bring traffic to their web sites eventually culminates into business gains.

Pay per click is an important tool of Internet marketing. A keyword optimized and cleverly set budget can see through a great online business. But there are myths attached the pay per click approach –

• Number one page rank is the best

Pay per click is about conversions and ROI. Being number one is a waste if it does not fetch you good click-through rate and eventually conversions.

• The natural page rankings are affected by pay per click

The ad text displayed does not act as anchor text; it only is an advertising punch.

• Pay per click only helps major businesses

This is far from fact as small business really benefits from pay per click through good campaign and landing page design.

• Pay per click is a short term tool

If PPC is promoting your company well with good ROI then it can be for keeps.

• Pay per click is not a life long process

With constantly evolving business needs; pay per click requires constant monitoring, change and hence regular optimisation.

Click Fraud is an inevitable aspect of any business and pay per click is no exception. Making money through ‘black hat’ techniques of business could be the prime aim of some. How do you escape being a victim of any such pay per click fraud/crime? There are some simple clever ways to reduce pay per click or online marketing frauds.

• Don’t be in a hurry to pay. Delaying payment may save you from the fraud.
• Keep your computer free from any bad software and stay away from the prying eyes of software trackers that eye every transaction you make or even every site you visit.
• Delay in divulging business details to a prospective supplier can also check on a fraud helping you to get more concrete information about your dealer/supplier.
• Study the contract thoroughly; you might overlook some business virus which otherwise might look simple and repetitive.

In Pay-Per-Click type of Internet marketing the advertisers pays an amount every time their ad is clicked by a prospective customer. This is also known as the click-through rate (CTR); both of these are integral part of web optimization.

Pay per click marketing is lucrative and measurable in terms of return of investment ROI. There are various methods of quantifying the ROI in PPC marketing. One important tool is tracking user actions like buying product, requesting a brochure/newsletter or even more information. This explains the users who have only viewed a page and those who have actually turned into clients. This also helps in calculating the number of sales against spending.

There are no strict rules in pay per click advertising or marketing and with extensive online tools available to optimize Internet marketing, measuring the returns is a simple process. The true measure of a business profit is the piling order request transforming to orders and subsequently getting the aimed revenue.

As per comScore report ; February figure of Google’s revenue shows slow down in Paid Search revenue for Google.

This can be a bad news for Google since they good dependency on Paid Search Revenue. With the fear of Recession looming around ; one has to wait for next few month to check the definitive trend.

With a loud cluttering regarding recessions the Search Engine Marketing companies may find more business. In the tough times when energy prices and good / services costs are going up, there is a need for spending marketing budget effectively.

The users are going to be more choosy and shall use internet for bargain hunting. There is possibility of more searches on the net and thus it makes sense for marketing dollar to be spent where possibility of the users come to search for bargains.

A good managed campaigns covering all possible avenues like Pay Per click , SEO, SMO , Comparison Shopping Feed management will take a center stage for every company who wants to sells its product / service using internet as a medium.

As per one of the news item and study conducted; if you display pay pal logo on your Yahoo Yahoo! Search Marketing ads then the possibility of Click Through Ratio going up is high.

In case you are using Pay Pal for processing your online sales then Pay Pal allows use of logo. You can show the ads with logo. It in turn helps increase the CTR.

You may not be knowing about this but if you are running Google Adwords account for your online store then you have a good news. You can have sales ten (10) times as that of your Google Adwords spend using Google checkout without the Transaction Fee for Google checkout.

For example ; lets say your Google Adwords spend is $5,000; then ten times that ; that is $50,000 of website sales is zero on transactions fee on Google Checkout.

Happy Selling

As per the new data the number of users clicking on Google’s Pay Per Click advertisements is declining. So what are the other alternatives that all those who want to sell their products / services )and / or) enhance Brand using internet as an option.

Following three options are worth looking into:

Audio Advertisements / Video Advertisements : These go much beyond the standard text based clicks. In case of a right enticing Audio / Video ads the prospect can really be allured to get to the website

Word of Mouth Advertisements: Very useful but a good Social Networking can really do wonders

Business to business Search Engines : These are alternatives beyond Google , Yahoo, MSN. These search engines are vertically focused and users tend to visit and believe in them

Internet marketing, adhering to its name, refers to advertising, promoting or selling your product/ services through the internet. Internet marketing involves usage of web sites and e-mails for all promotional communications. It includes search engine marketing, pay per click advertising, blogs, e-mail marketing and more.

Thus, successful internet marketing would mean increased traffic and return of investment (ROI) on your website. Strategically planned internet marketing ideally involves good search engine and social media optimization.

Benefits of Internet Marketing

• Overcomes geographical limitations: Internet knows no boundaries; your product/service is available to all, increasing the number of potential customers across the world.
• 24 X 7: Your website is available at any given time; this flexibility in time increases its accessibility as compared to a normal store.
• Usage of different advertising media: You can integrate audio, video, blogs and make advertising more interactive unlike in print or television/radio.
• Cost effective: Web services being the only requirement, internet marketing becomes more cost-effective; you save on travel and other advertising gimmicks like trade fairs, hoardings etc.
• Complete display of information: No constraint of time and space allows you to display robust and diverse information.
• Greater return on investment (ROI): A search engine/social media optimized website attracts huge prospective customers increasing the traffic and eventually accrue conversions. This builds up the return on investment, making Internet Marketing a lucrative choice.
• Attracts wider audience: Internet marketing attracts a range of audience who demand diversified services from your website. These services not only include buying of product but also information for research, job search, new business leads, capital investment plans etc.

Different types of Internet Marketing

As the new age marketing tool, Internet Marketing is a cheaper way of publicity even for small scale industries. Some internet marketing methods are-

• Search Engine Marketing: Search Engine Marketing (SEM) includes managing pay per click campaigns and banner ads by increasing the web page ranking and optimizing the website content to make it crawler friendly.
• Pay-per-Click Advertising: In pay per click (PPC), the advertiser pays some amount to the search engine for his ad to be displayed if a keyword related to his business is searched for. These clicks and eventual transactions become the revenue earners.
• Social Media Marketing: A new method of internet marketing; it allows you to use various social networks like Facebook and MySpace for all promotional activities. This informal approach has a wider reach providing a new leap to the business prospects.
• E-mail Marketing: The website owner maintains a subscriber database and uses that to send personalized newsletter thus creating a one-to-one bonding with a prospective customer.

Internet-Marketing Boosters

In today’s competitive market, a constant strive towards betterment is the business strategy motto. A few key energizers to successful online marketing could be-

• Creating online blogs which could include guest and community blogging
• Improving the quality content with good emphasis on real life implications
• Promotional contests like quizzes or e-book circulation
• Effective press releases with updated reviews
• Posting client testimony as a polite declaration of the successful venture
• Prospective customer/ visitor feedback; it acts as an intelligent input for improvising the marketing effort

Pay per click advertising

Why pay per click advertising?

Pay per click advertising is an effective and affordable means of search engine marketing. It is a fast and measurable form of advertising available in today’s market. It has the ability to directly drive the targeted audience to your site.

As an entrepreneur looking to optimize your search engine, it pays to take the services of an Internet marketing firm. The experts of these firms are aware of top search engine demands and will consider these for improving on-the-page and off-the-page factors for your website.

What is pay per click advertising?

Pay per click advertising refers to internet advertising/marketing where you are pay only if your ad is clicked upon. PPC advertising is different from pay per impression. In pay per click you are charged for very click made on your ad whereas in pay per impression you are charged for each ad/page view. Google Ad Words is the most popular PPC advertising system.

Pay per click advertising involves bid analysis and tracking, keyword selection, loading or editing the campaign data, monitoring the results and proactively making changes to optimize the campaign. Client reporting also forms an essential pay per click advertising task.

How is pay per click advertising beneficial?

Fast response time and flexibility makes pay per click advertising a lucrative marketing tool. Benefits of pay per click advertising can be summarized as

1. Pay per click advertising is a potential and cost effective form of advertising to small business organizations. With carefully chosen parameters, pay per click advertising helps these small companies display their ads above any of the bigger national/multinational enterprises.
2. It can be implemented fast and has immediate response time. Pay per click ads respond faster to changing market demand or marketing strategies. This allows the budget to be changed, increased / decreased or paused, almost instantly.
3. The immediate response time and its ability to handle businesses of all sizes make it cost effective. Flexible budgetary/bid changes make it a cost effective campaigning process.
4. A tracking code in the website allows the pay per click ads to be measured in terms click-through rates and cost per click. Tracking the number of visitors and the cost per conversions helps to quantify the benefits through pay per click advertising.

Why use a pay per click advertising agency?

Like any commercial advertising event, pay per click also requires a set of skilled professionals who with their expertise transform a non-performing campaign to a highly effective one. An Internet marketing firm provides a realistic assessment of the pay per click advertising benefits and guides you through all aspects of it like budget optimization, target keywords etc…

How much does pay per click advertising costs?

The cost of a pay per click advertisement is influenced by various parameters.

1. The target market – The lesser competitive or static market the lesser it costs. A more competitive and evolving market would require a higher investment in terms of bids as well as involve different analytical tools to assess the ad rating. This increases the ad cost relatively.
2. Website design – A well designed website which is easy to navigate and is search engine friendly results in low advertising cost. Such websites have high return on investment but low investment cost.
3. Website content – Poor quality content has a negative affect on your ad. It attracts a good amount of unauthorized visitors and thus the task of search engine optimization increases. This in return increases the maintenance of the ad.
4. Additional Internet marketing services – Additional services like website redesign, website maintenance, and search engine optimization, significantly increase the advertisement cost.
5. Frequency of reports- Frequent or detailed pay per click reports has a higher cost. Customizing the reports for each client takes longer time than analyzing or tracking a particular campaign. This effort of detailing eventually increases the cost of pay per click advertising.

Social Media Optimization

What is Social Media Optimization (SMO)?

Social media optimization (SMO) is a technique of marketing in which you market your website in various social networking sites like MySpace, Youtube, Digg etc. Also known as Web 2.0 marketing, SMO acts as a powerful tool to increase the traffic and page ranking of your website. It engages a wider audience through excessive promotion via the public portals. The success of SMO lies in its interactive content sharing through mediums like blogs, video files and more.

Why use Social Media Optimization (SMO)?

Social media optimization, sometimes referred as social book-marking, is about building a relationship between your website and a wide group of potential customer. Social media if effectively used can consistently direct a substantial amount of traffic. Some of its advantages are

• Increased traffic to your website
• Increased public awareness of your site and product
• Increased brand value
• Increased inbound link
• Increased ranking due to increased inbound and back links

Thus, social media optimization promotes your business by increasing high user awareness through social sites. This subsequently acts as the marketing strategy for incremental promotion of your product translating into increased conversion.

What are the parameters used by Social media optimization (SMO)?

Social media optimization follows the newer version of the ‘word of mouth’ technique where people have been replaced by social networking sites. The content is spread in the form of pictures, movie clips, blogs and more. This technique is known as viral marketing where user awareness of the site spreads across different community site. Some methodologies/functionalities used by SMO are

• Social book-marking using buttons like ‘Digg this’
• Using YouTube videos
• Interaction through social network sites like Hi5 and Facebook
• Sharing audio and picture files
• Blogging
• Frequently updating data using RSS feed
• Promotion through news groups, newsletters, e-mails and forums

What is Social Media Optimization service?

Social media optimization (SMO) service customizes a complete social media website with optimized pages for the network socialite and search engine. The SMO activity would ideally involve the following steps:

• Increasing the site linkability by making it social media friendly
• Creating awareness through viral marketing
• Using free/paid advertisements as a promotional tool
• Customizing application to geographical locations
• Creating brand awareness by integrating blogs, newsgroups etc
• Community building

How is Social Media Optimization (SMO) advantageous than Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SMO and SEO both have a substantial influence on the web traffic. While SEO focuses on website content, links, structure etc to increase the page ranking, SMO is more about networking through social media. Though SEO is equally effective, SMO is more popular due to the following

• Easy to implement and needs no expert
• Result can be seen immediately
• Good profiling leads to heavy traffic
• No fee charged
• Structure of the website not so important
• Internet community functionalities can be effectively used
• Gains maximum exposure
• Encourages online participation by the audience
• Visual presentation is more important than the content

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a powerful web marketing tool used to optimize your website in order to get quick traffic and better page ranking. SEO involves modifying design and content by copywriting visible and invisible text to improve search engine reading.

There are two important aspects of Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

• On-Page Optimization – Process defining the on-page activities, involved to maximize the website performance for target keywords, to make it a relevant content heavy page.
• Off-Page Optimization – Process defining the off-page activities, involved to maximize the website performance for target keywords, related to the on-page content and keywords in off-page direct-links.

So, if your website is keeping low page rank and you are getting low rate on return, you must engage a SEO service provider. This will improve the quality of your deliverable and increase the return of investment.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Process

The aim of search engine optimization is to understand search algorithms along with knowledge of user needs from your website. The goal is to create a search-friendly site holding data/keywords that a particular user would like to search for in your site. Following are a few parameters that the SEO experts focus on:

• Website Link Structure –hyperlink, internal/external links
• Sitemap
• Dynamic Variables Search Engine compatibility
• Meta Tags
• Content
• Back Links
• Broken Links

An SEO expert Company analyzes the website on these parameters and derives a solution highlighting the key concerns. As a part of the contract the SEO service provider incorporates the relevant changes in the links and texts keeping the core content same. The success of the process lies in the increase in popularity of your website.

Key Benefits of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with its numerous benefits has become a low cost advertising methodology with high return rate. Some of the SEO benefits are

• Increased targeted traffic
• Increased brand visibility
• Higher sales
• Increased return on investment (ROI)

Another key benefit of the SEO service is its cost-effectiveness. A well optimized website maintains a good ranking for a long term.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC)

SEO and PPC compliment each other. Good SEO helps to reduce the PPC cost. A well-designed website with crawler-friendly design and text reduces the cost of pay per click advertising.

Optimization of the website through SEO leads to strict keyword relevancy thus reducing a lot of unauthorized visitors to the site. This improves the quality score for the site. Quality score effects your keywords minimum cost per click and position in the search results. One of the important factors for quality score is to have relevant landing page. Google has to know that the relevant Keywords are used on those pages. It also decides if you ad will show at all!

Relevant visitors due to good content/keyword optimization roll-in good conversions. Conversions in turn bring you great sale and good money.

Also improving your search traffic with strong SEO allows you to reduce your dependence on PPC traffic. That saves money!

LogicServe is an Adwords Professional Company. LogicServe provide Pay Per Click (PPC) setup and management services. We offer a full Management and Optimization service for our clients by Qualified Google Adwords Professional’s & Campaign Managers. LogicServe goes beyond keywords, clicks and conversions to deliver tangible business value and measurable ROI on your search engine marketing budgets.

LogicServe is an emerging Search Engine Marketing Company, with intent of offering professional SEM services. We specialize in the design of Adwords campaigns with strategic reporting and Adwords Optimizations to ensure maximum ROI when using Google Adwords. LogicServe established itself as better company in the field of SEM by providing services like.

• Pay Per Click Management (PPC)
• Comparison Search Engine Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Click Fraud Detection
• Web Site Analytics
• Conversion Enhancement
• Internet Marketing Consulting
• Comparison Shopping Feed Management

The prime reason for the success of LogicServe is the professional approach.