Advertising

Internet advertising is the fastest growing Ad medium in the world. Just about every company in business has to have a Marketing and Advertising budget to stay in business. Although becoming more expensive, budgets, ROI and "real time" ad effectiveness are all easier to compute, review and manage in a digital world equipped with tracking tools and statistical software packages.

Most of the estimated current Internet Ad revenue comes from purchased links of some kind. Let's briefly review some of the more popular paid advertising methods:

PPC (Pay Per Click) also called PPM (Paid Performance Marketing)

Pay Per Click Search Engines (PPCSE) allow advertisers to sign up and bid on specific keywords -- keywords that are relevant to products and/or services available on their Website. Advertisers bid for top positions in the SERP (search results) for those targeted keywords. The order in which listings for a particular search term are displayed according with advertisers bids. The bid amount is only paid when the displayed ad is actually selected and the potential customer or client visits the website.

PPC or PPM is the most popular method to immediately earn top position in preferred locations in SERP. The "Gorilla on the Block" is the GOOGLE Adwords program. However two more very popular PPC Search Engine programs are YAHOO Search Marketing (formerly Overture) and Miva (formerly FindWhat). MSN has announced that they intend to introduce adCenter in 2006.

Many webmasters are looking for Microsoft to come out with extremely competitive rates, offering advertisers an appealing ROI. We expect the increased competition in the latter half of 2006 to make a marked impression on the market.

Because of the popularity of Paid Performance Advertising systems there are numerous specialty firms offering PPCSE program management services. There are also a large number of associated tools available to help manage Pay Per Click campaigns, some of which free, including;

1) Keyword Selection Tools

2) Bid Management Tools

3) PPC ROI Calculator

Purchased Links On Other Sites

For a while, back when a link's relative association wasn't being scrutinized and filtered by the SEs, many Site owners sought after links on high ranking pages, so that some of the Page Rank would be passed to their site.

For a while that "Gray Hat" practice was a successful strategy. Now many Site owners that resell links from their Site have been advised by Matt Cutts (GOOGLE Engineer), that they may want to seriously consider using the "No Follow" Link attribute, so that they don't put their own Site in jeapordy.

There is no problem buying and selling links as long as they are kept from contributing to the PageRank calculations for the buyer's Site. Of couese that wold be harder to detect if the page is relevant and the links are not sitewide.

In that way, the practice may still be a viable strategy in launching a new Site, as long as the PageRank gap between the Sites wasn't extreme. If you took the time to read Matt Cutts blog entry linked above you learned that GOOGLE has developed algorithms to detect purchased link spam.

Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing is a marketing method on-line or off-line that creates a drive for people to pass on information or a website URL, making it easy to do so using existing channels of communication. The potential for growth is exponential when a "viral marketing" concept plays out well.

One of the greatest advantages is that the advertising costs are very low for the benefit received.

More information on Viral Marketing techniques.

Off-Line Generic Link Generation

Off-Line Generic Link Creation happens when people find printed copies of your website URL on business cards, stickers on equipment or products, faxes, brochures and many other printed marketing, sales or promotional materials. Off-Line website promotion can generate quite a bit of targeted traffic.

We see references to website addresses in the newspapers, periodicals, magazines and in all kinds of places including talk shows, advertisements and news spots on television.

The promotors behind a well marketed Website place their URL links everywhere they can, within approved means.

We hope you have found good value in our Search Engine Marketing Tutorial and use the resources provided here.

Most of the time it is best practice to follow White Hat SEO and SEM practices, especially where you or a client's livilihood could be demolished during the next algorithm shift.

Every business has to do some Risk Analysis and Control. A professional service providers we bear some of that responsibility for our clients.

Ken Webster

Mountain Eagle Marketing