What is SEO or Search Engine Optimization

TitanicBlack — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 11:23:41 +0000

For those of you inquisitive individuals doing a search on this elusive, confusing term, I thought I would offer up my interpretation of what exactly SEO means.

Maybe you’ve heard the term during an office water cooler conversation or maybe you’ve seen a reference to it online. Maybe you even know enough that it has to do with marketing your website in the search engines. For most people though, SEO means performing some crazy, juju-voodoo magic on your website with the ambitious goal of ranking your website in the top positions.

Let me just say that it doesn’t have to be that complicated and there is very little voodoo on hand here. There is a right way and a wrong way to do things though and that’s where we can help. There’s an entire industry built around SEO and countless, never ending discussions about the finer details of the practice. But the core “best practices” of SEO are fairly solid and accessible if you know specifically what you’re doing.

My definition of SEO:

SEO is short for, and officially translated as Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization is the practice of “optimizing” elements within your website – and related to your website – so the search engines will consider your content more relevant to a user’s search inquiry. Beyond the “traditional” definition, SEO can take many forms and include many types of online marketing that all have the common goal of increasing traffic to your website.

We’ll talk more about these additional methods in the future, but for now, we’re going to talk specifically about basic SEO.

The basic elements of SEO:

The practice of search engine optimization consists of a couple core elements. If you feel like getting technical and spending every waking moment talking about the finer points, new tactics and theories you surely can. There are many great sites and books devoted to SEO and the finer points. Without a doubt though, there are 4 main things that we focus on when optimizing your website for the search engines.

Keyword research:

SEO is useless without research. If you know what people are searching for specifically you’ll have a much better time and find yourself to be far more successful in the long run. We spend a lot of time researching the specific words and phrases that your customers and clients might use to find you – plus extensive competitive analysis. We also get our hands dirty and review the competition ourselves and make many decisions based on observation and our experience.

To have an effective SEO campaign you need to know what people are searching for, not what you think they’re searching for. There’s a big difference between someone typing “SEO training” and someone typing “Learn search engine optimization” for example. One search might have 10 queries a month, the other might have 1000. Ideally we do our homework before we even start designing a website. We can use that data to build a more effective website and online marketing campaign on many levels.

Optimizing page content for the search engines:

At the most basic level, SEO involves using specific keywords and phrases in your content and writing naturally. It’s as simple as that. Search engines love content that is relevant and that’s what their businesses are built around. They want to give you the most relevant and useful content when you search. If they don’t, then visitors will use another engine and that will possibly cost them revenue in the future. Due to this fact, the search engines are smart – and getting smarter every day. They want good content that’s relevant to a user’s search inquiry and it’s getting harder and harder to fool them.

If you’re writing your website content yourself, take your time and write great, relevant content that revolves around your target subject and use your best keywords where it matters. Make sure to use proper English, punctuation and check your spelling. It all figures into the search engine’s opinion that you’re presenting high quality, useful, relevant content. Doing all this well results in higher rankings and that’s our goal.

Optimize website code for the search engines:

If you’re not a technical person this might sound like a daunting task. It’s one that might give another website the leg up though if you don’t take it seriously. That’s one of the reasons that you hire an SEO expert and how we can help. There are some basic things that you can do without being a computer scientist though if you just know what’s most important.

For example, use your keywords in your page title. It’s at the very top of every HTML page and it begins with . For obvious reasons search engines pay close attention to the page title because it summarizes specifically what the subject of the page is. Make sure the subject of your page is coded with an H1 tag. This is fairly easy to figure out and there are many resources on the web that will help you with this easy task. Essentially all you need to do is label your page title like this <H1>Subject of your article</H1>. H1 tags should be used once on a page because they tell the search engines what this page is about. These are just a few examples in our arsenal that serve us well. Link to others, get others to link to you and link throughout your own site Links are very important to SEO on many levels. A link essentially says that you think something is important. It’s a referral, suggestion, recommendation or “vote” that tells the reader that something is relevant or related to the content you’re presenting. The more people that link to your site, the more “votes” you have in the eyes of the search engines and the higher you will rank. Links can essentially make or break a competitive SEO campaign so we take a lot of time to link to others and get high quality links back to your site in return. This can be very time consuming though and another good reason to hire a professional. In addition, linking to other relevant sections of your site from within your content makes sense too and will improve the readers experience. So don’t miss an opportunity to do this if you’re taking on SEO yourself.</div> </div> </div> </article> <article> <h1>What is new in HTML5?</h1> TitanicBlack — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 07:23:13 +0000 HTML 5 adds a lot of new features to the HTML specification. And what’s even better, there is already some limited browser support for these new features. If there is a feature you’re interested in, watch the WHATWG Wiki Implementations page1 for information on browsers that support various parts of the specification. <h3>HTML 5 New Doctype and Charset</h3> The nice thing about HTML 5 is how easy it is to impelement. You use the HTML 5 doctype, which is very simple and streamlined: <blockquote><!doctype html></blockquote> Yes, that’s it. Just two words “doctype” and “html”. It can be this simple because HTML 5 is no longer part of SGML, but is instead a markup language all on its own. The character set for HTML 5 is streamlined as well. It uses UTF-8 and you define it with just one meta tag: <blockquote><meta charset=”UTF-8″></blockquote> <h3>HTML 5 New Structure</h3> HTML 5 recognizes that Web pages have a structure, just like books have a structure or other XML documents. In general, Web pages have navigation, body content, and sidebar content plus headers, footers, and other features. And HTML 5 has created tags to support those elements of the page. <ul> <li><section> – to define sections of pages</li> <li><header> – defines the header of a page</li> <li><footer> – defines the footer of a page</li> <li><nav> – defines the navigation on a page</li> <li><article> – defines the article or primary content on a page</li> <li><aside> – defines extra content like a sidebar on a page</li> <li><figure> – defines images that annotate an article</li> </ul> <h3>HTML 5 New Inline Elements</h3> These inline elements define some basic concepts and keep them semantically marked up, mostly to do with time: <ul> <li> – to indicate content that is marked in some fashion</li> <li><time> – to indicate content that is a time or date</li> <li><meter> – to indicate content that is a fraction of a known range – such as disk usage</li> <li><progress> – to indicate the progress of a task towards completion</li> </ul> <h3>HTML 5 New Dynamic Pages Support</h3> HTML 5 was developed to help Web application developers, so there are a lot of new features to make it easy to create dynamic HTML pages: <ul> <li>Context menus – HTML 5 will support the creation and use of context menus within Web pages and applications</li> <li>href is not required on a tag – this allows you to use the a tag with scripts and in Web applications without needing a place to send that anchor</li> <li>async attribute – This is added to the script tag to tell the browser that the script should be loaded asynchronously so that it doesn’t slow down the load and display of the rest of the page.</li> <li><details> – provides details about an element. This would be like tooltips in non-Web applications.</li> <li><datagrid> – creates a table that is built from a database or other dynamic source</li> <li><menu> – an old tag brought back and given new life allowing you to create a menu system on your Web pages</li> <li><command> – defines actions that should happen when a dynamic element is activated</li> </ul> <h3>HTML 5 New Form Types</h3> HTML 5 supports all the standard form input types, but it adds a few more: <ul> <li>datetime</li> <li>datetime-local</li> <li>date</li> <li>month</li> <li>week</li> <li>time</li> <li>number</li> <li>range</li> <li>email</li> <li>url</li> </ul> <h3>HTML 5 New Elements</h3> There are a few exciting new elements in HTML 5: <ul> <li><canvas> – an element to give you a drawing space in JavaScript on your Web pages. It can let you add images or graphs to tool tips or just create dyanmic graphs on your Web pages, built on the fly.</li> <li> – add video to your Web pages with this simple tag.</li> <li> – add sound to your Web pages with this simple tag.</li> </ul> <h3>HTML 5 Removes Some Elements</h3> There are also some elements in HTML 4 that will no longer be supported by HTML 5. Most are already deprecated, and so shouldn’t be surprising, but a few might be difficult: <ul> <li>acronym</li> <li>applet</li> <li>basefont</li> <li>big</li> <li>center</li> <li>dir</li> <li>font</li> <li>frame</li> <li>frameset</li> <li>isindex</li> <li>noframes</li> <li>noscript</li> <li>s</li> <li>strike</li> <li>tt</li> <li>u</li> </ul> <h3>Are You Ready for HTML 5?</h3> HTML 5 adds a lot of great new features to Web pages and Web design and it will be exciting when more browsers support it. Microsoft has stated that they will begin supporting at least portions of HTML 5 in IE 8. If you want to get started sooner, Opera has had the best support, with Safari close behind. </article> <article> <h1>Attracting, Enhancing and Retaining Client Relationships Using the Web</h1> TitanicBlack — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:11:27 +0000 A virtual explosion in Internet usage has businesses scrambling to launch Internet sites and establish a presence in the new Net economy. Projections indicate that the total number of Net users will increase from the estimated 150 million current users to half a billion by the year 2003 [1], with the E-commerce market then being worth $900 billion. [2] More consumers will go online and more companies will see the Internet as a viable vehicle for Business-to-Business commerce. Although accounting firms have not been at the forefront of this revolution, even a cursory search of the Web finds a plethora of accounting organization web sites. Several web site applications are typical for the accounting firm. Current applications of accounting web sites are shown in Table I. Effective use of a web site for attracting, enhancing and retaining client relationships will call on the firm to consider a variety of other communication techniques through the web site. A review of several accounting sites shows a pronounced trend toward use of the site for public relations information and image building. However, this is a limited view of the web’s communication potential. As Leung [3] points out, “Marketing through the web allows companies to supplement conventional communication channels at a very reasonable cost.” The web offers a wide variety of capabilities including audio, visual, interactive, transactional, and database management. Through various combinations of these capabilities, the web becomes part of a well-designed, integrated communications strategy. Burnett and Moriarty describe integrated marketing communications as “one of the most important communication trends of this decade.” This communications concept is defined as “the practice of unifying all marketing communication tools to send target audiences a consistent, persuasive message…” While the relatively new status of the Internet, as a promotional tool, is generating a great deal of attention in the marketplace, the true value of the web is not as a stand-alone medium. Rather, it should be carefully blended with the firm’s other communication efforts including advertising, brochures, business cards, yellow pages, and even company letterhead. This article discusses integrating your web site into an integrated marketing communications plan. The focus is on ways to use the web to attract, enhance and retain client relationships, and ways to avoid pitfalls. Traditional Media Effective use of a web site as a communication tool integrates the site with other communication elements, which may include television, radio, newspaper and magazine ads, as well as public relations or personal selling. With the integrated communications approach, all of these elements will carry a unified message in a common style. This comprehensive approach includes even the smallest details such as the choice of graphics, colors or fonts. Stationery, Brochures and Business Cards Include your web site address on all traditional communications with your current and potential clients. These individuals are already interested in the service you provide. Consequently, you should encourage them to visit your web site. It may be desirable to specify a particular page within your site, rather than the generic entry point to your site. This will allow users to obtain the information they desire more quickly by not having to traverse as many pages. Also, remember to place your web address on any communication that is given to a client. Even if it is unlikely to generate traffic to your site, your goal is to make it as easy as possible for individuals to find your site. Put your web address on audit bids, engagement letters and satisfaction surveys. Additionally, don’t forget about verbal communication. Remember to leave your site’s address on your answering machine. This will allow the customer to obtain information from your site after hours. Your site offers the advantage of providing information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you are providing service in a particular industry or specializing in a tax area, your site can sell your services much better than a phone message. Domain Name Your choice of a domain name–URL address–is very important. Many people will find you by simply typing http://www.yourname.com into their browser. Therefore, use the name that is commonly associated with your organization, something that will complement your comprehensive marketing approach. To keep it simple, some organizations prefer to use initials as their choice of domain names. However, unless your organization is widely know by its initials, we advise against this practice. If you are starting a new firm or just establishing a web site address and the name has not been determined, it may be advisable to check for the availability of a domain name. Trademark issues should be resolved, as well, in the selection process. It may even be appropriate to use a trademark attorney. The assignment of domain names (specifically the .com, .net and .org) is handled by Network Solutions in cooperation with the U.S. Government through an organization called InterNIC. To determine if a domain name is available, go to http://www.internic.net and search their database. Extensions other than .com, .net and .org are handled by other organizations. InterNIC assigns domain names on a first come, first-served basis through registrars. However, just because an organization has a domain name does not mean that they can keep it forever. Courts are applying trademark law to domain names. Organizations that have “squatted” on a domain name to prevent the trademark owner from using it are losing in court. There are situations where more than one organization has a legal right to a name. The name goes to the organization that requested the name first. We recommend that you consider obtaining all three of the global extensions–.com, .org and .net. Obviously, the most important for businesses is the .com extension. But, even though the original intent was .com for business, .org for non-profit organizations, and .net of Internet service providers, there are no restrictions on obtaining all three. For example visit CocaCola’s Web site at www.cocacola.com, www.cocacola.net and www.cocacola.org. Additionally, there are extensions for countries. If you conduct business in countries other than the United States, you may want to consider obtaining country extension for those countries. When choosing a domain name, you want to have a domain name that brings clients to your site. You should also use your domain name as your E-mail. Search Engines Another method of finding a site is by using one of the many search engines on the Internet. These search engines maintain a database of web pages that can be searched by keywords. There are more than 100 search engines. Some of the most well-known are Yahoo, Infoseek, Excite, HotBot, Lycos, and AOLNetFind. Obviously, the goal is to have your site appear as early as possible on this list when the keywords are entered into a search engine. Therefore, the selection of keywords is important because your goal should be to get the right people to your site, not just increase the number of visitors. You should think about the words that your current clients use to describe you. Your specialization should be part of your keywords. However, you don’t want to narrow the keywords too much. For example, CPA or accountant specializing in school audits or litigation services places you in the database segment of broad-based searches and also highlights your specialties. Additionally, you may want to include some geographi c keywords if your business is based in a narrow geographic area. Once the keywords have been selected, there are several ways to improve your odds of appearing high on the list when the keywords are entered. Search engines attempt to find the best possible pages for the keywords entered. Consequently, they are constantly looking for better methods to match web pages and keywords. Make sure that the keywords are used in the title and at the beginning of the web page. Additionally, the HTML code used in your web page has a Meta tag–used to help search engines classify web pages. Within this tag, you should place the appropriate keywords (For details on the syntax of Meta Tags, visit http://www.metatages.net/). Additionally, the search engines allow submission of web addresses and their matching keywords. This helps the search engines find your web site. These search engines will return over time to your site, and they respond favorably to changes to the web page. Therefore, it is important to update your web pages on a regular basis, even if the changes are small. One warning: Web pages that contain frames are handled differently by many search engines. Extra care should be taken with pages that contain frames to ensure that search engines can effectively categorize them. Link Exchanges, Banner and Pop-up Ads Advertise on other organizations’ sites to bring individuals to your web site. There are several different types of Internet advertisements, including banner and pop-up ads. Banner ads consist of a graphical image that when clicked, will take the user to the advertiser’s site. Generally, banner ads are found at the top and/or bottom of a web page. They are particularly common on a content provider’s web pages, such as http://www.cnn.corn, http://www.cbs.com, http://www.nbc.com, http://www.abc.com, http://www.espn.,corn, and http://www.foxsports.com. Content providers are organizations that do not sell merchandise, but provide information such as news and sports. Specifically, the use of the business or financial sections of a content provider’s web site would be appropriate for accounting organizations. The price for a banner ad can be established in a variety of ways. The most common are CPM (cost per thousand views) and the number of click-throughs (the number of times that users have clicked the banner ad to reach the owner’s site). Obviously, it is important to spend your money on banner ads wisely so that it reaches potential clients/customers. In addition to content providers, many organizations offer free web sites to anyone. The main requirement is that the organization be allowed to place banner ads on the free web site. They in turn charge for the banner ads, which pays for the resources required for the site. Examples of organizations that offer free web sites in exchange for banner ads are http://www.tripod.com and http://www.webjump.com. Introduction A virtual explosion in Internet usage has businesses scrambling to launch Internet sites and establish a presence in the new Net economy. Projections indicate that the total number of Net users will increase from the estimated 150 million current users to half a billion Ads by Google Accounting Solutions Advanced accounting & business mgt software. Making life easier myob.com Online Marketing Suite Website Analytics, Mktg Automation and Web Content Mgmt – Together! www.Sitecore.net/SitecoreOnlineMktg Small Business Case Study Work Smarter Not Harder – Watch Interviews Online From Commbank www.CommBank.com.au by the year 2003 [1], with the E-commerce market then being worth $900 billion. [2] More consumers will go online and more companies will see the Internet as a viable vehicle for Business-to-Business commerce. Although accounting firms have not been at the forefront of this revolution, even a cursory search of the Web finds a plethora of accounting organization web sites. Several web site applications are typical for the accounting firm. Current applications of accounting web sites are shown in Table I. Effective use of a web site for attracting, enhancing and retaining client relationships will call on the firm to consider a variety of other communication techniques through the web site. A review of several accounting sites shows a pronounced trend toward use of the site for public relations information and image building. However, this is a limited view of the web’s communication potential. As Leung [3] points out, “Marketing through the web allows companies to supplement conventional communication channels at a very reasonable cost.” The web offers a wide variety of capabilities including audio, visual, interactive, transactional, and database management. Through various combinations of these capabilities, the web becomes part of a well-designed, integrated communications strategy. [4] Burnett and Moriarty [5] describe integrated marketing communications as “one of the most important communication trends of this decade.” This communications concept is defined as “the practice of unifying all marketing communication tools to send target audiences a consistent, persuasive message…” While the relatively new status of the Internet, as a promotional tool, is generating a great deal of attention in the marketplace, the true value of the web is not as a stand-alone medium. Rather, it should be carefully blended with the firm’s other communication efforts including advertising, brochures, business cards, yellow pages, and even company letterhead. This article discusses integrating your web site into an integrated marketing communications plan. The focus is on ways to use the web to attract, enhance and retain client relationships, and ways to avoid pitfalls. Traditional Media Effective use of a web site as a communication tool integrates the site with other communication elements, which may include television, radio, newspaper and magazine ads, as well as public relations or personal selling. With the integrated communications approach, all of these elements will carry a unified message in a common style. This comprehensive approach includes even the smallest details such as the choice of graphics, colors or fonts. Stationery, Brochures and Business Cards Include your web site address on all traditional communications with your current and potential clients. These individuals are already interested in the service you provide. Consequently, you should encourage them to visit your web site. It may be desirable to specify a particular page within your site, rather than the generic entry point to your site. This will allow users to obtain the information they desire more quickly by not having to traverse as many pages. Also, remember to place your web address on any communication that is given to a client. Even if it is unlikely to generate traffic to your site, your goal is to make it as easy as possible for individuals to find your site. Put your web address on audit bids, engagement letters and satisfaction surveys. Additionally, don’t forget about verbal communication. Remember to leave your site’s address on your answering machine. This will allow the customer to obtain information from your site after hours. Your site offers the advantage of providing information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you are providing service in a particular industry or specializing in a tax area, your site can sell your services much better than a phone message. Domain Name Your choice of a domain name–URL address–is very important. Many people will find you by simply typing http://www.yourname.com into their browser. Therefore, use the name that is commonly associated with your organization, something that will complement your comprehensive marketing approach. To keep it simple, some organizations prefer to use initials as their choice of domain names. However, unless your organization is widely know by its initials, we advise against this practice. If you are starting a new firm or just establishing a web site address and the name has not been determined, it may be advisable to check for the availability of a domain name. Trademark issues should be resolved, as well, in the selection process. It may even be appropriate to use a trademark attorney. The assignment of domain names (specifically the .com, .net and .org) is handled by Network Solutions in cooperation with the U.S. Government through an organization called InterNIC. To determine if a domain name is available, go to http://www.internic.net and search their database. Extensions other than .com, .net and .org are handled by other organizations. InterNIC assigns domain names on a first come, first-served basis through registrars. However, just because an organization has a domain name does not mean that they can keep it forever. Courts are applying trademark law to domain names. Organizations that have “squatted” on a domain name to prevent the trademark owner from using it are losing in court. There are situations where more than one organization has a legal right to a name. The name goes to the organization that requested the name first. We recommend that you consider obtaining all three of the global extensions–.com, .org and .net. Obviously, the most important for businesses is the .com extension. But, even though the original intent was .com for business, .org for non-profit organizations, and .net of Internet service providers, there are no restrictions on obtaining all three. For example visit CocaCola’s Web site at www.cocacola.com, www.cocacola.net and www.cocacola.org. Additionally, there are extensions for countries. If you conduct business in countries other than the United States, you may want to consider obtaining country extension for those countries. When choosing a domain name, you want to have a domain name that brings clients to your site. You should also use your domain name as your E-mail. Search Engines Another method of finding a site is by using one of the many search engines on the Internet. These search engines maintain a database of web pages that can be searched by keywords. There are more than 100 search engines. Some of the most well-known are Yahoo, Infoseek, Excite, HotBot, Lycos, and AOLNetFind. Obviously, the goal is to have your site appear as early as possible on this list when the keywords are entered into a search engine. Therefore, the selection of keywords is important because your goal should be to get the right people to your site, not just increase the number of visitors. You should think about the words that your current clients use to describe you. Your specialization should be part of your keywords. However, you don’t want to narrow the keywords too much. For example, CPA or accountant specializing in school audits or litigation services places you in the database segment of broad-based searches and also highlights your specialties. Additionally, you may want to include some geographi c keywords if your business is based in a narrow geographic area. Once the keywords have been selected, there are several ways to improve your odds of appearing high on the list when the keywords are entered. Search engines attempt to find the best possible pages for the keywords entered. Consequently, they are constantly looking for better methods to match web pages and keywords. Make sure that the keywords are used in the title and at the beginning of the web page. Additionally, the HTML code used in your web page has a Meta tag–used to help search engines classify web pages. Within this tag, you should place the appropriate keywords (For details on the syntax of Meta Tags, visit http://www.metatages.net/). Additionally, the search engines allow submission of web addresses and their matching keywords. This helps the search engines find your web site. These search engines will return over time to your site, and they respond favorably to changes to the web page. Therefore, it is important to update your web pages on a regular basis, even if the changes are small. One warning: Web pages that contain frames are handled differently by many search engines. Extra care should be taken with pages that contain frames to ensure that search engines can effectively categorize them. Link Exchanges, Banner and Pop-up Ads Advertise on other organizations’ sites to bring individuals to your web site. There are several different types of Internet advertisements, including banner and pop-up ads. Banner ads consist of a graphical image that when clicked, will take the user to the advertiser’s site. Generally, banner ads are found at the top and/or bottom of a web page. They are particularly common on a content provider’s web pages, such as http://www.cnn.corn, http://www.cbs.com, http://www.nbc.com, http://www.abc.com, http://www.espn.,corn, and http://www.foxsports.com. Content providers are organizations that do not sell merchandise, but provide information such as news and sports. Specifically, the use of the business or financial sections of a content provider’s web site would be appropriate for accounting organizations. The price for a banner ad can be established in a variety of ways. The most common are CPM (cost per thousand views) and the number of click-throughs (the number of times that users have clicked the banner ad to reach the owner’s site). Obviously, it is important to spend your money on banner ads wisely so that it reaches potential clients/customers. In addition to content providers, many organizations offer free web sites to anyone. The main requirement is that the organization be allowed to place banner ads on the free web site. They in turn charge for the banner ads, which pays for the resources required for the site. Examples of organizations that offer free web sites in exchange for banner ads are http://www.tripod.com and http://www.webjump.com. Popup ads, also called interstitials, are a variation of banner ads. Instead of placing a graphical image at the top and bottom of a web page, they open a new, smaller window that contains the graphical images. Pop-up ads, which are less numerous than banner ads, appear while the main page loads. Unfortunately, many web surfers consider the popup windows to be a nuisance, and have been discouraging their usage. Pop-up ads are also sold using the same criteria as banner ads. An interesting variation of banner ads is link exchanges. Instead of paying for a banner ad, you allow a banner ad to be placed on your web page, and in return your banner ad is placed on someone else’s site. One company that organizes these exchanges is Link Exchange (http://www.linkexchange.com). Another variation on the link exchange is the Web Ring. In this case, a circle is formed that links related sites together. Each member of the ring places a graphical image, which when clicked, takes the user to a different site in the Web Ring. Again, no cost is involved. One organization that maintains Web Rings can be found at http://www.webring.com, now a part of Yahoo. Some Web Rings are geographically based, which can be helpful in attracting local clients. One example is the Web Ring for the “Denver Area Businesses and Organizations” (http://nav.webring.yahoo.com/hub?ring=denverco&list). E-mail and Bulletin Boards Using E-mail to publicize a web site can be effective. However, caution must be exercised. In the world of the Internet, it is considered improper to send junk E-mail to promote a business. Therefore, organizations should not send E-mail to anyone unless it is requested. However, E-mail can be effectively utilized. For example, whenever you collect information from your potential customers, request their E-mail address. It is also good form to tell them how their address will be used and ask if that use is acceptable. This can be time consuming, but it does have the advantage of reaching the desired audience. In addition to E-mail, your organization may want to monitor list-servers, discussion groups and bulletin boards. Appropriate information can be given to answer questions that are posed by members, including a link to appropriate information on your site. Additionally, many bulletin boards allow “press release” type of information to be posted. Again, caution should be taken to not use these as advertising mediums, but as a means of communicating with customers. Only very interested individuals will take the time to be part of a discussion group or read a bulletin board. Encouraging Return Visits Once you have brought the right people to your site using a combination of integrated methods, you want them to return on a regular basis. People will return to a web site because of the content. Is there information that would cause people to return to your site? Your web site should be updated with new information on a regular basis. This will encourage people to return to your site for the latest information. You can also request an E-mail address and some additional information from the visitor. This information is then entered into a database. When changes are made to the site that would interest the visitor, E-mail can be sent indicating what changes have been made to encourage them to return to the site. Again, this requires that new, updated information be added to the site on a periodic basis to generate repeat visits. As new tax information is enacted into law, you can quickly contact your tax clients or potential clients and promote your expertise. </article> <article> <h1>What Is CPC-Based Web Advertising?</h1> TitanicBlack — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:02:55 +0000 One of the most popular methods of online advertising is CPC, or cost-per-click, advertising. If you have been researching online advertising, you are probably already familiar with this term. As Web users become more and more jaded to banner and button ads, and click-through rates for these types of ads plummet, CPC advertising has taken hold. Ads are displayed in the same way as in CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions, or instances of an ad appearing on a Web site) deals — the difference is in how the customer pays for the advertising. In a CPM campaign, you pay for each how many times the ad appears. If your ad performs well and lots of users click through to your site, then each click-through costs you less. On the other hand, the lower the click-through rate, the more each click costs you. CPC advertising protects you by fixing the amount you pay for each click, and sets a ceiling on how much you’ll pay. By paying only for actual clicks, you save money and reach only targeted customers. Gone are the days of paying for thousands of impressions that are uselessly displayed. This is a great way for businesses to control their advertising budget and gauge response to their advertising campaigns. For example, if you decide to advertise with a CPC-based search engine or a featured listing with a search engine, your ad will display each time a user enters in a keyword that matches your predetermined keyword list. You don’t pay each time the ad displays; only when it’s actually clicked. If you prefer to try CPC-based banner advertising, the principle is the same. Your ad will display and each time it is clicked on by an end user, you get charged. Your ad runs until you have reached a predetermined amount of actual clicks. This means that your ad may get much more exposure than it would using a traditional impressions calculation method. One of the most popular methods of online advertising is CPC, or cost-per-click, advertising. If you have been researching online advertising, you are probably already familiar with this term. As Web users become more and more jaded to banner and button ads, and click-through rates for these types of ads plummet, CPC advertising has taken hold. Ads are displayed in the same way as in CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions, or instances of an ad appearing on a Web site) deals — the difference is in how the customer pays for the advertising. In a CPM campaign, you pay for each how many times the ad appears. If your ad performs well and lots of users click through to your site, then each click-through costs you less. On the other hand, the lower the click-through rate, the more each click costs you. CPC advertising protects you by fixing the amount you pay for each click, and sets a ceiling on how much you’ll pay. By paying only for actual clicks, you save money and reach only targeted customers. Gone are the days of paying for thousands of impressions that are uselessly displayed. This is a great way for businesses to control their advertising budget and gauge response to their advertising campaigns. For example, if you decide to advertise with a CPC-based search engine or a featured listing with a search engine, your ad will display each time a user enters in a keyword that matches your predetermined keyword list. You don’t pay each time the ad displays; only when it’s actually clicked. If you prefer to try CPC-based banner advertising, the principle is the same. Your ad will display and each time it is clicked on by an end user, you get charged. Your ad runs until you have reached a predetermined amount of actual clicks. This means that your ad may get much more exposure than it would using a traditional impressions calculation method. These extra impressions allow your ad to stay up longer, which may mean that even if you do not receive click-throughs right away, you may end up with users who decide to visit your site later on. CPC-based advertising allows businesses to pay only for the targeted leads they receive. In the competitive online marketplace, this can spell success much more quickly than other advertising methods. Whether your company has successfully used CPC-based methods in the past, or if you are completely new to the idea, there are several places where you can find CPC-based advertising. Google AdWords is one of the most well known CPC-based advertising venues. With AdWords, you pick the keywords you want to use and only pay for as many clicks as you can afford. Instead of having to pay for a campaign that may be more costly than you had planned, you can set a limit on the amount of times your ad can be clicked and cap the total amount you’ll spend on the campaign. This can be a life saver for a company that cannot risk an advertising campaign that may result in thousands of dollars of unexpected advertising bills. If you prefer banner advertising, there are also myriad companies offering CPC-based banner ads in addition to the traditional CPM advertising method. CPC advertising is clearly here to stay. But don’t spend all your ad dollars in one place. Test different methods of advertising at the same time, and always track the results. This is the only way to determine what works for you, and the only way to get the most for your advertising spend. </article> </main></body></html>

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