Marketing Tips

Search Engine Optimization and Advertising

In today’s net-savvy world it has become common for any business to have a website which they use mostly for advertising their products and services. With the advent of search engines it has become even easier for the customers to search for the stuff online. For a website to be successful its link should land in the first three pages which the search engine brings and the rank of the page should be high which means many visitors come to the site. This can be achieved by applying search engine optimization or popularly known as SEO. This is a marketing strategy which increases the quality and quantity of traffic flow to a particular website via search engines.

SEO not only affects the search engine results, but also image search, video search and industry specific vertical search engines. It determines how a search algorithm functions and searches what is popular with people. When a website link is submitted to a search engine, a spider crawls through a page to gather links which lead to other pages and stores those pages on the server of the search engine. The information collected from these pages is sent to the indexer, whose job is to extract information from those pages such as the keywords and their weights, the location of the page and other links that are stored for the spider to crawl in future.

In the beginning, the search engine optimizer algorithms were dependant on the keywords, Meta tags, and index files provided by the Webmaster. Meta tags provided information about a particular page, but using them for indexing the pages didn’t prove to be successful as some Webmasters added irrelevant Meta tags to increase the number of hits and earn huge ad revenue. They even changed the HTML of the web pages to achieve a good rank for the page. But this was a case of abuse as it fetched irrelevant pages.

Search engines then began utilizing complex ranking algorithm, which were difficult for the webmasters to manipulate so as to provide web surfers with genuine results. The rank of the web page was calculated mathematically by functions using strength and quantity of the inbound links. The higher the rank of the page the more chances it had to be viewed by a person.  Later algorithms were developed which considered various other on-page factors such as rank and off-page factors such as hyperlink. Since the webmasters couldn’t manipulate the page rank, they began exchanging, selling and buying links, which lead to link spamming and even creation of numerous sites dedicated for this purpose.

Algorithms became more complex by every passing day and top search engines kept their algorithms a secret. As the cost of SEO increased, advertisers were roped in to pay for it, which finally resulted in high quality web pages. Although investing in SEO is very fruitful, but at the same time is risky because with out any prior notice the algorithms being used are bound to change and the search engine will stop directing visitors to the page. Many consultants are available in the market that provides SEO services. They manipulate the HTML source code of the web site like menus, shopping carts and sometimes even the content of the website to draw more traffic. Search engines like Yahoo has algorithms that extract pages not according to the page rank but according to the cost per click or set fee, that is if a advertiser desires that the page containing his ad be displayed, he is expected to pay money for it. This is a point of controversy, as only the big businesses will be able to increase the number of hits of their page but not the small business who might be having a better quality page.

Google Ad Words explores ads which have words typed in the search box by the surfer. The Million Dollar Homepage started the concept of Pixel advertising, which is a graphical kind of advertising. Depending on the pixels, the space is sold to the advertiser. Keyword advertising involves advertisers who buy URLs of a site and place their ads at that location. Thus SEO is a market in its own which is yielding great results for businesses on Internet.

Advergaming: Advertising through video games

The practice of using video games to promote a particular product or an organization is known as “Advergaming”. Wired magazine first used this term in a column to describe the commissioning of free online games by large companies, in 2001. There are three categories of Advergaming: ATL Advergaming, BTL Advergaming and TTL Advergaming.

ATL Advergaming can be vaguely explained as a promotional video game. The business incorporates interactive video games on their website so as to create more awareness about their product among the website visitors. This method is also used to attract more visitors to the site and to increase the traffic flow on the website. If the games are made for product advertising, the product is highlighted in the game.

Before the invention of the internet, floppy disks and later compact disks were used as a medium to promote games and in turn a particular product. It started with floppy disk basically to create awareness as well as product promotion. The first Advergame was distributed by American Home Food, which was developed by Chef Boyardee. Taco Bell and Coca Cola followed it by giving customers floppy disks containing promotional games. The first Advergame to be distributed on compact disk was by Chex and General Mill. The graphics of these games have matured from arcade style flash to three-dimensional.

BTL Advergaming comprises of recruitment tools like In-game advertising, militiamen and edutainment. Usually the mascot of the particular company is depicted as the hero in such games. Pepsi man and Burger man were the mascots used in promotional games designed by Pepsi and Burger King respectively. The storyline of these games can be commercial, educational or political like the game American Army created to attract more youth towards devoting their life to army and also games meant to promote sports like Formula One racing are also a part of this technique.

In-game advertising is more commercial type and is purely targeted for promotion of the product via the game. This is really picking up and even movies are promoted by this method. Like on the website of the movie, The Mummy, there are games which have a storyline similar to the movie and the player is given knowledge of the facts about the movie and its subject, Egyptian Mummy. Educational Advergaming refers to games that portray a moral message to the players.

These games can also act as a medium of advertisement themselves like in the video game of EA Sports; banners of Pepsi line the frame of the game. By using this strategy the companies are able to provide low price or free games to the consumers.  This is also effective in reducing the price of games that have a monthly fee.

TTL Advergaming or through the line Advergaming is the most rare form of Advergaming. URL links are embedded into a game that takes the players to the web pages, which has BTL Advergaming. Different methods are used to attract the player to a particular webpage. In the game ” Enter the Matrix” URL hyperlinks are depicted in the background, which the player is forced to click to learn about the facts relating to the plot of the next level and at the same time advertises about the product. The curiosity to learn about the theme of the game attracts the player, although it might not be necessary to click to finish the game.  Such kinds of games are usually known as link-chases as one link will lead to another. Website visitors are sometimes tempted with a prize to prompt them to click the URL.

This technique of advertising is really beneficial as it not only creates awareness among the player but also among his friends who lands the website upon friend’s suggestion. The success of Advergaming is dependant on word of mouth and thus is also known as viral marketing. In the year 2004, this industry generated around $83.6 million and involved 105 million players.

Advertising on Internet

Ever since the advent of Internet, advertising on the World Wide Web has been very popular. Many corporations, companies and business have taken advantage of this and you can see ads on any web pages you visit. Consumer can go to any search engine and type the keyword relating to what they are looking for and hit search and they will be provided with a huge list from which they can select. This is a very cost effective and time saving method of advertising.

It has become really easy for any business to have a personalized website by which they can advertise, directly interact with the customer; provide details about their product and services. Regular newsletters, offers, discounts can be pasted on site to increase the interest of the website visitors.

Since it’s easy to reach any kind of audience concerning any kind of business, the possibility of misuse is always there. Based on this Internet advertising is classified into two kinds of advertisement, legal online advertising and illegal online advertising. Legal online advertising includes online advertising directories, search engine advertising, e-mail advertising, and desktop advertising. Illegal advertising is more commonly know as spamming. This is usually done by altering some system settings with the help of external applications after which pop-ups are sent to a particular network or computer. The external applications are known as adware or spyware. Some of these are really harmful, the most famous being Trojans, which are very hard to uninstall and remove from the system.

With the increase in technology, special effects are being used to make advertisement more interesting. Vivid colors, good page layout and lots of imagination is involved. Typically Adobe Flash is used to design advertisements these days. Depending on the technology being used to design advertisements can be classified into various categories.

Banner ads are animations displayed on the website usually created in HTML or Eudora. There is a range of type and sizes of the ads. Trick banner ads are banner ads that have an extra functionality of dialog boxes and buttons and are displayed as an alert or error message.

A pop-up is an advertisement displayed in a new window that covers up the active web page. A pop-under advertisement opens in another window that is under the active web page and can be seen after the present window is either closed or minimized.

Interstitial ads are those that are displayed before directing over to the desired page.

Wallpaper ads form the background of the web page.

The ads that float on the screen are known as a floating ad.

Polite ads download on a low pace without interrupting the normal functioning of the website.

An ad that enlarges and changes the contents of the page being displayed is known as expanding ad.

Advertisements which are displayed in a video form on a website is known as a video ad.

There are many ways by which advertising slots can be purchased on Internet like CPM, CPV, CPC, CPA, CPL and CPO. CPM or cost per mil means that the advertiser is meant to pay for a particular number of people to whom the advertisement will be exposed. CPV or cost per visitor means that the advertiser is meant to pay for the people to whom the advertisement was delivered. CPC or cost per click means paying for the number of clicks made on the advertisement by the visitors. Although the advertisement is put up on the website, the amount is paid only after the visitor clicks on the URL of the advertisement. CPA or cost per action means that the advertisement publisher bares all the charges of advertisement, but he gets paid only if the visitor clicks on the advertisement and purchases a product or signs-up for a service. CPL or cost per lead is similar to CPA, only that the visitor doesn’t have to necessarily buy anything; he or she can simply apply to get regular newsletters and special offers. CPO or cost per order is where the advertiser pays each time an order is placed.

Online advertisements cannot only be used to promote a product or service but in fact they can be used for purposes like promoting charity and spreading education.

What Is Viral Marketing?

Many people may have heard the term “viral” associated with different styles of marketing and wonder what some of them are, but specifically what is viral marketing?  Well, the simple answer to the question is that this type of product promotion is a form of advertising, which deals mainly with the infiltration of the Internet, with advertisements, logos, and critical product placement in a manner that will most easily entice people to buy their products.

The idea behind viral marketing is that if you can get the product up in multiple places on the web and in front of as many eyes as possible for as little money as possible, you are doing some really good marketing on a budget. Most of the companies behind this style of promotion are smaller businesses that just want to get the word out about their product but don’t have the money to hire a public relations firm or spend money on advertising.

Viral Marketing Examples

One of the more effective methods of viral marketing is to form a Joint Venture with another business. While you have the product, your JV partner may bring his customer content list of thousands and his marketing skills to the project. In most cases a JV will benefit both parties involved with an equal split of the profits and possibly the work.

Another form of getting your product, to race around the internet world, is to set up an affiliate program with 100s of individuals and business promoting your product. The difference between a JV and an affiliate, is the affiliate will only get paid a percentage of each individual sale personally made by them.

More viral marketing examples and ideas include sending out chain letters with information about your product buried within a story that urges people to continue resending the letter to all of their friends. This is a decent idea, but if you use the chain letter to try and collect money for something that doesn’t exist or run a scam for a business, then that is fraud and is a crime. You have to be careful and make sure that you aren’t breaking any laws.

If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of what is viral marketing, then you should realize that it is something anyone with a computer and a little bit of technological savvy can do.  First of all, using social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace is a fairly ingenious way of getting your product or service out to the public.  You can set up a site, get all of the relevant information listed on your homepage, and then add friends.

Theoretically, just adding whoever to your profile isn’t going to do you any good as they are likely looking to connect with friends and won’t be interested in your product.  The best way to market yourself is to look through the MySpace groups and find those with similar interests.  Say that you are a writer marketing a new book.  Adding other writers isn’t going to get you a whole lot of customers, but adding people who are fans of your genre, well, that’s a different story.

You should also know that using viral marketing plans too much can cause some problems.  If people feel they are being slammed by the product, then you are going to find many of your potential clients turned off by your aggressiveness.

Just remember that you’re trying to get the word out and tell people about your idea without being too pushy and you should be just fine.

The internet is a vital part of anyone’s business plan, and by utilizing top marketing strategies you are sure to increase your business. While traditional marketing is still important, online marketing has been increasing in popularity.

Therefore, the playing field has become much more competitive. If you are looking to level the playing field a bit to give yourself a chance to compete, then it is crucial for you to make use of the top internet marketing strategies. Using these marketing strategies aggressively will without question improve your business.

There are several different methods of marketing to choose from. For example, there are some short term strategies out there that can bring you some quick results. While these strategies may be able to give you quick bursts of traffic to your site, they may not be able to do much else.

These methods are primarily short term methods that will only give you temporary results. These short term methods usually include: bulletin boards, ads, and some search engine optimization techniques.

There are also plenty of long term methods included in the top 10 marketing strategies that you should consider. These marketing techniques will usually take a bit of work and will take some time before you really see any results. They are definitely worth pursuing though as you will find that the results you receive by this method will be much longer lasting and potent.

These long term strategies are designed to bring a steady flow of traffic to your site over a long period of time. The only draw back to these methods is that they take a much longer period of time to enact than do the short term strategies. These long term methods include: article marketing, press release marketing, and opt-in mailings.

When looking at the many options available for both short term and long term marketing strategies, you will find that both free and paid options are available. The free marketing strategies will no doubt be the first to catch your eye, and there are some great ones out there, but keep in mind that the free strategies will take quite a bit of time to bring into fruition. They will also require quite a bit of work on your behalf as well, this is why paid marketing techniques are often recommended. Paid marketing techniques will get you the quickest results and you will not have to do a lot of work yourself.

If you are looking for the best results, it doesn’t hurt to put both short term and long term marketing techniques to your disposal. All of the available marketing strategies can help you out by increasing your business and web traffic; so make use of each of them. There is some strong competition out there, but if you work at it, you are sure to succeed.

If you are ready to get your site in the top search engine results and have your email filled with customer orders, then it is time to put the top 10 marketing techniques to work for you.