How to Use Pay Per Click Marketing In Our Online Business

The concept of Pay Per Click revolutionized the way marketing and promotional drives were perceived on the internet. In other words, PPC has pushed the limits of online marketing further and made advertising accessible at base level as well. This form of marketing is highly productive and very cost effective. So, how do you use Pay Per Click in your online business?

When used in combination with each other, SEO and PPC can be the magic mantra for successful internet marketing. Essentially, PPC gets you two major benefits. Firstly, it gets you traffic. Secondly and more importantly, it gets you target traffic. This is in stark contrast to its counterpart, Paid To Click or PTC. The difference between the two is vast. In PPC, advertisers pay a website which gives them clicks when visitors to that site see the ad and click on it. So, the process is beneficial for the advertiser and the host website. PTC is completely different. In this method, it is not the website that gets paid for the clicks but the person who actually clicks on the link. This does not get you target traffic and does not help in the long term since you cannot build a patronage through it. PPC, on the other hand, accomplishes this beautifully.

Lets say you have a website and post ads on it provided by various advertisers. Every time a visitor to your site clicks on the ad, you get paid by the advertiser. This is a huge profit for you because basic PPC does not require visitors to actually buy a product from the advertiser for you to get your money. Just give them traffic and they pay you. So, if you have web space and can bring traffic to it, you can mint money through PPC. It is in fact a great online business idea.

Looking at it from the advertiser’s point of view, the scenario seems as rosy.  If you have just launched a website or a product and want interested people to visit you, PPC is a great tool. You do not have to be worried about spamming when you use PPC because usually, it is only the interested people who will want to visit your site since they are not getting paid for clicking on the ad like PTC. So, you can zero in certain sites that receive large amounts of traffic and put your ads on them. Choosing relevant and related sites can get you more results. You can have a steady flow of target traffic. Many people visiting your website can be successfully converted into customers if your website is efficient and interesting.

However, PPC is not just about posting ads. Remember, you are not the only one involved in PPC campaigns. There are millions others like you who wish to post their ads on the best sites. So, how do you ensure that your ads are seen? There are many things that you need to take care of beginning from using the right keywords and attractive ad formulation to other SEO and SEM techniques. Through PPC, you get more traffic, your visibility increases, your clientele increases and subsequently, your online business succeeds.

Author’s Bio

James is an Avid Blogger and Online Marketing Expert he recommends internet marketing agency london for online Marketing Needs.

Looking for a Groupon clone script?

The last 3 years Groupon style websites have become really popular around the world and many software companies have launched their own. I was looking to find a Groupon clone script for my website and I noticed that there are a lot of available on the market even for free. Of course there others based on commercial licenses with more features or technical support services.

I have tested few of them but my favorite is Couponic which even though you have to buy it, it comes up with a very reasonable price. But it is not only this. Even though all these scripts are built on the same idea, the features that this company offers can really make the difference. It is simple, easy to use, stable and customizable to your company’s needs.

For more info visit their website here http://www.uniprogy.com

SEO Checklist: 60 essential checks before launching a website

Launching a brand new website or publishing a new site version is typically a straight forward process given that it is well planned and well organized. Failing to take into account all the known ranking factors or failing to build an SEO-friendly website can lead to low rankings in Search Results. As a result before publishing a website, the Webmasters and the SEO professionals should validate that they are aligned with the best current practices and that they have not made important mistakes in their SEO campaigns. In this article we provide a detailed SEO checklist in which we have the most essential checks that one should make before publishing a website online.

 

 

 Keyword Optimization

 

Having well written/optimized texts and using the right keywords right is extremely important in SEO. Make sure that before launching your website, you can give a positive answer to all the questions below:

1. Did I conductive an extensive keyword research? Did I find all the popular terms that are relevant to my industry/niche/website?

2. Did I choose the targeted keywords wisely? Have I made sure that I can compete for the selected terms?

3. Did I write unique, high quality texts that will be considered useful both by the Users and by the Search Engines? Have I performed a spelling check to all of my texts?

4. Do I have unique titles and descriptions in all the pages of the website?

5. Did I add all the important keywords in the page Titles, the Meta-Descriptions and the HTML Headings (H1-H6)? Have I optimized my texts for those keywords?

6. Are the Titles and Meta-Descriptions compelling for the users? Will they click on my page if it appears on Search Engine Results?

7. Did I use keyword combinations that are likely to be searched by users? Have I optimized my pages for those keyword combinations? Did I incorporate in the text synonyms that are likely to be used in the queries?

8. Do I have a descriptive alt text in all the images of my website?

9. Have I ensured that the content is not over-optimized, that there is no hidden text in the pages and that no Keyword Stuffing techniques are used?

10. Did I keep my pages targeted by focusing on a small number of keywords per page?

11. Have I kept the content of my pages relevant to my website’s theme? Am I sure that I have not optimized my pages for irrelevant terms?

12. Are the most important keywords of my page in the beginning of the document?

13. Did I make sure that my pages will not compete each other on SERPs and that I do not have lots of different pages optimized for exactly the same keywords?

Note that by using SEO Tools you can speed up your checks. Analyze your pages by using the Keyword Analyzerin order to ensure that your pages are targeted and optimized for your selected keywords. Additionally theSERP Analysis tool can help you analyze and evaluate the competition and see if it is possible to compete for the selected terms.

 

 

Website Development

 

 

The techniques that are used in order to develop a website are extremely important and they affect the SEO. So ask yourself the following questions and make sure you have done everything properly.

14. Is my website well coded? Is it cross-browser? Have I made sure that my pages contain no broken HTML that is likely to affect the analysis of the site?

15. Have I developed my website by using Search Engine friendly technologies? Is someone able to access my website without requiring him to use Flash, Silverlight, JavaScript/AJAX, Java applets, frames etc?

16. Is my menu visible from all the pages and is it developed in HTML so that the search engines can find the rest of the pages?

17. Is my site easy to be crawled? Do I provide text links for all the pages of my website?

18. Do I use properly the meta-robots tags?

19. Did I take steps to eliminate duplicate content by focusing on the Link Architecture, by doing 301 redirects when required and by using proper canonical tags?

20. Did I make sure that I don’t use unnecessary or incorrect HTTP redirections?

21. Do I redirect the non-www version of my website to the www version or vise versa?

22. What is the loading time of my website? Have I done everything I can to reduce it?

23. Am I certain that I do not do Cloaking and that I have no Doorway pages?

Note that you can check several of the above (HTML Validation, Meta-Robots usage, Spider View, Page Analysis etc) by using the Web SEO Analysis tool. Additionally you can check the similarity percentage between two pages by using the Duplicate Content Tool.

More info at Official Source

Google Creates “Source” Meta Tags To Help ID Original News Sources

With the amount of content published online seeming to expand dramatically every year, Google says it’s experimenting with two new meta tags that it hopes will help it identify the original sources of online content. They’re called syndication-source and original-source and here’s a look at what they do and how publishers can use them.

What Is Syndication-Source?

Web sites that syndicate their content to others can use the syndication-source meta tag to give Google a signal that theirs is the one that should be included in Google News. In a perfect world, the tag will be used by both the site that syndicates its content, as well as the site that receives and publishes the syndicated content from another source. The tag looks like this:

meta name=”syndication-source” content=”http://www.somedomain.com/article1.html”

What Is Original-Source?

The original-source meta tag can be used by publishers wanting to claim their article as the original version. In a sense, it’s somewhat like the rel=”canonical” tag, which can be used to indicate the canonical version of similar web pages (more about the canonical tag below).

Search Engine Land, for example, could use the original-source meta tag on this article (and others) to indicate that ours — not the various sites that scrape our content or reference it in other ways — is the original version.

Similarly, Google says this meta tag can also be used in the same way publishers link to other sites. For example, since this article is also referencing an announcement on the Google News blog, we could use the original-source tag similarly to how we cite them via a link.

In fact, Google says you can cite several different sources with multiple versions of this tag if you want to credit each one that led to the article you’ve published. The tag looks like this:

meta name=”original-source” content=”http://www.somedomain.com/article1.html”

What About The Canonical Tag?

As mentioned, there’s another tag (technically, an attribute), that Google introduced that seems similar to what today’s new “source” tags do. That’s the canonical tag. See our past coverage about the tag for more background:

Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Unite On “Canonical Tag” To Reduce Duplicate Content Clutter

Google Supports Cross-Domain ‘Canonical Tag’

Why use these new tags if you’re already using the canonical tag? Simple answer — because you’re a news publisher. These tags only work for within Google News, and they are designed to help Googel News experiment more with source identification and attributions. Google told us:

We felt the options currently in existence [the canonical tag] addressed different use cases and were insufficient to achieve our goals. The more accurate metadata that’s out there on the web, the better the web will be.

What About Spam?

Meta tags are, in some circles, an invitation to spam. And there’s nothing to stop Joe’s Search Blog from scraping and re-publishing this article, while also using one or both of these tags to claim that his is the original version. Worse, there’s also nothing to stop a high-trust, authoritative site from using — or misusing, to be more accurate — these tags.

Google’s blog post talks about this being an experiment and needing to see how people use these tags “in the wild.” Clearly, they’ll be looking for misuses, too. Google says they may reduce the importance assigned to the metatags on an individual site if they’re being misused, and they also reserve the right to remove sites from Google News altogether if need be.

Google also has a help page about the tags here.

Official Source

Google News SEO Tips & Ranking Factors

1. Submit Your News Articles As Soon As Possible

You can submit your articles as soon as you upload them on your site. The earlier you submit, the sooner Google can crawl and extract them. The result is that you’ll boost your publishing power, and Google will process your most recent articles more quickly, since they recrawl all News sitemaps frequently.

2. Submit Your News Site Map to Google

Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools. Verify your site. If your site is currently included in Google News, the presence of the News Crawl link on the left indicates that the news features are enabled. If your site isn’t included in Google News, you can request inclusion.

3. Include Only Most Recently Added URLs In News Sitemap (Less than 72 hours)

Google wants only the most recently added URLs in your News Sitemap, as it directs Googlebot to your breaking information. If you include older URLs, no worries (there’s no penalty unless you’re perceived as maliciously spamming — this case would be rare, so again, no worries); we just won’t include those URLs in our next News crawl.

4. Include Your Company Web Site When Applying to the YouTube Partner Program

To get started, apply to the YouTube Partner Program. Don’t forget to include the website of your news organization in the “Company Web Site” field on your application form — this is critical to having your application approved. If you don’t already have a YouTube account, make sure to use an email address with the same domain as your website (e.g. johndoe@newswebsite.com) when registering.

5. Keep The Article Body Clean

For various reasons, when crawling an article, Google News checks to make sure it can find the article body. If your article body is broken up by tags, ads, sidebars or other non-article content, we may not be able to detect the actual article body, and reject your article as a result. In addition, if you place the beginning of your article’s body near the title in the HTML, we’ll be more likely to extract the correct title and snippet.

6. Make Sure Article URLs Are Permanent And Unique

If you reuse article URLs, Google’s system may have difficulty crawling and categorizing your stories. In addition, make sure your article URLs have at least three digits that don’t resemble a year (for example, 5232 is ok, but 2008 is not.) You can get around this requirement by submitting your articles in News Sitemaps. Also, please note that session IDs can confuse Google’s crawler, and Google may not realize that two distinct URLs actually point to the same page. You can learn more about some of these requirements here.

7. Take Advantage Of Stock Tickers In Sitemaps

Google News Sitemaps allow publishers to specify stock ticker symbols for companies mentioned in individual articles. Using these symbols helps Google better identify the subjects of your articles. You can read more about the format Google uses for this data here.
8. Check Your Encoding
Google occasionally sees articles that declare themselves to be encoded in one format (say, UTF-8) and are actually encoded in another (say, ISO 8859-1). Don’t do this. It hurts Google.


9. Make Your Article Publication Dates Explicit
In order to help Google’s crawler determine the correct date, please make the actual publication date of your articles explicit. You can do this by placing the article date and time in the HTML, between the title and the body. Also, you can remove other dates from the HTML of the article page, and add the required tag to articles in your News Sitemap. Dates on article pages can be in most common formats, but for sitemaps, Google asks that you use the W3C format; e.g. 2008-12-29T06:30:00Z.
Note that the article times and dates displayed on Google News reflect the time at which Google originally crawled the articles, and may not be the same as the publication date.

10. Keep Original Content Separate From Press Releases
If your site produces original content and distributes press releases that you’d like Google to crawl, make sure to separate your original news content from your press releases by creating two different sections on your site. As you may know, Google News labels press releases distinctly in order to alert our users that the article they’re about to read is a press release. If your original news sections have links to press releases, adding the rel=”nofollow” attribute to all links that point to your press release articles will ensure that they’re labeled correctly. You can learn more about this attribute here.
 
Official Source & More Info

Το αγγελιόσημο σε νέες περιπέτειες

Η απόφαση της κυβέρνησης να εισάγει το αγγελιόσημο και στο χώρο του Διαδικτύου προβλέποντας την υποχρέωση της καταβολής του σχετικού πόρου υπέρ τρίτων στα ενημερωτικά διαδικτυακά site, αποτελεί μια πολύ σημαντική εξέλιξη, έστω και αν η εφαρμογή της απόφασης αυτής περιορίζεται για την ώρα αυστηρά στους ιστοτόπους με πρωτογενή ειδησεογραφικό χαρακτήρα.

Η σχετική διάταξη προβλέπει ότι «διαφημίσεις ή με πληρωμή δημοσιεύματα που προβάλλονται ή καταχωρούνται στην ηλεκτρονική σελίδα ή πύλη του Διαδικτύου... υπόκεινται στην επιβάρυνση αγγελιοσήμου, στο ίδιο ποσοστό που προβλέπεται κάθε φορά για τους τηλεοπτικούς σταθμούς».

Επίσης το σχετικό άρθρο προβλέπει ότι το προσωπικό που απολαμβάνει τα προνόμια του αγγελιοσήμου, περιορίζεται σε συγκεκριμένες ειδικότητες και δεν αφορά στο σύνολο των εργαζομένων στα σχετικά ειδησεογραφικά site.

Με τον τρόπο αυτό η κυβέρνηση ενώ εμφανίζεται στη γενικότερη ασφαλιστική μεταρρύθμιση να επιδιώκει σε κάποιο βαθμό την αποκατάσταση της κοινωνικής δικαιοσύνης σε ένα φαύλο, άδικο, ηθικά χρεοκοπημένο και διεφθαρμένο σύστημα - με δεκάδες χιλιάδες συνταξιούχους ψευτο-ανάπηρους ή συνταξιούχους ζόμπι, ζωντανούς δηλαδή που εισπράττουν συντάξεις νεκρών- ταυτόχρονα επεκτείνει ένα από τα πιο φαύλα επί μέρους καθεστώτα του υφιστάμενου συστήματος και σε άλλους τομείς.

Ας υπενθυμίσουμε όμως γιατί το σχετικό καθεστώς του αγγελιοσήμου αποτελεί φαυλότητα. Η βασική αρχή του νέου ασφαλιστικού συστήματος, που εισάγεται με πρωτοβουλία της τρόικας, στηρίζεται στην ανταποδοτικότητα και στον περιορισμό της συνεισφοράς του κράτους (των πρόσθετων επιδοτήσεων δηλαδή που απολαμβάνει ο ασφαλισμένος όταν συνταξιοδοτηθεί πλην όσων θα δικαιολογούντο από τις δικές του ασφαλιστικές εισφορές), στη χρηματοδότηση της εθνικής σύνταξης.

Τι κάνει το αγγελιόσημο; Ενώ υποτίθεται ότι χρηματοδοτεί τις ασφαλιστικές εισφορές κάποιων κατηγοριών εργαζομένων, τις αποσυνδέει τελείως από το μισθό που λαμβάνουν οι συγκεκριμένοι εργαζόμενοι. Έτσι για παράδειγμα σε δύο site που υπάγονται στο αγγελιόσημο και έχουν τον ίδιο διαφημιστικό τζίρο μπορεί να δουλεύουν στο ένα δύο εργαζόμενοι που θα επωφεληθούν από το αγγελιόσημο και στο άλλο έξι. Στην πράξη λοιπόν, επειδή θα καταβληθεί από τις δύο επιχειρήσεις το ίδιο ποσοστό επί του τζίρου (21,5%), τελικά η μία επιχείρηση θα πληρώσει τριπλάσιες ασφαλιστικές εισφορές για τους εργαζομένους της, σε σχέση με την άλλη. Ποιος επωφελείται από τις επιπλέον αυτές εισφορές; Λόγω του τεράστιου ύψους του αγγελιοσήμου και του μικρού αριθμού των εργαζομένων που απολαμβάνουν το αγγελιόσημο, σε σχέση με τον συνολικό αριθμό των εργαζομένων που εργάζονται σε όλες τις σχετικές επιχειρήσεις (πλην του τύπου και της ΕΡΤ), επωφελούνται οι εργαζόμενοι στον τύπο και στην κρατική ραδιοτηλεόραση, οι οποίοι επιδοτούνται στην ουσία από το κοινωνικό σύνολο με τεράστια ποσά, πολύ πέραν των 360 ευρώ της εθνικής σύνταξης.

Η κυβέρνηση λοιπόν αντί να αλλάξει το καθεστώς αυτό, που παραβιάζει τις βασικές αρχές του ασφαλιστικού συστήματος, ανταποδοτικότητα δηλαδή και διαφανείς επιδοτήσεις που να πηγαίνουν στους κοινωνικά περισσότερο αδύνατους ή τουλάχιστον να διανέμονται ισότιμα, το επεκτείνει και στο Διαδίκτυο.

Ο λόγος είναι απλός. Προσπαθεί να εξυπηρετήσει (ρουσφετολογήσει είναι η ορθότερη λέξη), τους νεόκοπους ιδιοκτήτες των ηλεκτρονικών site, εισάγοντάς τους στον προνομιακό κόσμο του αγγελιοσήμου, κλείνοντας ταυτόχρονα το μάτι στους παραδοσιακούς εκδότες με το υπονοούμενο ότι θα προχωρήσει στη συνέχεια η συμπερίληψη και των υπολοίπων εμπορικών site, που δεν έχουν ειδησεογραφικό χαρακτήρα. Με την ίδια «λογική» με την οποία πληρώνεται αγγελιόσημο και για τις διαφημίσεις που τοποθετούνται π.χ. σε ταινίες που προβάλλονται στους τηλεοπτικούς σταθμούς, στην παραγωγή των οποίων δεν συνεισέφεραν κατά κανένα τρόπο οι εργαζόμενοι που απολαμβάνουν το αγγελιόσημο. Η φαυλότητα του αγγελιοσήμου λοιπόν, σε νέες περιπέτειες.

Official Source

Google Voice Blog: Google Voice for everyone#links

Google Voice Blog: Google Voice for everyone#links

Facebook Privacy Now Has an Official Fan Page

Do you like privacy? Well, now you can “Like” it officially — with Facebook’s newly launched Facebook and Privacy Page. Today, the social networking site announced on its blog() that it has created a page all about everyone’s favorite topic: Facebook privacy.

A few weeks ago, tensions came to a head with regard to Facebook — people were sick and tired of changing privacy settings, confused by the Open Graph and shocked by allegedly leaked IMs from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s college days, in which he scoffed at users for trusting him with their info. A (failed) movement calling for folks to quit the site grew, alternative versions of Facebook began popping up, and Time magazine even put privacy on its cover. Finally, Facebook launched new, simplified privacy settings in an attempt to make good.

Now, users have an official venue in which to get info on changes such as these, as well as to ask questions and (most likely) vent frustrations. Currently, there are a few video tutorials explaining the new privacy settings up on the page, as well as a series of articles on privacy from various publications.

Official Source

The Number One Rule of SEO

That might sound like a silly question – what should be the number one rule when it comes to search engine optimization? However, everyone has their own ideas. For some it relates to keywords, for others, on-site optimization or off-site optimization (or link building). It may sound like I am repeating the same philosophy all the time – here is a different twist.

When it comes to SEO, every site, every business is unique in every respect. They are have their own set of unique requirements and their own unique blend of options that can help lift them to the front page of the search results. While there may be a range of basic white hat optimization strategies that every site can implement, once you get past the basics it is a different story.

Some businesses can succeed with pure organic search results others may need the help of pay per click advertising. Another business may find that social media marketing through the use of videos delivers more and better targeted visitors than organic search on its own.

To be successful online now you need a blended strategy that uses every available channel promote your business. You also need a website that fulfills all the requirements needed to be successful – that includes design, content and usability. A mistake can be to try and copy what another business has done – it often doesn’t migrate to your business because you haven’t taken the same direction with other strategies.

So the number one rule (for lack of a better phrase) is that each business is different and each business requires a different set of strategies to succeed online.

Official Source

6 Steps to write a well-structured Press Release

Here are some steps to create a correct structure for your press release:

1. Attractive Headline

Write an attractive headline which communicates the core message of your press release. Use action verbs in the present tense and relevant keywords.

2. Text Summary

Under the headline, write a summary text with one or two key sentences.

3. Key Elements

Create the body of the press release and ensure that your key elements are written in the beginning of the text so as to attract the readers’ attention. Don’t forget that journalists are usually very busy and in a rush when they receive it.

4. Contact Information

Write the name and the contact information of your company at the end of your press release, so that media can easily find that information if needed.

5. Use standard fonts

Use fonts universally accepted and avoid the use of bold, italic or colored fonts. In this way your press release remains readable from various computer platforms.

6. Post it online

When your press release is completed, don’t forget to post it on your website(s) so that search engines can easily pick it up.

Don’t forget to optimize your texts, review the grammar & orthography and send your press release to all available free submission directories!

Tina Fotopoulou is the Official Author of this post WebSeoAnalytics.com