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iTKO turns double digit conversion per keyword on PPC campaign

January 28th, 2006

A large part of the challenge in managing a successful pay per click campaign is generating a conversion rate on keywords that translates to a bottom line result. While most marketers feel lucky to achieve a 10% conversion rate, The Info Group considers that a standard. iTKO developers of LISA a automated testing solution for SOA, websites, applications and more, has already seen their ppc campaign achieve double digit conversion rates on their keywords.

Childrens Medical Center

January 17th, 2006

Childrens Medical Center is a internationally known hospital and support center and we are honored they have chosen The Info Group to provide search engine marketing services for them. More news to come!

I Want Top Rankings or I Want Positive Return On Investment?

January 14th, 2006

The choice between a positive or negative ROI on a marketing campaign is a no-brainer right? Maybe not if you are convinced that top rankings for your big keywords are the only way to go. The reality is and always has been, at least as long as I’ve been involved with search engine marketing (1998), that the highest ROI keywords were the ones the client never thought of or at a minimum considered secondary keywords and not worth much effort.

Search terms are used in the same thought process online as people use them when shopping in a brick and mortar store. For instance if you were a sales clerk and a customer walked into your establishment and said I’m wanting to buy a dingy flopper, that would be a pretty clear indication you were going to make a sale. However if a customer walks in and says something like, I’m interested in learning about your dingy floppers, you would also have a clear indication not of a impending sale but that a sale is possible and will require you to educate and apply your best sales tactics to turn this potential customer into a paying customer. So this same thought process should apply online. When you are trying to decide what keywords you need to target you need to add intention into the equation. While you do want exposure on your “main” keywords, serious thought and effort needs to be put into all of your keywords. The true power of search engine marketing has always been bulk. The company that is gaining visitors from hundreds or thousand of keywords is converting more than the company gaining visitors from just a few keywords and statistics bear that statement out over and over again.

So while getting top rankings is an ego boost and will generate traffic, the more important question is are those keywords earning you a return on your investment? With search engine optimization becoming the norm and with only 10 slots on the front page of search engines, it’s time to look beyond egos and concentrate on what will really take your business to the top an effective overall search marketing strategy which delivers results that affect the bottom line.

1,000,000,000 links to your site in 15 minutes for $20

January 9th, 2006

We’ve all seen those ads or received emails trying to sell you hundreds if not thousands or millions of backlinks to your site all in a matter of minutes. Well just like the emails that promise you millions of dollars if you’ll just put up a few thousand, it’s too good to be true. Link building like every other aspect of an effective search engine optimization campaign requires research, time and patience.

It’s no secret that one part of the three main search engine algorithms (Google, Yahoo & MSN) is link popularity, or who is linking to you and how relevant is that link and how much weight will it be given. So to think that by simply buying links to your site is the magic bullet is a big mis-calculation. Let’s look at what should go into an effective link building strategy.

  • Anchor Text - Yes, it’s critical that you “say” the right thing in the links that point to your page. Although this is not always under your control for those links that you can generate that do allow you to determine your anchor text it’s essential that you use your keywords in the text. So just as you’ve done when optimizing your meta tags or body content, consult your keyword list and develop short, keyword rich anchor text options to use when soliciting links.
  • Research - Find sites that are relevant to your site, identify a page within their site to ask for a link to your site and then contact the site owner as ask them. Ok, you’re probably going to be rejected more times than not but if you’re site offers complimentary content, if the content is original and of value, you’ll be surprised how many site owners would be willing to offer you a link as a value to their visitors. Keep in mind, sites that are more popular will have a greater impact on the value of your link than sites of less popularity.
  • Offer something - A simple link from a site may not be enough for a site owner so you might offer an article that is content rich which will be of value to his site and also allow you to gain that link via a signature box or if the site owner is generous maybe even links throughout the article.
  • Time - It’s going to take time to not only identify sites that fit your theme but also to communicate and gain those links. If you go the article route you’ll also need to write those articles so your timeframe has increased even more.
  • Patience - Once links are obtained you’ve got to now wait for them to be recognized by the engines. MSN is fairly quick at identifying backlinks, Yahoo is usually not too far behind and Google usually takes much longer.

So the next time you pull the credit card out to buy those 1,000,000,000 backlinks, think again, the chance of those having any major effect at all is minimal and even if they do, it won’t be long before one of the engines realizes what’s up and suddenly you’re left with no backlinks.

6996Diabetes.com - Affordable diabetes supply website under development.

January 8th, 2006

In yet another innovative way, the folks at FIFTY50 are launching a website to provide discount diabetic supplies. The site, which will offer a months supply of testing products for $69.95, will enable those who don’t have insurance an affordable outlet to obtain their diabetes supplies. Watch for a launch in the next 60 days.

Closing the Great Net Divide

December 27th, 2005

One problem with the conception of a wired world is that many places on this Earth don’t have electricity to support a computer. With the concept of a wireless world one would not need a wire to a device but would still need electricity. It now appears even that hurdle is almost gone. Here’s an interesting article on AMD’s efforts to bring the net to developing countries, including a $100 laptop that has a handcrank as an option to power it up.

Human ingenuity! Read on.

Meridian Business Centers

December 20th, 2005

A big Texas Howdy to Meridian Business Centers as The Info Group begins their SEO campaign. Meridian Business Centers is a lessor of executive office suites in Dallas, Irving and Grapevine.

SEO Expectations

December 20th, 2005

During the course of every initial discussion about search engine optimization we have with new clients or potential clients is the subject of expectations. Usually the question is simple, when can I expect to see my site show up? The answer is a bit more complicated.

Several factors go into how a search engine will react to a site that has been properly optimized. One of the major factors, especially as it relates to Google, is how old the site is. New sites can take 6 to 9 months to show up for their main keywords in Google, why? The accepted reason in the SEO field is what’s called the Google “Sandbox”. Without getting into a discussion about the Sandbox Theory, simply put, this is a filter put in place to help prevent spamming. So what’s a site owner to do if his site won’t be in Google for 6-9 months? Well first, don’t panic! There is another little engine called Yahoo and a couple of others called MSN & Ask Jeeves that you can get in. In fact we’ve seen sites get listed and ranked in MSN in as little as 72 hours. If you could obtain significant traffic, front page rankings and sales without a significant listing in Google would you take it? Yes, I thought so.

So when can you expect your site to show up? To begin obtaining good rankings in most of the engines a new site that has been properly optimized should start “showing up” within 2-4 weeks. For established sites it should be much quicker but again all of this is dependent on numerous factors and certainly is site specific.

Categorizing Pod Casts

December 16th, 2005

It seems with the popularity of podcasting and the growing number of different organizations that are taking advantage of this new fad that it would be natural to start associating them into categories. Here is a brief list of podcast categories.

  1. God Casting
  2. Porn Casting
  3. Congressional Podcasting
  4. Corporate Podcasting
  5. Childrens Podcasting
  6. Radio Podcasting
  7. Music Podcasting

Just like music genres and all the different names that describe a brand of music (e.g. KrunkRock), it looks as if there is a genre naming phenomenon for podcasting. I look forward to the debates that will soon arise over naming these categories.

Have You Podcast Yet?

December 14th, 2005

Podcasting is a relatively new term but sure seems to be creeping into the mainstream fast and as businesses begin to catch on to the idea podcasting could easily change the way we market products and services. If you’re new to this whole RSS/Blog/Podcast world, it would be worth your while to learn about it because the new operating system from Microsoft promises to have RSS features built in and newer versions of the popular browsers are already making it easy to subscribe to your favorite blog or podcast.

P.S. You can add our blog via the RSS link in the highlight box below … and yes, we’ll be podcasting soon.