If you build it they will come!... Right?

Unlike traditional advertising in printed media, yellow pages, bill boards, radio and TV, Internet marketing is a completely different animal.

There are basically two ways to get your prospect to visit your website: Ad Campaign and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

1. AD CAMPAIGNS, PAY PER CLICK AND SPONSORED RESULTS

An ad campaign is done through the major search engines such as Google® and Yahoo® otherwise known as "pay per click" or "sponsored matches". This is accomplished by creating an ad for your site, depositing funds into an account and bidding a certain amount per click. When someone clicks on your ad to visit your website, your account is reduced by the amount of your bid. Your add will continue to run until your account is exhausted at which point the ad will go of-line. Once you refill your account and reactivate your campaign, the ad will then come back on-line.

Generally the position of your ad in relation to the top of a search engine result page (SERP) depends whether you are the highest bidder, the second highest, third.. and so on. To really be considered effective, your position should be one of the top three. In cases where the desired keywords are highly competitive such as "real estate new york" the bid amounts could be very high, possibly over $10 per click. In other cases, where the keywords are not very competitive such as in "miniature pneumatic pumps" the bid amount could be very low. Perhaps even in the .10 cent range (usually the minimum bid).

Ad campaigns can be very effective in exposing your website to your target audience and should be a consideration in your marketing budget. However, proper selection and combination of keywords into the proper phrases is crucial in setting up an effective campaign. Cape Fear Technologies has the experience and tools needed to assist you in your key phrase selections and in setting up your campaigns in Google® and Yahoo®.

2. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)

SEO is the process of maximizing the content of your website to meet the guidelines of the search engine spiders and human reviewers. These guidelines also known as "algorithms" are sets of standards created by the search engines to maximize the relevancy of search results and to minimize irrelevant search results. For years, many inadequate tactics have been utilized by website owners in an attempt to beat the competition resulting in a tremendous amount of irrelevant search results. Today, these search engine algorithms are very precise and effective. Websites that attempt to use inadequate tactics are being penalized and dropped from the search engines, period.

There are many factors involved in proper SEO but the bottom line is that your website must contain good relevant content to what you provide. The rest is following proper protocol in setting up behind the scene coding that includes:

• TITLE
• META TAG DESCRIPTION
• META TAG KEYWORDS
• ALT TAGS
• TITLED LINKS
• PROPER PLACING OF HEADINGS
• PROPER KEYWORD DENSITY
• ELIMINATE REDUNDANT OR UNEEDED CODE

There is much more to it than that but it should suffice to say that SEO is an ever changing field because the search engines keep producing better and better algorithms and as a result, the guidelines change as well.

Cape Fear Technologies provides SEO services ranging from free reviews to weekly or monthly monitoring and updates as needed of our clients' websites. SEO fees are based on volume as shown in our consulting services page. We will be happy to provide you with a complimentary report on your website. Simply complete the following form and we will send you the report. You might by surprised at what you'll learn. Most website owners are. Let our SEO technical experts take a look at your site: