Where’s the best place to find an established website for sale? Some of the registrars and web hosting companies have their own auctions. If you spend enough time scouring these auctions, then it’s very likely you’ll come across a good deal. But, what’s a good deal look like? Would you know it if it was staring you in the face? And, what criteria is important to know about the site before making an offer?

Instead of buying a new domain and going through the painfully long task of searching for a domain name & building/promoting a site from scratch, I prefer to go through an auction to buy an established domain.

Here’s a checklist of several factors to investigate before making your offer.

Guide to Buying Established Websites:
1) Find a subject matter you like. Sounds obvious. But, people looking to make money can be drawn to website with a subject matter they have no interest in. If the subject matter of the site is something you like, then the odds are you’ll be much more interested in working on it.

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How important is content quality?  You ask! It is well known that Content is king but not just any content by quality content.  Here is a couple of very few good reason you should read this article, that is if you want to increase your bottom line which I am sure is commissions.  The blocking & tackling of SEO is Content & Links. I’ve discussed a Link Optimization and why advertisers should stop paying Google. But, Links are just half of the equation to champion keyword rankings. The other half of the equation is Content. Quality & Quantity.

Once you’ve made your site search engine friendly through a technical SEO analysis, it’s time to build content on to what you have. Google likes content-heavy sites vs content-light sites. Think about the 7 page brochure site vs the 500,000 pages on a news site.

Generally speaking, the more pages of content, the better. Better for keyword ranking. Better for users. A Content-rich site is a good thing. Especially, in combination with a properly structured link campaign. The ole’ 1-2 punch.

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Image via CrunchBase

Contrary to how it may appear on the façade of things, CPA networks are not affiliate networks. The “CPA” part in their name is what is misleading many. Generally meaning cost-per-action, a widely-spread affiliate payment model, the abbreviation “CPA” is actually not the best way to describe “CPA networks”. The more appropriate name for them is sub-affiliate networks.

Whereas a traditional affiliate network (e.g. Commission Junction or LinkShare) is functioning as a mediator between merchants/advertisers and affiliates/publishers, CPA networks are working as yet another link in the chain between the merchant and the affiliate. I have put together the following diagram to illustrate the difference between a traditional network and a CPA network:

This Graph Explains CPA Networks

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Are your looking to stop paying Google and put more money back into your pocket then you want to read this short article.  The question of SEO vs PPC is really about budget allocation. If an advertiser has X dollars allocated for Search Marketing, then how much of that should be allocated for SEO vs PPC? This is often the case when a small business wants to try Online Marketing.

We can look at this question from another angle. Long Term vs Short Term? If I only have a finite amount of marketing dollars then where will I get the bigger bang for my bucks?

Your PPC Marketing Budget

Let’s start with PPC. Say for example a client has a monthly budget of $10K. If they throw that into Google Adwords for a 30 day campaign, that breaks down to a daily budget of $333. Depending on the competitiveness of the keywords, the budget could run out within the first few hours of the day. And, even if it is spread out evenly throughout the day, it certainly wouldn’t be served for every search query. Then, once they decide to stop running the campaign…poof! Their ad disappears. Done. Finished. Finito.

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So how do you leverage social networks to gain twitter followers.  This article will give you some twitter tips and social media tips to help you improve your social media skills.

Jumping into Social Media can be confusing & overwhelming. Do you need to sign-up and be active on every one? Which Social Networks should I spend my time on? These questions could cause Social Media paralysis. And, that’s been my situation for quite some time. Non-action, even though I have profiles on several social networking sites.   And hence no followers or listeners in my group.
Gain Twitter Follers How To Video

Gain Twitter Follers How To Video Play Now | Play in Popup | Direct Link

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It can be a confusing process to find a good Search firm. If anyone has ever been to an SES or SMX show, you probably find every PPC (Pay-Per-Click) vendor says the same thing. They all say they do the same thing, and they are the best.

Many advertising agencies & corporations outsource their Paid Search (PPC) Marketing. They usually will use a PPC Consultant or a large search firm. Very often there is a RFP process that involves questions and answers.

Below, I’ve put together an organized list of questions that anyone can use when gathering information regarding a potential Paid Search partner.

Conversion Tracking:
Do you have integrated tracking across all media types and all the leading search engines worldwide?
Does your platform have the capability for Transaction tracking based on:
- Using server redirects or direct traffic?
- Unlimited types of tranactions?
- Multiple variables (Order ID, zip code, etc.)
- Organic search results

Bid Management:
Can you set up rules based bidding such as:
- Optimum Keyword Ranking
- Bid Gap Management
- Cost per Acquisition (CPA) targeting
- Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) targeting
- Day Parting Rules
- Manual bidding

Reporting:
Does your platform show both reporting and tracking data for the following criteria:
- Campaigns
- Keyword Groups
- Keywords and phrases
- PPC Search Engines
- Destination URLs
- Date Range (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly)
- Latency Reports

Please attach a sample performance report.
Can we export reports as Excel or csv?

Account Management:
Can your platform handle multiple accounts?
Are there single or separate Logins, or dropdowns for each campaign?
Is there a limit on the number of keywords per account?
How many bid reviews per day? Is there a limit?
How many people will be dedicated to our account?
How is your client services team structured?

Keyword Generation Tools:
Do you have a Keyword Research/Generation tool to suggest relevant keywords and phrases for our campaign based on our input, AND through “crawling” our website?
Do you have a Keyword tool that enables us to build large keyword lists specific to our campaigns by utilizing all potential combinations of keyword phrases?

Ad Creative:
Does your client services team write ad copy?

Testing:
Is your platform capable of handling A/B split tests?
Is your platform capable of Multivariate testing?

Portfolio Mgmt vs Keyword level:
Does your platform offer the ability to choose between a portfolio based management, and keyword level bid management?

Pricing:
How is your service priced? Is it full-service client services, or just advice for do-it-yourself?
Are there multiple pricing models?
How is your technology priced? Can your platform be licensed?
What is the pricing structure for 100 campaigns that need full-service?

International Search Feature:
Does your technology support keywords and ad creative in all languages — including Asian double-byte characters?

Competitive Differentiation:
How do you differentiate your company from the rest of the industry?

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Related posts:

1. Organizational Structure of a Search Team
2. Accurate or Not? Fathom’s Keyword Price Index
3. Keyword Overlap Strategy

Properly optimizing a website is a combination effort of both on-site and off-site optimization. The ole’ 1, 2 punch. This post is about the off-site component of SEO to achieve link popularity and link relevancy.

In the past, I’ve written about how to use a Link Optimization and the Criteria & Time Period for Link Effectiveness. Below, I reveal the “secret sauce” on how to properly structure a Link Campaign to achieve high keyword rankings for your target keyword and target url.

I’ve crafted this as powerful, and permanent Link Campaign “package”:

Custom Blog Reviews
We hand pick higher quality blogs from within our network to write reviews about your website/product/service. The blogger posts their review on their blog. As part of the review the blogger links back to your site 2-4 times (randomizing the number of links will avoid creating a pattern). All of these links are considered permanent.

Custom Article Marketing
We provide an SEO friendly, professionally written, fully optimized Article(s) with 500+ words of content. The Article is submitted for syndication to the top Article sites. Package includes a guarantee of 15 placements. The article includes 2 footer links, embedded within content. [eg: ezine, with links in footer].

Article Plus (A couple targeted blogs):
Longer articles & more textlinks.
We write a full article and embed 4 links within the 500+ words of content. This article is then hosted on the homepage of the website for a minimum of 10 days. The article then archives within the site permanently. We will also backlink boost the archived page monthly, to ensure it continues to receive full search engine visibility and continues to gain trust over time.

2nd Tier Links:
This package includes Comment Links and Social Bookmarking Links on sites that have PageRank and dofollow. 100% of these links will point to your newly created link pages to ensure quick spidering and visibility, as well as support the relevancy using the same anchor text .

- Comment Links:
Make a relevant comment on a blog or other Social Media style site and link back to your site within the comment. Get the links on pages with guaranteed Pagerank from 1-5. You’ll have full anchor text and URL control. Sites are 100% SEO friendly (without nofollow).

- Social Bookmarking Links
Hand build keyword links on Social Bookmarking Sites (web-based sites designed to let users share internet bookmarks). This is a great way to build natural looking links in high volumes at low costs.

Premium Directory Links
Relevant, SEO friendly links on Directory Sites. Get the highest PR web directories available. They provide guaranteed SEO friendly links, regardless of the number of submissions.

Pricing:
Prices varies depending on the budget, and how competitive your industry is.

Share and Enjoy:

Related posts:

1. A Bakers Dozen of Link Building
2. Link Aquisition vs. Content Creation
3. Off-Site Optimization