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
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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?

Share and Enjoy:

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

Perhaps not surprisingly, traffic to retail sites and consumer spending on those sites were both down during the holiday season, according to ComScore.

The research firm estimates total U.S. e-commerce spending declined 3 percent, the first ever drop reported by ComScore since it began tracking online retail spending in 2001. Total spending was estimated at $25.5 billion, compared to $26.3 billion in 2007.

“The combination of having five fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the severe economic headwinds faced by consumers has mad this a really tough season for retailers, both offline and online,” said a statement from ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni.

Some online retailers appeared to benefit from the bad economy — at least in terms of traffic. Consumers hunting for deals online helped drive a 5 percent lift in visits to sites like Amazon (7 percent) and Wal-Mart (4 percent). Apple (19 percent) also saw an increase. The list of traffic losers included eBay (-4 percent); Target (-1 percent); and JC Penney (-11 percent). Best Buy’s e-commerce site had no measurable change in traffic from the corresponding period in 2007.

Dunkin’ Donuts — where a 10-ounce cup of joe goes for about $1.30 — will be investing 77 million times that amount – in an ad campaign that launches Monday.

“You Kin’ Do It,” will be the theme of the $100 million campaign for online, TV, and outdoor ads, according to a report on usatoday.com. The theme apparently plays off of Barack Obama’s campaign mantra, “Yes we can,” and the “kin’” from Dunkin’.

The brand will continue its participation in social media, such as Dunkin’ Dave on Twitter.

Studiocom is Dunkin’ Donut’s online agency of record.

A spokeswoman for Dunkin’ Donuts said the company doesn’t break out its media spend, so the portion devoted to online isn’t available.

Viacom and Time Warner Cable have resolved a bitter dispute that threatened to strip TWC customers of Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other MTV Networks channels. Such negotiations are usually handled behind closed doors, but in this case the companies went all out with ads, on-screen pleas and online rebuttals meant to alarm TV fans and rally them to one side or the other.

The LA Times described a newspaper ad featuring a crying Dora the Explorer, taken out by Viacom, as well as an on-screen alert, warning viewers they may lose their favorite shows. A :30 spot, available on YouTube, had a similar message.

Digital media were heavily leveraged by both parties. Over at TheRiver.net, Pamela Parker posted the above screen shot from MTV.com and described bombastic copy (since removed) on a Time Warner Web site at TWCFacts.com.

“MTV please don’t do it!” Viacom is asking “you” to pay “millions” more, the site says, adding, “Those demands would be unreasonable any time, but given the current economic conditions, they are outrageous now.”

It’s not clear to what extent either party used search marketing or e-mail to get their message out. If you noticed either over the past few days, feel free to post them here or email me and I’ll post them here.

Multiple reports have noted that the dispute points to how important affiliate fees have become as the recession takes an increasingly harsh toll on network operators’ ad revenues.