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Breakin' It Down
I've recently begun working with individuals one-on-one who are truly interested in earning an income from the internet in the comfort of their own home. A common complaint I hear from them is that they are constantly overwhelmed by the...
Points to Consider before Web Promotion
Points to Consider before Web Promotion
Doing business online is not as easy as it seems! You may have the notion, with millions of prospective customers being only a click away, all you need is to build an eCommerce website and you will start...
The (Not So) Shocking Truth About Getting A High Search Engine Ranking
I have seen my site hit #3 at Google, and some of my fellow entrepreneurs are wondering how I did it. Well, it's no big secret, and it won't cost you anything but your time. Here's what I did: 1. I searched online for information about the title...
Two Basic Parts Of A Low Cost Web Site Promotion
Anybody could own a web site. Anybody could up sell their own products and services to their target audience. Anyone could try to promote their web site with a low cost. But there are not many web sites that have a truly successful web site with...
Your Total, Effective Online Marketing Plan
Everyone is looking for that magic formula that will propel his or her web site to phenomenal success. Sooner or later, most people give up their search for this mythical online marketing secret and accept a mediocre level of online business...
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Five Minute Introduction to Overture
If the topic of search engine promotion sounds interesting, but you're not quite sure if you want to deal with submitting to an engine or directory and then waiting for results, there is one search service that eliminates the confusion and ranks sites purely on one factor: how much a business is willing to pay for a listing. This pure-market-based service is called Overture (formerly GoTo.com), and it can generate extremely targeted leads and referrals to businesses willing to pay for them.
Overture operates on a competitive bidding structure. Businesses place per-click bids on specific keyword phrases, such as "automotive parts" or "golf shoes", and the higher the per-click bid a business makes, the higher the ranking that business will receive for that phrase. For example, if Company A places a $0.30 per-click bid on the phrase "motorcycle repair manual", and Company B bids $0.29 per click on the same phrase, Company A's listing will appear before that of Company B. This sounds pretty straightforward, and it is, but there are two factors that are crucial for success with Overture - keyword selection and tracking.
To begin with, a company must analyze how customers search for the products or services they offer, and more specifically, the keyword phrases that are used to find the products or services offered. There is one maxim here that should not be ignored: The more specific the keyword phrase that is bid on, the more targeted the results. For example, the owner of a small used book store may be inclined to bid on terms like "books", "used books", and "book store", but searches on phrases like these would not generate targeted leads. To find good phrases for our book store owner to bid on,
we need to dig a little deeper into her business. Perhaps, because the bookstore is in the Houston medical center area, she has a large selection of used medical books. This would give her a competitive advantage in selling these types of books, so she should try to find phrases that people use to find used medical books online. Phrases like "medical book store", "used medical books", and "discount medical books" would be good phrases to bid on because the people searching on them would be good customers for her business.
The second factor that a bidder at Overture must address is the issue of tracking. If a business doesn't know which search phrases it's leads are coming from, that business can waste a good deal of time and money. This is where Web programming technologies such as PHP, PERL, and ASP can be extremely useful. Without going into too much detail, these technologies can be used to track a customer from click to sale.
If you are interested in Overture, you should read over some of the resources available from their site at http://www.overture.com/. But there is one resource that you won't find unless you are a business that uses Overture, and it is located at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. This second link is to their Search Term Suggestion tool, and it is a useful tool for determining keywords and phrases that are used in searches. It's also a pretty good all-around marketing tool to find out what's hot online.
About the Author
Alan is the lead developer for InfoServe Media, LLC (http://www.infoservemedia.com/), a Web development company that specializes in Web site design, hosting, domain name registration, and promotion for small businesses.
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