Tom Chuong, SEO » Marketing

Google Experiments with Sponsored Links within Google Suggest

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:23:31 +0000

Last year, I was delighted to see and use the new search feature called Google Suggest. For me, it helped correct my horrible and sometimes annoying spelling errors when I was searching. In fact, it had saved me more time than I’d realized because I was now researching keyword or phrases that I would not normally thought of.

Fast forward to September 2009, and it was only a matter of time before Google started experimenting with AdWords ads within it’s Google Suggest.

Here’s a snapshot for the keyword “att wireless”:

From an advertiser’s perspective, it could mean a higher click-through rate for their ads. However, it could also mean a higher CPC (cost per click) for the advertiser. Ultimately, the advertiser could see more sales as a result of the added exposure or impressions.

This is yet another attempt by Google to increase it’s AdWords exposure, and overall revenue. Clearly, exposing searchers to an AdWords ad within Google Suggest will definitely increase Google’s revenue. And since this is a new feature, many searchers that are not Internet savvy may inadvertently click on the ad because it’s more appealing that the other suggestions in the list.

Most importantly, it will give Google another opportunity to revised their advertising guidelines because currently only one sponsored link is being shown within Google Suggest. The quality of the ads shown may be better, but it may also present problems for many marketers, and new users of AdWords.

The Death of a Website

admin — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:21:45 +0000

Death comes when you least expect it. It may come quietly or abruptly. And since you probably don’t know when it comes, it may help you to understand it’s arrival is inevitable. Death lives inside all of us and outside in our environment. In the online marketing world, death also prevails arguably in the form of a decreased search engine ranking.

If you’re like most online businesses, you may be completely dependent on Google or other search engines for your livelihood. These search engines produced the targeted website traffic necessary for the survival of a website’s monetization.

Here are some tips you can use right now to ensure sustainable website traffic for you website.

create a blog and maintain it with unique content
write and submit articles to article directories
create and upload videos to video sharing websites
post relevant comments on high traffic blogs
post or answer questions in Yahoo Answers

These are a few of my favorite things that I like to do to keep traffic coming to my website. So if you don’t want to completely rely on your SEO efforts, give these five ideas a try. Perhaps with a little effort you can avoid or delayed the death of your website if you’d inadvertently did something wrong in your SEO campaign.

Benefits Of Social Media Optimization For Websites

admin — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:10:21 +0000

Although it has been around for sometime in our society, social media optimization (SMO) is a new concept in the field of website marketing. Men are social creatures and have a craving to stay with like-minded people. These like-minded people form a group and eventually lead to a society. Similar concepts are followed in the online world.

Previous Techniques

Previously, online marketing techniques were different. Webmasters used different SEO techniques for getting top ranks in search engines. High rank made it a possibility for their website to come in the visibility of their desired audience. Eventually, it could lead to monetary benefits. However with social media optimization, you can reach every corner of the globe both as an individual and a company.

Single Platform For Dissimilar Business Minds

Facebook.com, del.icio.us, Furl, technorati, digg, bloglines.com and similar other online social forums provide us with an excellent opportunity for promoting businesses in a methodical manner. The cliché behind the success of these types of websites is their ability to accommodate different types of business minds on a single platform.

Platform For Harnessing Your Business Skill

These domains allow intermingling of two different people having similar interests and business needs. Business owners can earn valuable tips from different posts, which are put up by experts of their field, for improving their business strategies and eventually making the desired profits. Simultaneously, they can post their own problems for getting solution from these experts.

Affordable Method Of Globalizing Your Business

Apart from finding out tips, SMO helps business owners in making their products affordable and the company name visible to the global market. In return, they get clients in large number from the same forum and through the reference of the former. Henceforth, you are making friends and extracting cash from similar location at the same time.

Social media have changed the entire networking field from top to bottom and have brought the whole world to just the click of a button. If you have the desire to promote your business with minimum or sometimes no investment, SMO is the perfect ingredient for your recipe.

Tree of Success

admin — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:35:51 +0000

Have you ever really looked a tree and wondered why it’s so resilient? I was in my backyard today and noticed something really profound about our Florida live oak. This live live oak grew from a single acorn and now it’s must be over 50 feet tall. Although, it is leaning slightly to the left from all of the hurricanes that hit our area over the decades, it is still standing tall and firm in this soft sand.

When I looked closer, I noticed that the roots from this live oak is deeply rooted in the sand. One of the largest root points to the right of the tree and so I assumed that this one of the reason why it’s standing so strong.

The methodical growth of this live oak can also be applied to our online business. Whatever online business you’re involved in, you have to create a solid foundation that withstand the cyclical nature of business.

For example, let’s take look at search engine optimization. If you know that the search engines are always changing their algorithm and that quality backlinks is the key to maintaining a top ranking, it’s very important you do your best to seek the best quality backlinks that you can find.

This scenario is especially true for Google because they value relevancy above everything else. And if you’re like most online businesses that depends on Google for traffic and sales, then you’ll want to keep this fact in mind when you do your link building campaign.

If you’re not seeking quality backlinks yet, now is the best time to re-evaluate your link building campaign.

Seo Yahoo Store

admin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:25:48 +0000

As an experienced SEO professional, we’re always looking for more ways to help small businesses make more money with their online business. With the Yahoo merchant solutions, new and experienced businesses can easily create an online store for as little as $39.95/month. Yahoo offers three comprehensive packages: Starter, Standard, and Professional.

The cost of each package represents a certain level of projected sales per month. Inevitably, the higher the monthly fee you pay per month, the less you pay per completed sale transaction. For a new business, I recommend that you start off with the Starter package and then upgrade when your monthly sales increases.

Once you get your Yahoo store up and running, you might want to consider doing some search engine optimization on it. By doing SEO for your Yahoo store, you are ensuring the long term success of your business venture. A carefully planned SEO campaign could produce new sales, build brand awareness, and garner free targeted traffic from all three major search engines.

SEO and your Yahoo store should be part of your overall online marketing campaign. If you have the budget, I highly recommend that you start and launch a PPC or pay per click campaign soon using Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing. Both are great ways to generate instant targeted traffic for your new online business.

Additionally, the information that you learn from your PPC campaign will also help with your SEO campaign too. You can easily use the same keywords that produced the most sales from your PPC campaign for your SEO campaign.

For example, let’s say that you were selling “used golf clubs” on your Yahoo store. Cleverly, you use this keyword and other variations of it within your Google AdWords and produced a steady flow of sales. With this information in hand, you should place the same keywords in the title of your Yahoo store too.

And if you want to increase your search engine rankings, simply buy text links or have other websites link to your Yahoo store with the keyword “used golf clubs”. Over time, you will build a steady number of backlinks that inevitably increase your rankings.

It all sounds simple, but doing SEO for the first time can be frustrating for some people. Consequently, you will have a lot of unanswered questions about SEO. Keep in mind that your job is to produce sales and learn SEO at the same time.

Fortunately, there’s a better way to do SEO for your Yahoo store. You can hire an SEO firm like our company to do the work for you. You can focus instead on running your business, and we’ll take care of optimizing your website for Google and others search engines.

Why should you trust us? Unlike other SEO company, we will treat your Yahoo store as if it was our own. Our goal will be to garner interest in your website and help you convert these targeted traffic to real sales. If your objective is to make sales from your website, wouldn’t you want to work with an experienced SEO company like us? SEO Yahoo store is a comprehensive optimization plan that you can use starting today.

Use Free Press Release to Market Your Website

admin — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:18:20 +0000

In this SEO game, you need to use a variety of online marketing strategies. One strategy that I’ve found to be effective and cheap is to use free press release service like free-press-release.com. They offer a good service and it’s great for the online marketer with a shoe string budget.

Here’s what you can do now:

1. Write a press release or hire someone to do it for you. ( ask me about our press release writing service)
2. Open an account with free-press-release.com.
3. Submit your press release.
4. Repeat this process if you have new and interesting news about your company.

Make Your Marketing Message Clear and Easy to Read

admin — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 15:30:26 +0000

Getting your message across to rushed drivers can be difficult. Earlier this morning, I was driving to a local superstore. On my way there, I noticed several young girls holding some cardboard signs.

Unless I’m mistaken, I think they were trying to flag down potential customers for a high school car wash. There was only one problem, I couldn’t read a single character on the white cardboard. The girl’s enthusiasm did not fit with the nearly invisible message on the cardboard signs.

This is an important lesson for anyone involved in selling a product or service. If you don’t make your marketing message clear and obvious, your potential customers will NOT buy from you. All of your efforts will be wasted and your sales will be less than great.